Thats not why i do it. I do it because my brain is bad. The way i see the tweets youre talking about, hes basically giving voice to a lot of people who have felt that they were voiceless. Hes communicating with people in this country who felt like they have not been listene to. Thats whats going to matter at the end of the day. Did we improve peoples lives . Did we solve the problems the American People need solved . Are we addressing the concerns of people who are tired of being tired and who cares what he tweeted on some thursday night if we fix the big problems. Thats the way i look at this. Good monday morning to you. Its monday, december 5th. Were getting into the holiday season. Counting down to christmas. For christmas we have a huge story in europe. Whoa. Here we go. Brexit, brexit. Another italy. I retweeted when you talked about austria that was seen as a positive for the eu. Italy last night. Boom. The hammer comes down. The International Community is reverberating with that and then Donald Trump Tweets on china. Its called disruption. It is. We have bill neely coming up. Well start with who we have on set. Managing editor of Bloomberg PoliticsMark Halperin. Msnbc analyst and professor at the university of Michigan Public School of policy harold ford jr. Secretary of what . Secretary in waiting. We didnt make it. Did that happen . Im disappointed. As you saw, we have the president on the council of Foreign RelationsRichard Haass. We have cabinet members in waiting. Author of the forthcoming book, a word in disarray. Whats remarkable is i gave this to my kids this summer. Jack. Summer reading. Whats remarkable is it was written postbrexit and predicted everything that is happening right now pretty remarkably. It is a world in disarray. Also with us from outside boston, columnist and associate editor for the Washington Post, David Ignatius joins us this morning. Great morning to have everybody on here. David, were sorry we were we wanted to get you on because we thought there might be something to talk about in the Foreign Policy realm. Instead were just going to talk football. Its nice to be here in Mike Barnicle country. Yes, you are. Well start with this. President elect donald trump took an aggressive approach toward china last night as he pushed back over his complaint with the conversation of the president of taiwan. On friday trump became the First American leader to speak directly with taiwans government since the u. S. Began formal relations with china in 1979 creating speculation over whether trump will stick with the one china policy continued under the last six president s. Last night on twitter trump responded to the uproar saying he does not need permission to speak with taiwan. Did china after us if it was okay to devalue their currency making it hard for our companies to compete . Heavy tax on our products going into their country. The u. S. Doesnt tax them or to build massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea . I dont think so. The Washington Post is citing unanimous sources who claim the call was trstrategic saying it s months of deliberations among trumps adviser about a new strategy of engagement with taiwan. Mark halperin, whats the reaction . What do you think the political fallout will be . Whats your take on what he did . Theres a quality to how theyre dealing with everything vetting Foreign Policy, everything. Thats dangerous. I see why people are unsettled. I agree with the wall street journal editorial. Weve not had leverage over china for a long time. This is easy leverage. This shows in some areas he doesnt plan to be an inbox Foreign Policy president. He wants to try to change the board and to get leverage over countries that a lot of areas we dont have leverage. I think people who are unsettled by it better get used to it. Its the way its going to be. He will be a disrupter. You were with me when we voted on whether to pass mfn for china. Theyre going to have to stop selling intellectual property and other things. Long story short. They would do nothing. The record would be worse every year. We would have the debate again and we had no leverage over them because we wanted to get into their market so badly. It was one of the things that nancy pelosi and i agree on but it was so frustrating. We never held them to account. Im not saying this is the way to do it. We have policy experts here that well get to in a second who i suspect will be very troubled by this. I can tell you at least where i sat in congress and where millions and millions of americans sit out there, a lot of people are saying, you know what, pushing back a little bit on china not the worst thing for an american leader to finally do. Its what voters found app l appealing about him. You described a subset frame as well as any could. The art of the deal if you read the book, this is what he does. He tries to find leverage points and found them with some Great Success and sometimes not Great Success but majority successful in his business life. Hes doing it here. Almost like criticism we saw last week around the carrier deal. Some of my former colleagues and every democratic friends say its not a sustainable approach but if youre a hard working american whose job could be shipped overseas and you see the president make a call, they are awakened to the fact that people view washington as standing up for rich, powerful, narrow interests. Now theyre standing up for every day hard working americans. People will support it whether its right or not. An interesting column about the pressure this is now going to put on a lot of other ceos. Mika, it is about leverage. Its about the art of the deal as far as china goes. Well hear whether its a good idea or bad idea from the real experts. Think about this. It cost nothing. He took a phone call. And he tweeted last night. And in his mind, im sure, hes pushed them back and is showing that hes setting up to a tough negotiation down the road on all the things he talked about during the idea. Good idea . Bad idea . Well see. The only thing that is really curious and possibly even troubling to me, richard, is that mike pence even said this had no deeper meaning. Those who say this was a longterm strategy that was really thought out even before the campaign is not true. Its just a phone call. Theres a little bit of a lurchy quality here i would think would make folks in the Foreign Policy a little concerned. At what point is a tweet going to be real damaging or a phone call the wrong call to make . This is allowed the United States and china to deal with all else with establishing an economic relationship to potentially dealing with north korea to global issues like Climate Change. The question you have to ask yourself is does this give us leverage or rather is taiwan the one place you dont want to potentially have a confrontation with china given the geography and Everything Else. Whats your answer to that . My answer would be no. This is not the place you want to have an issue with china. This deals with the unity of the country. You also have to look at the geography and look at the military situation and Everything Else weve got going on. Lets talk about how china responded to it. It seemed the foreign minister was trying to push it away from trump and said this is a cheap trick on the part of the taiwanese. I was just in china last week. The chinese very much want to have a Good Relationship with the United States. They want to get off on the right foot. So thats why they put this on taiwan. But then when mr. Trump followed up with the tweet, that made it seem less about taiwan and a new signal that theres a new sheriff in town and theres a new policy and mixed signals coming out of the transition. My hunch is chinese now are trying to figure out what it is and we have to be careful that they dont retaliate in ways against taiwan. Taiwan is economically overwhelmingly dependent on their ability to export to china. Suddenly china shuts down those exports and it will hurt taiwan a lot more than it will hurt china. Do we want this to be the opening chapter in a new relationship with china . David ignatius, James Fallows said it would be hard to overstate the big headed nature of accepting this phone call. Would you agree with james as well as Richard Haass that this is a phone call that should not have been taken . I think it shouldnt have been taken without a careful strategy for what to do with the knock on effects. What trump did in engaging directly with taiwanese president was to go at the law of the providence for the u. S. china relationship. The understanding about taiwan goes back to the 1972 communique that nixon and kissinger negotiated. Everything is built on this idea that theres one china and were not fundamentally going to challenge that. Trump has put that in play. If its all about leverage and bargaining, you can argue getting an extra source of leverage is sensible. As richard said, there are so many things the chinese could do that would back in 1969 theres a mad man theory of how history works and sometimes you just have to be the mad man and he was claiming that north korea would see how crazy and erratic and volatile nixon was and would make concessions they wouldnt otherwise. I sometimes think trump with his impulsive statements, hes crazy like a fox and would think hell get new concessions. This wasnt the area to play with that idea. Its too delicate. Play the man mad youre saying at times when it helps you. It never hurts in they think youre crazy but not here. Not on this one. I think trump by doing the unconventional, trump gained himself leverage. Carrier may be a good example. But going after the shanghai communique and the basis of stable u. S. china relations i wouldnt think is wise unless you had a deep plan for what to do next and next and next. And monday morning may not be the time to pick a fight with two people who know as much as richard and david do but the wall street journal editorial captured it perfectly. For a lot of americans letting china continue to do what its been doing is not the right way to proceed. Donald trump put china at the center of his campaign. While there are risks to this and it goes after something established, theres no cost to americans. Americans dont see cost in accepting the call. If it unsettles the chinese, american say go ahead. You want to play in a situation where youre prepared to escalate more than the other guy. For china, this goes to the core of their national identity. Theyre going to be willing to take anything to do with taiwan much farther than the United States. Secondly, if we get off on a thing about taiwan, this then makes it impossible to move ahead on the rest of the relation. We have to ask ourselves, Foreign Policy strategy is about priorities. Is it our priority to have a showdown over taiwan or i would say why isnt our priority to have a showdown over north korea. This isnt about taiwan. Once you set it in motion, you cant control the dynamic. We ought to be setting things up to make sure that north korea could not have Nuclear Weapons on missiles that can reach the United States during mr. Trumps administration. Im just saying this is not likely to be the way to get their help. Im just saying in my negotiations a lot of times i find the one thing that the other person wants that i have absolutely no interest in and thats what i walk in saying. Thats what i want. Im not going to walk out of here until you give me that. And then they dont realize that actually all they want is money. And so in the end they flip it and you get money. Im not saying i understand exactly what youre saying. I understand that this does go back to 1972 and a lot of work that dr. Brzezinski did in 1978 and 1979. I understand that concern. I dont think he gives a damn about taiwan. I think he does care about north korea. Well find out. Well find out whether he has a sense, you have a sense being in china over the past week that the chinese really want a Good Relationship with us. David ignatius, richard said that china could retaliate by limiting exports to china. What other retaliation could there be . What other retaliation could we suffer because of mr. Trumps phone call . Well, certainly the chinese would want to demonstrate their ability to control the military situation on the Taiwan Strait and then decide what military asset we move in to show our resolve. Those are the situations where you get accidents, unexpected developments. I think in terms of what richard was talking about, we have all been saying that our priority for the next president is to deal with this threat of a north korea that could soon deliver a Nuclear Weapon onto u. S. Soil. That was job one. Every sensible republican and democratic strategist was adpreagreed on that. It was seen that a key, a pathway to that was to get chinese cooperation. The problem is that the chinese have to appear to back down and lose face to be helpful to the United States on north korea, thats not good. All right. Lets go to europe now. Italian Prime Minister renzi announced his resignation after voters rejected a constitutional referendum he was backing that would have drastically shifted the balance of power from parliament to the executive branch but was widely seen as a vote on renzis policies compared to the poll list trend moving across europe. Meanwhile, in austria, a liberal who ran on a proeu platform defeated right wing populist in that countrys president ial election. The election was a redo of sorts. Van der bellen won in may but they claimed widespread irregulari irregularities. This is the second time the party in austria who feared the most have lost. It looks like austria is firmly committed to immigration with the eu. Your take on italy . Another selfinflicted wound. This didnt have to happen. You say this is just like brexit with the center left pushed a referendum that didnt have to happen. Got a lot of his agenda through the Parliament Without this reform and remember the line the president said, you have to choose fish versus steak. You dont have two choices. You have one choice and people use it as a way to express frustration. This another critical blow for the eu . It weakens the center. Extremists of the left and right. This didnt just lose. This got hammered. It lost 6040. And so when is the French Election . This spring. German later. Theres a picture last night that someone was tweeting around. I retweeted it. Just from may of 2016, David Ignatius, you had barack obama, the leader of france, the leader of germany. The leader of italy. And i forget the fifth leader. All of them are going to be obsolete within a year unless merkel figures out how to survive. The world has radically changed in the last six months. Another one bites the dust feeling looking at the array of leaders. Renzi was particularly attractive figure of the center left. He was somebody who barack obama saw as the key to a more dynamic europe. Obama went out of his way to host renzi when he was in washington a month or so ago. His problem is that he picked a fight without having a real personal power. The constitutional changes here that were rejected by the public honestly they are technical matters that a lot of people think they make basic sense. It wasnt about them. It was about people in italy saying we want change even when our Prime Minister is a young, charismatic, forward looking person. That is now in train everywhere. It was David Cameron who was the fifth. How quickly we forget. Lets bring in bill kneneely from vienna, austria. What does this mean Going Forward . I think a lot of the european establishment will have had a sleepless night. There was a moment of relief here in vienna when the far right candidate Norbert Hofer lost the vote to become president to an independent. The main center parties that have governed austria since 1945 werent even in the final runoff. They can have their sigh of relief. Its still in a sense a bit of a poll list revolution here in austria even though the far right didnt win. Talking about italy, thats the more important result. Matteo renzi was the future once. Not any more. Demolition man. He wanted to kickstart the ailing economy but he was demolished by this referendum and was kicked out of power. Not even close. 6040. This was a howl of anger from italys population. Youth unemployment at 40 . Theyve had 63 governments in 70 years. In many respects italy is a political basket case. There may be early elections and the fivestar movement led by a comedian may do very, very well in those elections. So if europes establishment had a sleepless night last night, theyve got more to come. Italy elections probably. France definitely. Netherlands, germany. The far right doing well in all those countries. The populist way we saw with donald trump and brexit still sweeping across the west. Thank you so much. Heres a picture if we can zoom in on this thing. Look at that. Cameron gone. Obama about to go. Merkel, well see. Renzi. Hes right. Italy had over 63 elections. The joke about italy is chronic stability since world war ii. The difference is most of this took place within a very narrow part of the political spectrum. Renzis defeat potentially opens up italy to something muc