jong-un. he didn t hear it from the pentagon. he said the war games were provocative. that s north korean and chinese talking points. they re not provocative. they re defensive. the point here is that wre not only defending south korea, we re defending the united states. shepard: did he say that because he knew that s what the north korea wanted to hear? he just heard it from them. they always called them provocative. why wouldn t they call themprov? if he agrees with that, maybe he will get something else. i was wondering if that was the thinking but we don t know. shepard: why would he say today the north korea threat is over? i mean, saying something like that is a just make you wonder about everything. north korea on monday had enough fissile material for 20 to 60 war heads. srd: who is in charge of that stuff? the military.
with kim but can t get a deal. the reality is he wants a deal and this is a president driven by acclamation and place in history books and separate himself from his predecessors the reality number one is you re not going to get the zero war heads with kim within a matter of years. so i think he understands that. he also understands that you think he s gradually understood that, though, do you think that has evolved since the beginning when he said hey, we are going to meet. some of his advisers recently john bolton and the vice president have gotten far out ahead of the president with respect to being too tough on north korea and i think the president wants to reel it back. i think he s also recognized something he sees in himself, the fact is you ve got two mercurial volatile leader, kim and trump, both focussed on their needs. trump understands if he wants to get through to kim, he s got to treat him with some measure of respect, which is extremely
to fire him back in december. is there any reason to believe he would want to do it now. this raid on his lawyer s office is like a nuclear strike with multiple war heads, the ada audacity. the judge would not have granted this warrant. and so the implications for the president are absolutely profound and he is going through internal upheaval and turmoil that obviously is giving rise to these reports from cnn that he is contemplating firing rod rosenstein. and remember that warrant had to be approved at multiple levels
month ago. the problem is that kim s goals are really easy and largely symbolic and largely been accomplished by the in terms of search legislate myselfation. the u.s. goals are hard and complicated. how do you unspin a nuclear weapons program that has been operating for a couple of decades? it has 60 war heads, has a missile a sophisticated missile practice. and let s not forget about the chemical and biological weapons that also are on the peninsula and pose grave risks to allies in south korea and japan, as well as the u.s. troops based there. if you look at the history here, north korea carried out six nuclear weapons tests in last year. that one set off a 6.7 magnitude earthquake here. and violated agreements in the past history. you talk about in and what
invisible missile, commander, he s clearly telling us, do not trifle, what do you make of it? you need to put it in context, neil, the presidential elections for russia are in a couple of weeks and while vladimir putin clearly set conditions to win overwhelming, he s still appeal to go his base, he wants to make russia look like the great power that it once was and while it still has 1500 nuclear weapons, when he talks about a none like this, okay, he s peel to go domestic audience, putting forth a new weapon that we know they ve had in development, it s had problems, the reality is when it comes to russia, all these weapons out there, they can overwhelm our defenses, we don t have enough to go against that many war heads and north korea still remains the first and foremost nuclear threat against the united states right now. neil: all right, they can overwhelm our defenses, we can overwhelm their defenses, we seem to have more of the weapon that is would be necessary to do the job, i