whether, you know, it s a good precedent to use an economic instrument, a blunt economic restaurant at that, to effect a policy outcome. they said they don t really connect the two. dow futures are now down 260. it will be another day for the president to consider is he the tariff man or mr. market. kayla tausche, hans nichols, thank you so much. you know we ll be digging into this when the u.s. markets open in less than 30 minutes, so stay tuned. now to ken dilanian who covers national security and intelligence. ken, these are stunning new comments by attorney general bill barr. he now says special counsel bob mueller could have reached a decision on obstruction of justice but didn t. explain. this requires a little bit of a legal explanation, steph, so bear with me. robert mueller approached this case knowing that he could not indict a sitting president under justice department doctrine but he went further. he and his lawyers decided not only couldn t he charge donald trump, he
for him politically, as he s looking towards the real election. but president trump has not, you know, relented on putting tariffs on japan. other countries have gotten some exceptions, but japan hasn t. trump has continued to threaten auto tariffs on a number of countries including japan. and he s continued to complain about the trade deficits that exists between the u.s. and japan. it s not clear that prime minister abe has been able to win on policy, because, you know, due to these close ties that he has and all of the red carpet rollouts that he s provided for the president. but it is something that he values in having that close relationship with president trump. and we ll have to wait and see if he s able to get some sort of policy outcome over the next couple of years. let s talk about the policy outcome over this trip. now, this is mostly ceremonial, this is a state visit. but with so much on the taken that you described so well. what s the white house explanation for not hav
one, two former intelligence officials likened this move to the one that put secretary mattis over the edge. ultimately a lot of national security officials believe secretary mattis finally resigned not just because he disagreed with the president s syria policy but because he feared that lives were at risk, that perhaps syrians who helped as translators or allies, that their lives would be at risk. they said there might be a parallel concern in the intelligence community that allies, informants, intelligence sharing agreements could very much be at risk if the attorney general who has staked out ground for himself as an ally of the fringiest kinds of beliefs that the president and his allies and conservative media voice about the intelligence community, do you share that concern? i do. it s one thing, a bad thing but one thing to politicize intelligence analysis to say, well the analysis of what happened with regard to the iraq war should lead to this policy outcome, war or peace or
thing to politicize intelligence analysis to say the analysis of what happened with regard to the iraq war should lead to this policy outcome, war or peace or what have you. it s a completely different thing to politicize the use of intelligence sources, human sources, assets, confidential sources of the united states that operate in very dangerous situations over seas risking their lives and the lives of their families to give us information and their information and identity could be revealed for a political effort by bill barr to amplify donald trump s theories. i don t think intelligence professionals are going to stand for it. you thought that maybe attorney general barr was getting resistance in his efforts to get his hands on his intel. i picked up today that wasn t just the intelligence community but also perhaps at the fbi. there s a gap that s opened up
an eye on. what about acting defense secretary shanahan, is it time for not an acting defense secretary? is it time to have a real one? i mean, certainly the fact that he s more operational and isn t really a policy guy, so he doesn t have the same level even if he was the secretary of defense, he would not be a significant voice in determining what the policy outcome here. i want to be clear here. i don t think the concern is 120,000 troops on the dproubd and invading iran at all. i think the concern is you get an accident, you end up with a military confrontation that could lead to a couple bombs flying and in the case of iran, the impact that would have on disrupting traffic through the straits of hormuz really raising oil prices globally, that s what is plausible now that wasn t a few months ago. and we know that trump doesn t want the sort of disruption that could really impact the markets. he likes showing that he s tough, he doesn t mind landing a couple hits, he didn t mi