while the president did threaten military action this morning, he did leave it open for the summit to happen. that s right. in a letter he sent to kim jong-un on one hand he s boasting about the military prowess in the united states, and on the other hand he s inviting kim jong-un to call him or write to him. the president has signaled that he still wants this summit to happen even if it doesn t happen on june 12th as originally planned. i white house officials today what would it take for the summit to be back on track, and basically said the administration would need to see the opposite of what it has seen from north korea this past week for it to happen. even as the summit was being called off north korea was taking steps to scale back its nuclear program, destroying nuclear test sites. will ripply joins us now from north korea. first of all, when the news broke that president trump was pulling out of the summit you were actually the one to break the news to north korean
up until this point. but it really all culminated with that statement from north korea which led to this letter the president sent to kim jong-un today. i m told that the administration had been expecting a response from north korea through national security channels. they knew there would be a response to mike pence s statements he made on fox news talking about the libya model. but when they received that statement from north korea threatening nuclear war, that is when the president met with his national security team, and the prevailing option on the table last night was just pull out of the summit. the president wanted to sleep on it, and that letter was sent this morning. while the president did threaten military action this morning, he did leave it open for the summit to happen. that s right. in a letter he sent to kim jong-un on one hand he s boasting about the military prowess in the united states, and on the other hand he s inviting kim jong-un to call him or write to him.
see these types of attacks is an indications that not all of the chemical weapons were destroyed in that effort, katy. so president trump weighing this in real time and he has a new national security advisor, john bolton, starting today. let s get more on that, ashley. it is john bolton s first day. he s a hawk on russia. how is he going to be influencing the president? well, to put it this way, john bolton is sort of overly simplistic terms is never not hawkish. that is almost always the position he is pushing. he s sort of saber rattling and bellicose. so that s what the president is going to be hearing from him. i have to say, the president on one hand, he likes that tough talk, and he sometimes likes being forceful. but in a lot of ways, ideologically, he and john bolton actually diverge. the president says america first is his view and we should be in less foreign conflicts. he s wanted us to withdraw from
speech. he talks about unprecedented job creation in the last 14 months. really? because 2.4 million in the last 14 months is less than the 2.8 million created in the 14 months before or the largest tax cut in history, which it ain t. he would argue, i think, and he sees the world in a way that says as long as if this conversation gets to a, on one hand, on the other hand level, he has won, because he has declared his headline in a grand sort of state of the union-like forum. the larger point of people didn t vote for this. people want him to be unusual. they did. but no, they didn t, because yes, they wanted a new kind of washington, but did they want someone who is outrageous, did they want someone who acts in the way he has. and i will say what people voted for in 2016 is the past. and right now if you re a republican, you re looking at generic ballots that have democrats up 16 points, which would be a wave of, you know, 50 seats in the house and perhaps deeper losses in t
perspective, strode out to the podium with two things in mind. two act. first act was a pheupb city state of the union address pushing against an unaeurbl negative media narrative ab how his administration has begun. he said here s how i see things talking directly to millions watching tv. the second part of it was the q&a. it was striking. open rhetorical war fare with the press throughout most of it. and the people who love him, the people who elected him, they re watching that and they ate every minute of it up. people in the press, of course, i think are gonna say it was a frightening performance. melissa: bernard, on one hand, you have to give him credit because he let people ask questions. they responded. he responded. they responded. no one was standing on ceremony. there were a lot of lobs going back and forth in every direction. that press conference was a long rambling hot mess, just like his presidency has been,