in jerusalem. u.s. secretary of state antony blinken is scheduled meet with several arab leaders today as the u.s. tries cool tensions in the middle east. blinken is in amman, jordan where he will meet with his counterparts from jordan, egypt, saudi arabia, the united arab emirates and qatar. a palestinian authority will also be in attendance. the trip comes after he met with israeli leaders in an attempt to get them to agree to humanitarian pauses in the war against hamas. we need to do more to protect palestinian civilians. we ve been clear that as israel conducts his campaign to defeat hamas, how it does so matters. it matters because it s the right and lawful thing to do. prime minister benjamin netanyahu is refusing the idea of a cease fire, saying the more than 240 hostages still held by hamas must be released first. the united states would not agree to a cease fire after, the bombing of pearl harbor or after the terrorist attack of 9/11. israel will not agree to
to give the president the best intel so he can go into these talks and figure out where he wants to go? particularly for leaders of authoritarian regimes, they will try to close the gap with all source intelligence, derived from defects or sources in the case of north korea, foreign government partners, video footage, so you can take a look at kim jong un and analyze his health and his behavior. it is really trying to paint a picture of him as an interview l to inform the president s negotiation strategy. ed: he travels with his own toilet because he doesn t want the cia intelligence agencies to get a stool sample to get a better sense of his health, but we know he is a smoker. we believe he has diabetes. what else do we know about him? in the picture of great help, we ve looked back at studies in switzerland, he is a basketball fan even though he himself doesn t take much to athletics, apparently, but he has a predilection for bold moves.
stool sample and find out about his health, longevity, allegedly killing one of his own brothers in order to keep his hold on power. talk about his somewhat bizarre negotiating partner the president has. this really gets to the really, really interesting part of the story. let s say kim decides to denuclearize. i don t know if that is off the table. north korean officials had said in private, look, he is not like his father and his grandfather. he wants to bring his country into the future. putting aside all of his weird personal habits and everything else, he has said he wants to be a transformational leader, and he has told president trump this, and trump is willing to put his prestige and american negotiating on the line to see if kim is really serious. the interesting question is, let s say he does that. how do we get to the real hard part, which isn t getting rid of nuclear weapons, we know how to do that, how do you transform that country so his regime