brian: got a strike. knocked down a lot of trees. steve: we have a very busy morning and shocker out of north korea. abby: we want to start with a 234rer789. the summit is still on. steve: the white house is saying that nothing has changed after the rogue regime claims they won t participate in a one-sided discussion if it s all about giving up their nukes which they early kind of sounded like they were about to do. brian: griff jenkins is going to do a different story these reports came out about john bolton and south korea exercises being the problem. griff, will you tell us the latest? the latest, guys, is the question of the hour. that is how real are these threats to scrap the summit? china is urging al fly proceed with talks as planned as the north koreans vice foreign minister issued this statement overnight saying if the u.s. is trying to drive us into a corner, enforce our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsi
realized. and what we re learning even today is that people that i call the formers, former white house chief of staff, reince priebus, former white house spokesman, sean spicer, former interim national security advisor, keith kellogg, all voluntarily working with or being interviewed by the mueller team. this is a sign that he s penetrated into the white house. these are the people who were savvy, in meetings, privy to knowledge, for example, reince priebus was white house chief of staff when trump decided to fire fbi director james comey. what does he know about that? what does he know about might be al fly michael flynn and who knew what when? but let me tell you something, the appearance of hope hicks and the likelihood she s about to be interviewed when he returns from a foreign trip with the president should worry president trump perhaps more than anything else. why? all of the people we just named are formers.
this situation in syria, shep. shepard: widely seen as poorly handled in the early going have the president and the prime minister of turkey been in contact since all of this started? u.s. officials say so far there has not been direct contact between the president and prime minister. interesting that when they had those talks here in mid play at the white house, one of the concessions president obama got from the prime minister, prime minister was to get turkish support for a upcoming conference in geneva to try and deal with the future of syria. in terms of making sure that if assad does go, president assad does go in syria, there will be some sort of peaceful transition, again, the idea that prime minister will now be focused on a peaceful transition in syria is lost in the fact he has got major problems on his own hands right now. this is a big concern for the white house tonight, shep, because they have already got this instability in syria. instability, instability spreading