and he can t even do it in print, let alone out loud. seriously. after initially stating that hitler didn t use chemical weapons, that hitler, okay, okay, well, at least he didn t gas his own people. that hitler only did the gassing of whoever he gassed in the holocaust centers. after that happened out loud, look at this. this is how they tried to clean it up in print. the white house put out this written clarifying statement from the press secretary. in no way was i trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the holocaust, however, i was trying to draw a contrast of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on innocent people. when you say innocent people, do you okay, no, let s try that again. so then a few minutes later, this is nine minutes later. from the press secretary. in no way was i trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the holocaust, however, i was trying to draw a contrast of the tactic
couple having said that there are a couple theories i would present. one is, you know, trump needed competent foreign policy professionals to run his national security apparatus. there s only so many people who can do that. you really can t find many people who are way out on really what was kind of a fringe position that he adopted in the campaign. you have people like h.r. mcmaster, general mattis, as defense secretary, and a lot of the other people who have come in around him to formulate policy are much more kind of mainstream, center right, establishment figures who i think are counseling him and sort of educating him. that s the other piece of this. trump is now getting daily briefings and intelligence briefings, learning a lot more about the world, discovering that things are happening on his watch, like the gassing of women and children, and suddenly people are turning to him and saying what are you going to do about it. it was easier to tweet criticisms of another president
robert costa of the washington post is also with us. robert generally has been having messaging issues. this comparison to hitler that sean spicer just made is something that is no doubt going to come back to haunt this administration. what is going on there in terms of trying to get a more coherent message out there and get a more a message that is more unified, bob? we don t have any audio for bob, unfortunately. ambassador pickering, you are here as well. ambassador, when you heard those comments from this press secretary, what was your reaction? well, katy, i shared the same reaction. i thought it was perhaps a little extreme, if one can say that in a diplomatic way. the comparison for the gassing of the jews, as horrible as it is, was not gas warfare in that sense, but there had been gas warfare used by the japanese against the chinese which they
getting rid of this guy and finally bringing peace and stability to this country that is so decimated. i do not believe the president simply has the authority to laun launch missiles. i think he has to come to congress and explain what his long-term goals are. perhaps the most important vote i have ever cast in my life was against the war in iraq. when we get sucked in, we don t know the unintended consequences. it s easier to get into into a war than get out as we have learned. is there a point where humanitarian cause trump that s? you know, where you see the gassing of people? is there a point where america s moral authority is being challenged and you have to send
there was no strategic thinking behind it and no big strategic shift. i do think one promising thing is we re never going to be in the business of regime change anytime soon. we should be in the business of defending some basic norms of civilization. 100 years ago, the u.s. entered world war i, thousands were gassed to death. we can be against gassing and so in that sense this action was a useful action and we should just be in the business of trying to make sure when people fight, they behave with some basic level of human decency. so we had a little thing in this, but i m not sure a big shift in any way. is it the doctrine of flexibility? flexibility, we were all over president obama when he told president putin he would be flexible. i don t think we know. i think david is right. we don t know whether this was a tactical strike or this is a strategic shift. and we have the secretary of state suggesting to us, no, no, no. nothing to see here. a one off. still isis. and still a