u.s. troops out of syria. you can see the timing and the reason for the questions. why is the president s deterrence on the asaid sad regime now failing. the president wanted to be clear that with the defeat of isis he wanted to bring our troops home. at the same time he wants to make sure that assad is deterred from chemical witnesses atension on innocent civilians. we think you can have separation. didn t the president by saying he wants to get out of syria essentially give a green light to assad to do this, as john mccain suggested, that the united states was leaving, was kind of pulling up and leaving it to ? look, we are still there. i think it is outrageous to say that the president of the united states green lit something as atrocious as the actions that have taken place over the last several days. the president once again made very clear how he feels about those types of actions when this incident took place roughly a year ago.
allies and partners in a response. sorry, second question. prime minister orban, an admirer of the president, who has said many find things about him, won a loond slide re-election. will the president call him? are there any plans to extend an invitation for a state visit or a working visit to prime orban? i m not aware of a scheduled call at this time. if there is one we will keep you posted and likely have a readout to follow. john. thanks sarah. today is the first day on job for john bolton as the skushl nart adviser. perhaps you can bring him out here one time and he can take our questions. here here. i will be happy to tag him in. thank you. in 2013 on fox and friends he said i think if i were a member of congress i would vote against an authorization to use force in syria. he continued i don t think it s
was the president given a heads up by the israeli government? i can speak only for this government. at this time the united states is not conducting air strikes in syria. i can t go beyond that. from the white house perspective, did the white house get a heads up about strikes in sir yachbl i can t go further than commenting on behalf of our government i can tell you clearly at this time the united states is not conducting air strikes in syria. backan deterrence. you said the president wants to make sure the assad regime can t conduct attacks like this in the ud future. last year when the president launched those cruise missiles he said that was a deterrent. what changed between months ago when the assad regime wasn t using chemical weapons and this strike right thousand. it seems to be on the heels of the president making the comments about wanting to pull
and we are going to continue looking at all of our options on the table currently. that emboldened assad, that this was sending a message to assad. i think the message we sent to assad was very clear, both in the president s words over the weekend and in our actions that we have taken in the past. roberta. has the president s attitude toward [ muted ] putin changed because of what has happened. the president has always been tough on russia, as he said last week, as i echo toed again when asked about it. this administration and this president have been tougher on russia than previous administratio administrations. i think you can see that both through the actions we have taken and in the comments over the last several days. he singled out vladimir putin in the tweet yesterday. does he feel that he can still sort of find some common ground is work with him on various thing. the president still feels that if we can have a good relationship with russia at some
russian government to this gas chemical weapon attack is basically to challenge president trump as to whether he s going to be pushed back by a threat from the bullies in moscow or whether he s going to go ahead and punish assad, as he said he would do. i m encouraged incidentally, i think the president going back to the campaign has not been tough enough on putin as he should have been. but in recent weeks he s really called out putin for his behavior, including saying that putin, russia and iran that was in a tweet though. does he need to do something more than just tweet about it? well, in fairness, he has sanctioned russia for other misbehavior of theirs in recent weeks. but i think the most significant message to russia, which rushed in when president obama moved back from syria, and now occupy a pivotal role there, is for the president to make clear that threats from russia are not going to stop the united states