the president has taken a wrecking ball to every pillar of stability and security we ve erected over the past 60 or 70 years. frustration boiling over after james mattis resigns as defense secretary. the breaking point? the president s decision to pull troops from syria. the government is on track to shutdown at midnight. the president vowing to follow through on the demand for a border wall. the acting attorney general defying ethics officials and will not recuse himself from the mueller probe. this has been an incredible joyous journey with you all. and a surprise announcement from andy cohen. it s not what you think. andy cohen will help us count down to 2019. we are counting down to a government shutdown. welcome back to early start. i m dave briggs.
i m alison kosik. it is 30 minutes past the hour. president trump scouring for a new secretary of defense. james mattis will leave at the end of february. he tendered his resignation a day after the president revealed plans to withdrawal u.s. troops from syria. his departure shaking washington and creating uncertainty at the pentagon and at military bases around the world. mattis resignation is a rebuke to the president s foreign policy views. mattis using his letter to promote the importance of u.s. alliance and unambiguous approach to russia and china. the last straw was the planned withdrawal from syria. for more, here is barbara starr at the pentagon. reporter: alison and dave, an administration official tells
and called naive and unamerican. we have the president of the united states in love with kim jong-un. paula, thank you. breaking overnight. iran said to have launched six ballistic missiles into eastern syria targeting those involved in the attack last week. barbara starr says the u.s. was concerned about the strike and threat of iran hitting forces in syr syria. the missiles had death to america and death to israel and death to saudi arabia written on them. iran blamed the u.s. allies for the parade attack. anti-government group and isis claimed responsibility. coming up, the seattle seahawks lost a game and lost the all-pro safety and lost their winning chemistry. he saluted the seahawks in an interesting way. andy scholes tells us about that in the bleacher report next.
member nations must pay their fair share. it makes the alliance stronger, chris, if everybody does. and that sends a message to russia that this is a stronger alliance. meanwhile our military has the largest budget it s ever had. and we are a stronger military. we have exercises going on all across western europe. we re in the face of russia. we have attacked syria, a russian state, for lack of a better term, that russia has a naval base right close to where several of our attacks came in. we killed about 200 russian mercenaries and didn t apologize for it. we just steam rolled right through. we ve been very tough on russia. i hear are are yyou, general. i m just saying it s been a mixed picture. i ll have you come back to help us make sense of it. general, thank you. thank you, chris. so russia says its
good reason. if gassing your own people doesn t cross a red line, what does? obama took a different path. he went to congress, he wanted their involvement, they didn t want to dmoig with it because congress is all about giving up its authority to the executive branch. so he did nothing. trump did do something. he hit syria. he bombed them. but. but when it came to hitting russia over their role in syria, what happened? nikki haley was on tv saying this. you will see that russian sanctions will be coming down. secretary mnuchin will be announcing those on monday if he hasn t already. now, you remember what happened there? the next day the administration suggested she was confused. nikki haley did not like that. she said i wasn t confused, i said exactly what i wanted to say. but ultimately, they all walked it back. why? trump didn t like the idea. he didn t want to go toe to toe with russia on this. the poisoned spies in the uk.