Revolt on fisa as the House Speakers future hangs in the balance, just a few votes. But we begin at the white house where President Biden is still predicting an Interest Rate cut and defending his administrations role fighting inflation. At the same time, the president is trying to circle the wagons in the pacific against china. White house correspondent Jacqui Heinrich starts us off tonight live from the north lawn. Good evening, jacqui. Good evening, bret. Once enemies now allies closer than ever. The United States and japan announced more than 70 Defense Cooperation Agreements among other collaborations in a not so subtle message to china, increasingly aggressive in the South Pacific and the taiwan strait. President Biden Preemptively Cooling Blowback from beijing. And our alliance we have with japan is a purely defense in nature. Its not aimed at any one nation or a threat to the region. The japanese state visit comes one day before a trilateral meeting with the philippines under i
tough fighter, he eventually left as secretary of the navy over a matter of principle, deciding that the budget was insufficient for the navy ship building program. he is anything but a yes man. he s a centrist. i agree and disagree with some of his particular views but i think he s a strong, steady character who would do well on the job if the president would listen to him. so an issue that matters a great deal to many americans right now that actually matters to conservatives across the ideological spectrum, even those who have been traditionally supporters of donald trump has to do with the withdrawal of syria and russia and iran and a resurgent isis. where would jim webb based on what you know, what would jim webb think about cedeing syria
you say that the zinger scores truthfully and the claims we know that horses and bayonets long been retired from military service, at least within the ways we define them in history. well, actually, i mean, think eve used horses in afghanistan and they have bayonets, actually, with the marines. but the broader point that romney had made concerning the smallest navy since 1917 is almost as if the president was quoting one of the fact checks of this from a few weeks ago because, actually, you can t compare torpedo boats to nuclear aircraft carriers or nuclear-powered submarines an point of fact just counting ships, smallest point since 1917 during the bush administration it s been going up since then in part because of a ship-building program that president bush put in to place. obviously, talking about what the military heavily relies on
effective military with even putting less into it. and the kind of ship-building program that we had proposed back in 2005 that actually sits in congress said not 316 ships, 250 would be sufficient if you put sufficient into the sensors that we can to find the adversa adversary. the beautiful thing i would almost argue, the metaphor you re arguing works in almost everything. we could spend less and get more in health care, spend more and guess less in defense. we just need the willingness to break through the financial grip on congress of the disruption of short-term revenues. very quickly? admiral, if you could, do you have a sense, when you talk about that idea that we re not really getting value for the buck, can you have a sense of what that proportion is? i mean, how much of our defense budget is a function of this relationship of these distortions. and how much is a function of what we really need? in 2008, for the 2008 programs that congress had that the defense