the next couple minutes. what we will be listening for is what the obama administration has decided to do to deal with the crisis in egypt. will there be a sus intentionpe the financial assistance to egypt, pays for battle tanks and other hardware. let s see if the president says anything about that. the second decision the president has to make, every year the u.s. military and the egyptian military, they have joint exercises called operation bright star. they do this every year. they poe phostponed them when t was the earlier revolution. what will the president say if anything about bright star. several hundred u.s. soldiers and others are scheduled to go to sinai within the next few weeks to participate in the lengthy weeks long exercises. they do it every year.
we expect him to be speaking momentarily, let s go to chris lawrence. he s over at the pentagon. chris, a lot of focus on bright star, this annual joint exercise, u.s. and egyptian forces, they meet and continue for several weeks. and there is a lot of suspicion right now, a lot of concern aim sure in egypt that the u.s. the president may announce as early as the next few minutes the u.s. is either postponing, suspends, derailing, whatever, bright star. what are you hearing? that s right. we ve been hearing that there has been intense discussion and consideration of postponing that exercise. and when you say postpone, that s the word they will use, they mean cancel because there is no chance that it would get rescheduled until at least 2015. it was canceled in 2011 because of the unrest in egypt and it s really a way for the u.s. military to demonstrate how it could deploy to the middle east in the event of a war. it involves thousands of troop,
do bring weapons. ian, stand by. jill dougherty, you re monitoring what s going on. the president made a dramatic announcement canceling the joent exercise scheduled next month, bright star as it s called. at the same time, he did that suspend any u.s. military or economic assistance to egypt, although he did say further steps could be in place down the road. right. and it s an important step and in a way a no-brainer. because imagine as we say the optics. imagine what it would look like if u.s. troops were holding joint military not exercises, but training exercises with the egyptian military who are on the streets firing on civilians. it would look really bad. so it was one thing the president could do. serious step. but in a sense it was unavoidable.
advance the principles that we believe in. and so many egyptians have sacrificed for these many years no matter what party or faction they belong to. so america will work with all those in egypt and around the world to support a few of stability that rests on a foundation of justice and peace and dignity. thank you very much. so there he is you can the preside, the president taking a strong stance, opposing the violence going on.can the , the president taking a strong stance, opposing the violence going on. the demonstrators supporting the former president morsi, announcing the united states is now canceling operation bright star, the biannual military exercise hundreds of hundreds of u.s. and egyptian troops had been poised to meet next month, spend several weeks on the ground, in the air and on the sea exercising. they have been doing this going
cracks down on protesters in cairo and other cities around egypt. where does it go from here and what if anything canned the united states do about a transition back to democracy? let s bring in our panel now tucker carlson, host of fox & friends with us as is julie, host and correspondent from the associated press and syndicated columnist, charles krauthammer. the president talks tough saying he is canceling operation bright star. it s been canceled for a number of years now but he doesn t cancel the $1.3 billion we give to egypt. much of that money has already gone away. tucker, is he out of leverage here? i have to say, in his weak defense, it s a tough situation because you don t know. it s very volatile, you don t know where it s going to go. in the end, u.s. interests are paramount. there s no reason to stake out more ground than you need to except on the human rights question. i was really struck by the short shrift he gave to the burning of christian churches and christia