toughness with china. in fact, they believe that we need to. we were in finland, as i mentioned. nokia is completely gone, largely because of theft of intellectual property. they know full well that china is the real threat. so isn t the president s approach the right thing, given what you re just saying? no. just the opposite. in fact, we need to stick with our i m sorry, our european allies, those in the eu, to challenge china. we can do that through the wto. when we take cases to the wto, we win about 90% of them. but if we split with our friends and our allies, then we ll not be able to confront the real problem here, and that is china in terms of trade. so that s what nobody in europe can understand why in the world the president would pick fights with his allies here with those who need to be with us when we confront china.
welcome back to state of the union. the president famous for saying you re fired is building drama for a you re hired moment. but with just a single vote to spare in the u.s. senate, the real drama may be whether he has the votes. it s an especially tough spot for democratic senators in states trump won, now caught between their constituents and their democratic base. among them, democratic senator representing alabama, a state trump won by 28 points. joining me now is democratic senator, doug jones, of alabama. thank you so much for coming on, senator. let s start with the president s impending announcement to replace anthony kennedy on the supreme court. the president said he has narrowed the field down to four. and will announce tomorrow night. now, the question for you, sir, is as you represent an incredibly red state, donald trump won 62% of the vote in
about what might be promised. there was a promise made with regard to exercises in with south korea that may not have been fully vetted or noticed with south korea. i know that countries in europe are concerned about promises that might be made by the administration without consultation with our nato allies. for example? what s the biggest concern? well, that suspension of exercises, for example. or a commitment to remove troops from certain countries. those kind of things would concern and do concern our nato allies significantly. if you were advising the president if he came to you and said, jeff flake, tell me what you think i should say to vladimir putin, what would you say? well, one, that annexation of crimea will not stand. we cannot accept that. two, their involvement in or i m sorry, eastern ukraine is not going to be not going to
be accepted. and the sanctions will continue until the behavior stops. and that we know that russia, despite putin s saying otherwise, russia interfered with our elections. so those things, to start with, to say, hey, let s stipulate these items, and then go forward. i think that s what the president ought to do. and the other thing that you were talking to allies about was was and is the trade war, which is in full effect, as of 12:01:00 a.m. friday morning, the chinese responded with tariffs of their own. the opening selvo in a full-fledged trade war, for sure. let me ask you this. what is wrong with america showing some backbone after years and years and years of leaders saying that china is raking america over the coals in terms of a deficit, in terms of intellectual property? i don t think there s much concern in utah about showing
to. i m glad that the president is raising this issue with the nato countries. many of them are not pulling their full weight. but the president makes it sound as if they re supposed to contribute 2% to us somehow for their defense. what the commitment is, is to spend 2% of their gdp on defense, which will make them a more valuable part of nato. and about 8 of the 29 are doing it. some of the countries are coming closer. many are making great strides. but they are concerned about the rhetoric. do they have a right to be concerned? yes, they do. so when you re in a meeting with them, and you are clearly somebody who is critical of the president, but you re representing the u.s. and they say they re concerned, what do you say? well, we assure them that in terms of congress, we passed legislation frequently, talking about our commitment to nato. we are are certainly committed