the former secretary of defense said you could not launch pre-emptive strike against north korea because the nuclear fallout could be devastating to the asian peninsula. if the military told you, we can t do this. you re giving me two names. you want to do it in five years when they have war heads all over the place everyone one of them pointing at new york city or do you want to do something now. you berl do it now. if they think your serious, i deal with lots of people, if they think you re serious they ll negotiate and it ll never come to that. that s donald trump then private citizen in october of 1999 talking to the late great tim russert on the meet the press, his quote says it ll never come to that has now been met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. trump s message yesterday was
you d better do it now and if they think you re serious i deal with lots of people. if they think you re serious and they ll negotiate and it will never come to that. welcome back. that was president trump on meet the press in october of 1999. he was promoting his book the america we deserve and he was laying out why he would be willing as president to launch a preemptive strike against north korea. by the way, at the time he was a sort of kind of running for president as a reformed party candidate. that cycle for what it s worth. bring in tonight s panel. welcome all. john, let me start with you and what you heard there from donald trump 1999. what do you make of it? in some ways very consistent with the donald trump that we hear foed? well, i m sorry, you can t look at the existence of a miniature iced nuclear warhead
of a president, the brother of a president, is in fifth place. his average in all the polls is just 7%. two things about this will put it in some perspective. back four years ago when mitt romney was running, newt gingrich rose up and challenged him, rick santorum, he had a lot of headaches. mitt romney never dropped in the entire 2012 campaign below second place in the average of the polls. and here jeb bush running in fifth place. mitt romney also never dropped below an average of 16%. jeb bush at less than half of that right now. and the strategy that jeb bush decided to use this year, that shock-and-awe strategy is the same strategy his brother used 16 years ago, george w. bush, they raised a ton of money. they built all sorts of early support. let me show you what that did at this same point in the race for george w. bush in october of 1999, 53 points ahead of his
impeaching bill clinton. the ad said reward. larry flint and hustler magazine announced a cash offer have you had an adulterous sexual encounter with a member of congress or high ranking government official can you provide evidence of illicit sexual if so larry flint and hustler magazine will pay you up to $1 million if we choose to publish your verified story and use your material. they ran that ad in the washington post in october of 1999 and by december of 1999 it paid off. it paid off presumably for whoever tipped larry flint and it paid off when he got to claim the scalp of the next speaker of the house, bob livingston by outing livingston for his affair. and claiming his scalp basically on the day that the house of representatives was voting to
charlie brennan broke the story in january of this year about what was in that sealed grand jury report from 1999. and then he pushed for the release of the actual document. and he told me why that was so important to him. i realized after publishing this story in january about the existence of the indictment there were still many people who kind of looked at it as a, well, maybe it is, maybe it isn t, maybe there was, maybe there wasn t, and i just realized as a journalist that she nailed the story down with absolute certainty is important to obtain and show to the public the actual indictments that reflected the decision of the grand jury back in october of 1999. so in addition to the indictment, there were the dna test results. tests that came nine years after this indictment clearing the ramsey parents. does it payment it irrelevant or is it still important in your