for his secretary of state nominee. well i think you just described the foreign policy of the trump administration. it s day to day. almost moment by moment. especially with regard to afghanistan and the president s mind. he s willing to get out of af afghanistan. he was talked into staying a bit longer by general mattis and now the pompeo nomination, he s going to clear, he s going to be secretary of state. the interesting question, we know, we assume and we ve heard that mike pompeo has enormous influence with president trump. he gets along quite well with him. is he going to be secretary of state, plus secretary of defense? is he going to have a bigger say in the troop movements and troop placements as secretary mattis? i think that s going to be a potential collision we re going to be watching. we shall see. steve rattner, as far as mike pompeo goes, here s a guy that s got the education, the knowledge, he s got the know-how of certainly how to work with
to the pompeo nomination, you also said he should have been more forthcoming appearing before your committee. that notwithstanding, do you think that pompeo was still the right person right now to hold these direct negotiations with kim jong-un? well, there s a real question of whether he was the right person. as the cia director her conducts intelligence and covert operations. i don t know for kim jong-un, who you re concerned about, at the end of the day, his concern is about regime change. whether sending the cia director is the right person, unless he was groing there as the secretay of state designee and that violates, someone is nominated for a position you don t act until that position is confirmed. i m not sure he was the right person. maybe because of his closeness to the president it might have been a message to the north