naval credit union, usaa, they re telling soldiers they ll give them a spot loan and allow them to say, basically, withdraw their salary on a zero interest loan to make sure they re not affected. it is a big topic here. we finally have the secretary of defense weighing in saying, yes, the pentagon will be affected. quickly, because i m almost out of show here, but it seems as though for the military, the bigger issue is not what s happening with the shutdown but the issue of continually funding the government through crs, through the short-term continuing resolutions, piecemeal, piece by piece. that seems to be the broader issue here. is mattis talking about that? reporter: he mentioned that in his speech. the point of his speech was the national defense strategy. how you plan long-term to challenge and make sure you have more than parody against china and russia. it is difficult to do that if you don t have a budget. it is difficult to plan for the long-term if you re just on shor
i helped build an army, defend a country and create the biggest drug cartel this world has ever seen. that sounds made up barry. tom cruise. stop now if you want. it gets crazy from here. woo! american made. rated r. good morning, welcome to morning joe. there s so much to fet to this morning. in storm-battered texas, a chemical plant that officials feared would catch fire has, indeed, endured multimillion explosion there is this morning. we have a live report coming up. plus the pentagon revs up its fighter jets as president trump says the time for talk is over with forth korea. but issing is mattis on the same page or are we seeing yet another break between mattis and the president? we will break down new reporting on the mueller investigation into russia, which now has a new york twist. and a focus group of trump
kill them. you re saying all the military commanders up until now have not been up to the stuff that general mattis is? obama didn t have the will to do. obama put ten times as many troops on the ground. 30,000. the point is to win, you have to win now, not put troops there and talk about it, go and win. there s no military outcome. that s what tillerson was saying, that s going to win. there s a military outcome when everybody there is taken to their knees then they say wait a minute, we had more than 100,000 u.s. troops in afghanistan if you don t have the will to fight, you can have a million troops. you re saying the 100,000 u.s. troops in afghanistan did not have the will or ability no, the president of the united states. that 8,000 u.s. troops are going to have? the president of the united states didn t have the will to do what it took to handle the thing the way they needed to. that s what trump is saying. i think trump was better on this topic
trump last night about the diplomatic side. we didn t hear a lot of details about how that actually would happen. right. the specifics are there s no confirmed ambassador. reportedly tillerson was the only person from the state department who was at these camp david meetings this weekend. representative for afghanistan and pakistan, but not somebody who s there permanently. how exactly they ll get this done, how they ll get the taliban and afghan government to the table, those are big questions we don t know. in the meantime, we have an open-ended nil te eed military the one word, maddog. i think it s two words. i think it s two words, but it together, no? mattis. you guys, you were here for this. north korea, trump said we re going to come and take you down. tillerson says, okay, let s try to get together. this is good cop/bad cop. what you have is mattis whose message is, when you meet someone, be nice, remember, you have is to figure out a way to
i ve heard your side. matt, let me hear your side. how do you see it? christine s been very rough on barack obama. i can t believe she just said that he was that it was disgusting discrimination. for seven and a half years. i did. i did. check the record, matt. i did. as i said, his delay in putting marriage equality in place was horrible. so don t pretend i m only an lgbt activist now that donald trump don t play that game because you will lose. make your argument on what is true to you. christine, for seven and a half years, president obama he s not president anymore. he did the right thing at the end and now your president is undercutting it. it took him too long. i appreciate that you re passionate on this issue. it is a very touchy issue. i get it. but for seven and a half years of the obama administration, this was the very same policy. when general mattis came into the pentagon, he asked for an internal review.