best for our partners and allies, then, you know, what we would hope is that he would make an adjustment here. i think what we all fear is that the president made a promise when he was on the campaign trail, and now that he s won and he is the president of the united states, what we all fear is that he s not doing what most presidents do, and that is to take a step back and with the benefit of full knowledge, to make decisions, to have the courage to come forward and say, you know, i made a promise and a now that i know everything that i know, i need to pull back on that promise. i need to go a different direction. let s hope that that s not why the president is doing this and that he is going to listen to what the commanders say. governing is not campaigning. stand by, everybody. we will get more of your thoughts on all of this in a few moments. we will be back to talk about that and what the president had to say about the government shut down. that s coming up in a few moments. my
thing is coming out of his mind. now, there is a scary thought. and, congressman, let me turn to the shutdown. when asked about the government shutdown today, the president said he s willing to do whatever it takes to get a wall. let s listen to the president speaking earlier today in iraq. whatever it takes. i mean we re going to have a wall. we re going to have safety. we need safety for our country, even from this standpoint. we have terrorists coming in through the southern border. we need a wall. so when you say how long is it going to take? when are they going to say that we need border security? when are the democrats going to say? don t forget, the democrats all agreed that you need a wall until i wanted it. once i wanted it, they didn t agree. your response to that? it is a little more complex than that. yes, the democrats and the republicans agreed to a major, some $40 billion border security plan back in 2013. that passed the senate. it had all of the elements
these decisions, this decisionmaking process, which is so vital to the security of the world, differently now that he s visited a war zone? well, this is precisely the big major problem confronting, frankly, the entire world. the united states is the strongest, most influential and most lethal country in the world. we need to use our military with extraordinary wisdom. we need to use our diplomacy and our international relations similarly with wisdom, with long-term thought and plans and strategies, none of which this president seems to have. he seems to have just ignored all of his advisers. he has no use for the intelligence organizations, consistently trashing them, trashing the fbi, going after and i don t know if he s paying any attention to the state department right now, but he certainly didn t pay any attention to mr. bolton as well as to the military. all of this means this entire
are on the ground that are able to identify targets, able to coordinate the air and ground activities. that will not be available. and then there is the issue of what will turkey do with the kurds. all of this is chaotic, and the president s arrival in iraq is just one more bit of chaos and all of the things that go with it. we really need to calm down here. let s get a strategy in place. let s understand what it is we re trying to accomplish, and then put in place plans to get it done rather than helter skelter. and, congressman, a secret administration official told cnn the national security decisionmaking process has basically stopped working, and this is happening as the defense secretary, jim mattis, his departure date has been moved up to january 1st and the president said today that he may just have this acting secretary serve in that role for who knows how long. are you hopeful that the president will approach some of
counterterrorism mission that the forces in iraq are performing. sean turner, i want to look back at the president s surprise announcement last week on syria, saying he is going to pull u.s. troops out of syria. listen to how the president described the fight against isis just last week. we have won against isis. we have beaten them and we have beaten them badly. we have taken back the land? so last week he says we have beaten isis, we re going to take back the land or we have taken back the land, but today in iraq he said that, well, we could use iraq as a base to strike syria or strike at isis targets if syria if we need to. it doesn t sound as though they ve been defeated or knocked silly as he said earlier today. yes. i think if the president is listening to his national security advisers, one of the things we know he knows is that isis has not been decimated the way that he says they are. i thought it was very interesting he said we have beaten back isis. one of the things