so much pressure from republicans, democrats, from the public. he signed an order saying we re going to keep families together. there are still separated families that have not yet been reunified. how about when he wednesday overseas and met with theresa may. he undermines her on her brexit plan, on her politics. and then what does he do the next day at the press conference? he tells the story he apologized to her and was nothing but deferential to her. a character trait we don t see with donald trump. then of course on the trade issue you mentioned, not that long ago, brooke, he was calling the eu a foe. some of our oldest and closest allies, america s closest and oldest allies are in the eu. he calls the eu a foe. after a ton of pressure from his base voters in farm country, from republicans on capitol hill, from big business and companies, their bottom line is being affected by this.
president called the eu a foe. you re hearing top level officials close to the prtd trying to make that case that nothing is really changed even though the president has. i would say with the president in europe, we did the nato and then we went to london and helsinki. it was kind of remarkable, you had mattis and others telling allies we re committed to nato and want nato and you have the president demanding now 4% of gdp spending instead of 2%. throwing the meeting into an emergency session. then declaring a victory, somehow inexplik by and leaving, he criticized theresa may and she s she would have handled brexit better. oh, it was fake news, didn t criticize her and get to helsinki, he does what his team doesn t want him to do, hundreds of pages of briefing material, let s be tough on that was first mistake. let s be tough on president putin, he doesn t. i mean, what you often see when you watch him, whatever the folks around him tell him to do
foe. and yet a lot of people in the national security realm are saying it s really china that is the bigger national security threat here. you were speaking at the aspen security forum earlier this week. what is the assessment of china s goals on the u.s.? it is realin credible at a forum facing the range of threats against the united states. china is the most significant counter intelligence threat facing our country. a cia official at the aspen forum said china is waging a cold war against us. china is our biggest threat. and president xi is very busy the last few weeks. he was just in the uae where he signed a bunch of agreements and deals. now he s in africa. he s going to rwanda the first time a chinese president has visited. and he is really investing time and money in relationships with countries that he doesn t criticize. so the media around his visits is positive. and potentially trying to pull countries closer to beijing and
don t have, a working relationship with their allies. that s one of the reasons we started the the nato observer group again. would you characterize the trump administration and president trump s relationship with our nato allies as strong. i think it is, he s questioned some things and in doing so he s brought the importanceover funding on behalf of all of the other countries back into play. for a while it seemed like we were spending money but the other guys were relaxing. beyond the money in the last week he s called the eu a foe. two separate issues, first of all with regard to nato i think he did the right thing by saying we kick in and recognize that nato was created because of the soviet union so while he gets criticized because people think he can be soft on russia, the reality is the actions he s taking have been to strengthen