the brinkmanship with north korea could work. this is bad cop routine. it s one of the only strategies that has not been employed. do you agree? does he have a point? many believe the trump administration is practicing a rational good cop/bad cop and that s the best possible interpretation. the problem with that is that they are undercutting the chance for diplomacy and the credibility of american diplomats that will be the ones to be called upon to do the hard work of negotiating north korea s nuclear and missile programs. every time they undercut secretary tillerson, and every time they say diplomacy won t work, north koreans hear that and understand that. they have no reason to believe the united states would live up to their side of the deal if they believe president trump doesn t believe that deal with work, and if he goes back to the
is saying and i just wonder again whether we re looking at a bad, a good cop-bad cop routine where we heard leaks over the weekend that the president was telling everybody just relax i m being the bad cop. mike pence on russia. mike pence talks like ronald reagan when he is in the baltic states. he says exactly what you or i would want this administration to say. at some point, 8 months in, it can t be an accident at a all of these policy leaders inside the administration are towing the same line. it just happens to be a line that s differ from the president s bluster. the difference there joe is good cop, bad cop is choreographed. i don t think there s anything about this is choreographed. the national security council process, the interagency process isn t working.
the same tune here. the great leaders that i have seen, they don t threaten unless they are ready to act. i am not sure that president trump is ready to act. president trump has basically drawne a redline, saying that he ll never allow north korea to have an icbm missile that can hit america. he won t let that happen. he s not going to contain the threat. he will stop the threat. brian: fascinating. meanwhile, the media s more upsets for the president s choice of words than the actual threat of war. you don t think that the president s comments are at odds with those of the secretary or this good cop-bad cop routine? his language implied the use of force. to the secretary have early warnings? is the president of the united states pat threatening a nuclear armed country?
a clear message. his words were unmistakable. he said, further threats will result in fire, fury and power like the world has never seen. that s something pretty clear to understand. there have been further threats since he said it and there s been no reaction yet. we ll see if this just is written off as just another thing donald trump says or it reflects some new policy. but so far there s just been no change, notwithstanding the threat. john kirby, in the course of today, we first saw secretary of state rex tillerson deliver what was widely seen as a much more restrained statement, followed by the defense secretary james mattis, a very tough statement similar, in fact, to what we heard from the president. is this a good cop-bad cop routine on behalf of this? the president said this crazy
words do matter and to say maybe we ll have some kind of a strike against them or take military action, any military action against north korea because they re so unpredictable and you know that better than any of us we don t know what he would do. would he then turn to a nuclear weapon? he s also doing the good cop routine with china at the moment. every interview you read he is highly respected. what we know about donald trump is if the carat doesn t work he will go to the stick. the chinese president lied to me so that s the issue. that s a concerted strategy to pressure china with the good cop routine. donald trump likes to also play the good cop and he switches out notice. if he doesn t get what he he