payments, don. interesting. john, hicks was asked about trump ordering the former campaign manager, corey lewandowski, to urge jeff sessions to un-recuse himself from the russia investigation. the transcript says, quote, chairman nadler, sitting here today, do you find it concerning that the president today that the president asked mr. lewandowsky to deliver a message to the attorney general? ms. hicks: concerning would not be the word i would use to describe how i view that. chairman nadler: well, in any way problematic? ms. hicks: i d view it as odd. was it odd, or was it obstruction, john? what was odd was the way the question came about. nadler was weaving his way through a bunch of objections, and as soon as she responded with her answer that she found it odd, her lawyers objected to her explaining what she meant by
with iran, and whether or not donald trump does or not is going to be one of those things that his famous gut will lead him to it one way or the other. he will either decide that there s a benefit to his image in it or not, and i think that s unfortunately the sort of president we have right now, where he s really going to look at it through his own prism, whereas bolton is looking at it through a ideological and a perspective built up over a long period of time where he views iran as a central malefactor in the middle east. and, look, there s no one excusing the behavior of the iranians in this equation right now. mm-hmm. but there are a lot of options short of full-scale war with iran that i think could be address the before we get to that point. you know, we ve always had a long, slow run-up to these things for a reason, and that s to give the other side time to capitulate. but the president said that he didn t want to get into a conflict with iran, that he was elected to get
with iran, and whether or not donald trump does or not is going to be one of those things that his famous gut will lead him to it one way or the other. he will either decide that there s a benefit to his image in it or not, and i think that s unfortunately the sort of president we have right now, where he s really going to look at it through his own prism, whereas bolton is looking at it through a ideological and a perspective built up over a long period of time where he views iran as a central malefactor in the middle east. and, look, there s no one excusing the behavior of the iranians in this equation right now. mm-hmm. but there are a lot of options short of full-scale war with iran that i think could be address the before we get to that point. you know, we ve always had a long, slow run-up to these things for a reason, and that s to give the other side time to capitulate. but the president said that he didn t want to get into a conflict with iran, that he was elected to get
collision course, and it could get scarier, and you write, both say they don t want a war, but each feeds off the other, and both have behaved reckless way in ways that increased the risk of conflict. how did the shooting down of this drone escalate to the situation that we have right now with iran? well, i mean a great deal depends on where the drone was. iran insists that the drone was over iranian airspace, that they collected pieces of it in iranian waters. if that is true, then they are in a much better position. the u.s. insists that it was in international airspace and that would be an enormous provocation. so, you know, the basic thing we have to establish is the location of that drone. and, you know, the fact that the drone was shot down may also play into the reasons for the delay. indeed, as the art cal suggests, one of the first things we would do is go after the air defense systems that iran has.
there were support aircraft in the air and strike aircraft in the air. we don t know at least what i ve read at this point, what the configuration of those forces was. but at some point someone said to the president, this is too much, and he said, hold on, let s pull it back. but, again, i think these are hard things to spin up. it takes a long time to spin up a strike package like this, and it s a very serious question as to what he was going to do with it, and now what the iranians know about it. okay. rick, i want you to stand by because i need to get to someone on the phone. lieutenant general mark hurtling. give me your reaction to this news that the new york times is reporting that the president approved strikes on iran, but then abruptly pulled back. it was an interesting piece, don, and what struck me was the part of the article that you just noted, that the strike was