from the closest us border crossing as a threat to security. ordering military to the border. unless granted special powers they will be used in only a support capacity. but the president doesn t mention that. he continues to portray this caravan of men, women, and children as a caravan overrun by dangerous criminals, possibly even isis members. these are tough people. these are not angels. these are not little i think a gels. these are tough people. and we are not letting them into our country. of course, in any large group of several thousand people there are going to be people with criminal records or people who you want want to invite into your home. but there is a process in place to determine who can be accepted for asylum and who cannot. this notion of invaders from the south which the president repeatedly identified is the
and has been dedicating virtually all of his public energy, his time, his tweets to pushing this idea that there is a crisis and an invasion at the border. he s even gone so far as to suggest that the u.s. troops that he s sending to the border in a support capacity should greet rocks with guns. anybody throwing stones, rocks, like they did to mexico and the mexican military, mexican police, where they badly hurt police and soldiers of mexico, we will consider that a firearm. because there s not much difference. when you get hit in the face with a rock, which as you know, it was very violent a few days ago. very, very violent. so u.s. military officials are permitted to use force in the face in self-defense, but president trump s suggestion there is one that a lot of former military officials are saying really flies in the face of the rules of engagement for
it is u.s. military rules of engagement that this is not allowed. is the white house answer on that that the president disagrees with that assessment or that the president is intending to instruct the military to disregard the rules of engagement? that s a very good question. it is not clear what the white house s official position on this. the president often says these things without having gone through some kind of consultation with his staff. i would also point out that based on our reporting this week, the people going to the border from the military are not going to engage with the migrants coming up, with people crossing the border. they are there in a support capacity. so it s not clear even if they would be in the position to do what the president appears to be asking them to do. but of course we ll be asking the white house to clarify that today as well, jim. abbie phillip at the white house, thanks very much. joining us now to talk about this dana bash.
costing wove ge ve got in a days, 42 to $110 million? not at all. this caravan is about 1,000 miles away. there have been caravans over the years and they always get disbanded. imagine walking across mexico. it is incredibly difficult. by the time anyone reaches our borders, if they reach it at all, it is a very small group of people. most of them are turned away. to deploy the u.s. military down to the border is simply a waste of federal resources, and they can t even take any actions. they are just there in a support capacity, so really this is just a big waste of taxpayer funds. the president continues to lament that the serial bomber and the synagogue shooter, quote, stopped the tremendous momentum his words leading up to the midterm elections. what message does that send? that the president really thinks this is all about him, it is all about winning, when, in fact, we had 11 people that were murdered in a jewish synagogue and my heart goes out to them as
as they are being teach how to dive. elon musk is sending his engineers to help the team there in thailand. what kind of support can these divers be getting? reporter: those engineers will come here at first in support capacity apparently. what they re primarily going to do is see what they can do. they have been talking to the thai government. they re in the business of making tunnels the assumption that can be made is if they are able to locate another way into this cave system that perhaps somehow this technology can be employed to drill a really big hole so they can drop lines into the cave system and pull the boys out that way. one of the divers i was talking to earlier, that s actually the best case scenario if you are looking at the safest option to get the kids out is to pull them out when they are surrounded by air and not the other option