of our destroyers. no call for that. it is unsafe, it is unprofessional. martha: john kirby also called the move in a later comment increasingly aggressive, so what does all of this mean. i will talk to former defense secretary mark esper standing by with his thoughts, and eric shawn with the latest news on this in new york. hi, eric. hi, martha, showing that they are showing an increase level of aggressiveness against the assets in the pacific. after the chinese warship intercepted a u.s. guided missile destroyer in the taiwan strait, the shocking incident happened on saturday and crossed dangerously close to the ball of our ship. and then there was this, passing the surveillance plane occurred ten days ago causing the cockpit and our guys, they had to shake because of the turbulence. and the white house at the last hour, saying that the administration in his view is to prepare to face beijing s growing aggression. when you have pieces of metal that size whether it is
i understand it. in fact, trump made the republican party the party of working americans in a way that probably hasn t been true for almost 100 years. yeah, because in 100 years, there hasn t been a politician who said, i m going to make this for third graders to understand what i m talking about. talking on that level? that was newt gingrich encouraging ron desantis to get on the level of third graders. i m not joking. you know, kind of like donald trump does. wonder what he means. this is a tough hurricane. one of the wettest we ve ever seen from the standpoint of water. rarely have we had an experience like it, and it certainly is not good. oh, my god. one of the wettest we ve had. good morning. welcome to morning joe. hope you ve had a good week. it is friday. friday, may 26th. let s bring in with us the host of way too early, white house bureau chief at politico, jonathan lemire. the host of inside with jen psaki, jen psaki. she s a former white house press
dominate to the global water by the year 2049 and that means getting the united states out of the way. this is the beginnings of that in a much more increased pace. and has been increasing in the past few years, but since the unprecedented third term as party secretary, his intention is to mark his place in the pantheon of leaders by reclaiming taiwan and pushing the united states and its allies out of the region. and we are starting to see the beginning of this increased activity. martha: we just heard john kirby call it unprofessional and unsafe, are those words that you think are appropriate for what we saw? those words work, but it was reckless, its political messaging. it s aggressiveness. and it is all meant to signal and push us out. and frankly i think we need to respond. we need to up our game. get more allies and partners to speak out. get more allies and partners to speak out about the chinese bad
ukraine demonstrates, you can spend a lot of money to modernize a fighting force. when they have to deliver the goods on the battlefield, it may not be able to do the job. that may play into xi jinping s calculations, in terms of whether the military is capable of delivering, you know, perhaps the sacred mission as the communist party described it, reclaiming taiwan as part of the motherland. the communist party never governed taiwan. it is something fundamental to their view of what it takes to make china great again, to realize the china dream. i think in terms of what xi jinping might be thinking going forward, it s hard to say, but i think he s made very clear in his engagement with american leaders that taiwan is a non-negotiable issue. they must deliver. the americans cannot push harder on this issue. if push comes to shove, china will be forced to make a
taiwan and other places in the region. so you ve been covering him for a long time. what s your best assessment of that? i think in terms of taiwan, i think it s not a secret that xi jinping definitely cares about this issue, perhaps more than some of his recent predecessors have done. xi famously said in 2013 to visiting taiwanese president, you know, the taiwan issue cannot be handed down from generation to generation, which suggests there is an urgency in resolving the problem. although he s not specifically set a timeline, some people suggested 2027, 2035, 2050. i don t think you can pin this down to a specific timeframe, but we do know that xi jinping has spent a lot of time and expense to modernize the chinese military. it s been a focus since he took power. he s spent time and energy telling people, you know, i want to make this a first rate fighting force. by all account, they ve made significant progress in that sense. but as the russian invasion of