Promise to unleash fire and fury at north korea, you could be forgiven for your confusion about whether youre listening to the fictional hungarian on game of thrones or the very real president of the United States. Trump spent this week ratcheting up the rhetoric even as his own cabinet tried to take it down. The war talk between rounds of golf at bedminster has made it difficult to tell trumps words from those of the brutal 33yearold dictator of north korea. Take, for instance, some of the tough talk from this week about a sea of fire or the threat that only absolute force can work on him. Can you guess who said it . Mother of dragons, kim jongun, donald trump. Okay, all of those came from kims regime. But you werent 100 certain, were you . Because with trump its very hard to tell the difference. Now i should note that the threats and weapons tests and bluster from north korea are actually nothing new. But as the New York Times noted this week with previous american president s they would meet such provocations with carefully warded responses and diplomacy. What is news is that our current american president who ca cavalierly freestyles threats that much of our nation and that inch our nation and the world that much closer to nuclear world. Joining me now is a senior fellow on foreign relations, a spokesperson and Senior Policy Adviser for the counter extremism project, president of the fund, and gordan chang, author of nuclear showdown, north korea takes on the world. Thank you all for being here. I will start, max, since youre here at the table with me, your impressions of donald trump extemporaneous threats that migrated from north korea to venezuela this week. Joy, he looks like a man unhinged. The impression is he enjoys delivering ultimatums. He does another asinine with locked and loaded and then he says i like threatening north korea so i will move to venezuela. It gives the impression he likes issuing military threats. He was somebody who also ran for president on this idea that we didnt want to be the worlds policemen, right, and on criticizing the iraq war very heavily. Now hes being incredibly casual about the use of the american military. This is pointing out the incredible contradictions and incoherence of Donald Trumps world war where he wants to win, win, win, but pull away from the world and his idea of win, win, win, is signaling massive use of military force. Here is a wakeup call to the president , getting into a war with a nuclear arms state that has 10,000 artillery tubes zeroed in on seoul is not a winning scenario. That has the possibility of massive casualties. We should stay away from that. Gordon, am i wrong in saying theres a way donald trump kind of talks the way kim jongun talks . Well, youre right, and secretary tillerson said that on his way back from asia when he said that the president was using language that the north Korean Leader would understand. I think the important thing here for him is to tone down the rhetoric but to amp up the pressure because north korea is a real threat and is threatening not just the United States but also our allies and, indeed, is taking on the international system. There are things that the president he can do to take the initiative away from the North Koreans such as, for instance, sweeping up all that money that is fueling these weapons programs. The president can do that and if he can do that he can signal to the North Koreans that he is, in fact, serious beyond the words. Thats going to be critical if were going to solve this situation. I just want to stay with you and put up a map of east asia, of this region, because i think a lot of people, gordon, dont understand sort of why north korea behaves this way. You see the neighborhood that theyre in. Can you just very briefly explain to us what is the source of this constant insecurity and these constant threats that the north korean regime issues . Not the just kim jongun. His father did the same thing. I think the important thing here is the core legitimacy of the kim regime going back to 1948 when it it was founded was really to rule the entire Korean Peninsula. Its now divided in two with south k south korea, and so kim has to take it over because the North Koreans have been suffering for decades. Now they can suffer and sacrifice if they believe theres a larger goal and they wont do that, though, if they believe that kim is just not the serious about absorbing south korea. So that is inherently unstable where you have two koreas, one poor, one destitute and the other very wealthy and powerful. So this is an unstable situation. And lets listen to and im going to throw this to you, tera, donald trump had been making noise about running for president a long time. He was asked a question on meet the press about north korea. Lets listen to donald trump back then. You say that you as president would be willing to launch a preemptive strike against north Koreas Nuclear capability. First, id negotiate. I would negotiate like crazy and id make sure we tried to get the best deal possible. Wouldnt it be good to sit down and really negotiate something. He speaks very differently now. I mean, do you get the accepts the way donald trump is talking now is real or play acted . What is going on in your view . I think whats problematic about what hes saying recently it doesnt seem to be part of a coordinated strategy, something that hes working with his advisers on and planning before he speaks. The Trump Administration had a solid victory with the u. N. Multilateral sanctions that came before the u. N. Last weekend. They should have built on that. They should have cooperated with china, and they should have worked towards trying to get north korea to the table. At the end of the day you need to have strong sanctions in place and push for some sort of negotiated solution here. Nobody wants a military outcome. You need a credible Deterrent Force on the table, a military option, but you dont want to get into the realm of inadd ver tent escalation or Accidental Nuclear crisis or a misperception type of situation where you end up having the United States unclear if north korea is launching a missile or taking some sort of provocative action. And wars and conflicts can happen because of misperceptions and accidents and we need he to avoid that and we need to tone down the rhetoric to prevent that from happening. And, joe, you now have members of congress, democrats it wrote a letter expressing concern about the way that donald trump is talking about north korea threatening, profound concern over the statements hes made that raise the specter of nuclear war. One it particular congressman from long island asking the speaker of the house to debate legislation that would block a Nuclear Strike without a congressional okay. That is terrifying. It is. Underlying all of this, joy, is the fact the president of the United Statess has the unique and unfettered ability to launch a nuclear war whenever he wants for whatever reason he wants. Following him around in that golf cart in emergennew Jersey Military officer with the command and control codes for the u. S. Nuclear arsenal. The president and only the president can order such a strike. And once he gives the order no one can countermand him. The missiles could be flying within four minutes of such an order. That is terrifying. And so this crisis that is building on the Korean Peninsula brings us closer to war with korea than we have been in over 20 years. And you can see that the North Koreans believe this. The first rule of strategy is to know your enemy. What are the North Koreans thinking right now . They think the u. S. Is out to get them. They think were practicing were implementing plans to overthrow them and, guess what, we actually are. Nbc news reported a couple of days ago that since may weve conducted 11 practiced bomber runs from guam to korea practicing dropping bombs on north korean sites. The last one was on monday. On tuesday the president issues his fire and fury comments. On wednesday north korea responds by threatening guam. You could see this cycle of action reaction that could get out of control and start a war that no one truly wants. And, gordon, is there a chance that because of how erratic kim jongun is that he could do something to try to act first and preempt us . Yes. The thing about kim jongun is that he looks stable most of the time, but there have been periods of intense disruption in the regime. And we saw one as recent areally as january and february where there were a series of events indicating turbulence at the top of pyongyang and that indicates kim jongun has maybe less to lose than we think that he does. In in any event he operates under a set of incentives very different than those of most authoritarian leaders because the kim regime truly is different in some important respects. So as joe says, we have to know our adversaries and in this case im not the so sure we have a good handle on whats going on because no american official has ever talked to kim jongun. The only american who has had any substantial contact with kim is dennis rodman. And yeah, exactly. Were dealing with a gutted state department meanwhile. We dont have the capability to deal with this crisis as we should. I think the key point, joy, to my mind with kim jongun is, yes, he is a brutal dictator but hes not crazy and hes not suicidal. He doesnt want to go down in flames and the reason hes acquiring Nuclear Weapons is basically for defensive reasons because he doesnt want us to overthrow him. I think the proper response is not Nuclear Brinksmanship with the kind donald trump is engaging in now. The proper response is what we did with the soviet union, deterrence and containment. Wait him out. The state has no legitimacy. Its a failed state. It will collapse. Korea will be reunified. Wait for that day and it will be foolish and dangerous if we were to launch a preemptive strike based on the fact his Nuclear Capabilities are increasinging. And, it tara, is anyone in the defense establishment even seriously considering a crazy idea like a preemptive attack on north korea no matter what donald trump says . Im not currently in the government but i can say one of the difficulties can any sort of preemptive strike and one of the extreme risks is they can retaliate. A preemptive strike youd have to be 100 confident that you can hit 100 of the targets in 100 of the locations or else youre going to have missiles being launched at seoul or japan or at guam or potentially towards alaska. So that is obviously not a scenario we want to find ourselves in and even if you could launch success itful preemptive strikes and take out everything then you have a north korean state on your hands and thats a whole other set of problems within itself. So i dont think we should really be thinking about that right now. I think we should be focused on deescalating this, on containment and deterrent for the time being, pressure with the sanctions and trying to get parties to the table to resume multilateral talks. And should we be contemplating what happened during the spiraling last days of Richard Nixon with schlesinger essentially prepared to ignore the president s authority to launch a nuclear war just in case richard nicxon completely melted down . Schlesinger told the military officers that if the president gave them an offer, an order, they should check with him first. Thats completely illegal, unconstitution al, thats not te way its suppose to work but were glad schlesinger did that. Can the socalled adults around this president intervene . I dont think they have control of the situation. This administration is in a deep state of strategic incoherence and it starts at the top. There is something very wrong with the president of the United States. His statements do not make sense. He strategically, even logically, we are in very, very dangerous territory now and its not just because of the unstable leader in north korea, its because of the lead ership we have here in our country as well. Weve got to be very worried that we dont repeat the mistakes of that quiet august 100 years ago when no one expected world war i to break out, when each side took Strong Military measures they thought would cause the other side to back down. We dont want this to turn into the missiles of august. Yeah, well, on that sobering note, i would just thank my guests. Max will be back later in the show. It tara, joseph, gordon, well have you all back. Thank you very much. And coming up, a story thats been buried underneath the avalanche of trump scandals is next. Using artificial tears often and still have dry eye symptoms . Ready for some relief . Xiidra is the first and only eye drop approved for both the signs and symptoms of dry eye. One drop in each eye, twice a day. Common side effects include eye irritation, discomfort or blurred vision when applied to the eye, and unusual taste sensation. Dont touch container tip to your eye or any surface. 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Lets say 10,000 people working for him, to do terrible things, to arrest, kidnap, torture, and kill to take Peoples Properties away. As a result of the act he can no longer guarantee absolute impunity because all of a sudden weve created consequences in the west. Americanborn businessman bill browder is a putin adversary who has emerged as a small but key player in the russia investigation. Browder was once the largest foreign investor in russia until, he says, he and his attorney tried to expose massive corruption among people linked to the kremlin. The backlash was fierce. Browder says members of putins inner circle stole 230 million from his company and set him up for tax evasion charges. Browder was a driving force behind the 2012 magnitski act which imposed sanction on individual russians and was the topic of discussion at one now famous meeting in trump tower. Joining me now is bill browder, founder and ceo of Hermitage Capital management. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Your testimony got overshadowed. Give us the encapsulated version why you went to washington to testify and what it is you think people need to know about the putin regime and the magnitsky a act. My lawyer was murdered by the russian government in 2009. I embarked on this big project to get justice for him which led to the passage of the magnitsky act which freezes assets and bans visas of those involved in his murder and do similar types of things in srussia. And Vladimir Putin became enraged by this whole thing. The reason some of had his money is potentially coming from the same crime that Sergei Magnitsky he can posed and all the money in the west canning frozen. He retaliated by banning the adoption of russian children by american families. He held a big lobbying campaign to get the magnitsky act revealed. I was inveited ited to the sena committee and was there to talk with american lobbyists working on behalf of Vladimir Putin not admitting that they were and trying to get this important piece of human rights legislation repealed. The Judicial Committee was shocked by my testimony because people didnt expect that the evil of putin could be so cle clearly infiltrating washington. When you hear donald trump jr. Met with a lawyer who has lobbied for the overturning of the the magnitsky act and they talked about adoptions, what do you hear when you hear that set of facts . The first thing my reaction is that nobody there wasnt a Single Person in the room talking about adoptions. It doesnt surprise me these people showed up in trump tower because putin has been trying every different tactic he can to try to ease these sanctions because these sanctions affect him more personally because his money is at stake. Vladimir putin himself could be subject to magnitsky sanctions . Thats exactly what im s saying. Hes one of the richestmen men in the world. He has a lot of money held in western banks, american banks, and he received money from the cry Sergei Magni