putin, and it would be the same thing that we ve seen before. now the white house has said it s cancelled for now. do you think the scrapping of the meeting is entirely because of the russia aggression against campaign? you don t think cohen has anything to do with it? i don t buy the wag the dog theory. i don t think this is wag the dog. they started a war in wag the dog. i happened to be on network here right after the president of ukraine the other day, on cnn international, and i listened. it s a serious situation of what took place. sure. they are on the verge of war on the crimean peninsula. they are at war right now, but an escalated war. it s a very serious situation. i think the president probably got the full briefing, at kaitlan outlined from secretary pompeo, secretary mattis, ambassador bolton and realized the gravity of it and said this is the key time, g 20, everybody is there, a big snub to putin, and putin has been saying this is all made up, totally made
can give up now or you re going to get killed. this is your choice. so but that s not what s happening now. the president s tweets are not a message. i think our president is suspect about his decision. i m skeptical of the wag the dog theory. you don t think he would do something out of impull sibbing ander. i don t think the white house has shown the strategic communications to lay that out. he is a magician at shifting attention away from what he doesn t want us focusing on by creating another stir. this is a moment that is a response to something that somebody else has done and frankly it comes after three separate expressions of unity by the international community against russia on sanctions. sarah huckabee sanders job sell tomorrow after we act. we ll see. up next a republican congressman launches into a blistering tie too raid against president trump and says anonymously the president is like an evil stupid version of forest gump and that
presidency in a lot of the ways. we ve seen over the last 15 months a president willing to do things that other presidents haven t done. and this is a real test. he s come up several times before and suggested to aides he was ready to dump robert mueller only to be talked out of it. the question is whether or not he goes forward at this point. ashley, your paper and you with a few other people have been amazing at getting close to the president. does he know that every move he makes right now especially with the use of military weaponry, those missiles he talks about being nice and smart and all that, if he uses them it will be suspect that he does. does he know he s under suspicion he might be wagging the dog? i will say that people in the white house sort of outright dismiss the wag the dog theory, and their argument is on something as serious as what to do with syria and launching possible air strikes, there has been a very deliberative process
that said it s a change from when donald trump was not only against the involvement with syria, but was also warning about any u.s. strike that was then. right now we re joined by jason miller. i do think the office, being in office is a lot different than being a civilian and reading about this stuff in the paper or even as a candidate. when you hear people asking that wag the dog theory, what do you think? well, the first thing i tell them is let s take a step back and recognize that president trump passed his first test on the world stage. i think he had excellent results. now, when we talk about the
i think the office being in office is different than being a civilian and reading about the stuff in the paper or even as a candidate. when you hear people asking that wag the dog theory, what do you think? the first thing i tell them is take a step back and recognize that president trump passed his first test on the world stage. he was challenged. he stood up. he was decisive. he moved quickly. i think he had excellent results. when we talk about previous comments he made, what he is faced with is a humanitarian crisis. had to send a msage that no longer are we going to lead from the back when it comes to chemical weapons and regimes like assad. i think there s other folks that were sent a message, north korea. kim jong-un was sent a message that president trump is not to be trifled with. the u.n. was sent a message as well. one that if they re going to continue to coddle regimes like assad, then the u.s. will go it