but he s got to do that. loves her, respects her, but this isn t about her and it s not about me. it s about the country, it s about democratic values, it s about progressive values, it s about not turning this country over to extreme supreme court justices and the koch brothers. and that will probably get you an applause line even if it s a cheap shot. david ignatius i mean do you agree? is that the way forward? i actually think that you ve offered the best argument and said what s at stake is too big to risk losing this white house and then the subtext is and she s damaged goods, yeah. david ignatius, nicholas confessore, thank you very much. jeff greenfield, thank you as well. your latest book if kennedy lived, the first and second terms of john f. kennedy in alter tat minate history. up next, new jersey governor chris christie joins us next right here in the studio. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. remember pa.
survived the attempt his life in dallas? and what ever happened to counter culture in the cold war with civil rights, would kennedy have survived the terror in dallas? it s hard wondering how history might have been different. jeff green is a brilliant author and wrote the new book if kennedy lived, and he s a great political analyst. what you wrote is based on what happened before kennedy was killed, you extrapolate it. i don t want to belittle it, but less than 200 americans had been killed in vietnam by the time he was killed. and where do you think he would have taken that? would he have blown it up to 500,000 american soldiers over there, a war that had gone right through the late 60s? no. i mean, i think the probabilities are no. nobody could say this with certainty, of course, but everything we know about him is that the hawkish john kennedy of the 1960 campaign, the guy who wanted to take out castro, to take the offense against the soviets, had gone through a kind of an ak
starbucks, you know, and home depots, and you think, that was the country eager for nuclear confrontation? so, if you can bet on a country, perhaps, giving it that s the point, give it room to move and see what happens. well said. thank you. your book is a great book. i recommend it, if kennedy lived by the great jeff greenfield. thanks for coming on, jeff. ® cr. yup, you get it free each month to help you avoid surprises with your credit. good. i hate surprises. surprise! at discover, we treat you like you d treat you. get the it card and see your fico® credit score. life with crohn s disease ois a daily game of what if s . what if my abdominal pain and cramps come back? what if the plane gets delayed? what if i can t hide my symptoms? what if? but what if the most important question is the one you re not asking? what if the underlying cause of your symptoms is damaging inflammation? for help getting the answers you need, talk to your doctor and visit crohnsandcolitisinfo.com
impact on you. fortunately, because i was so young, i think i couldn t even begin to comprehend that somebody was being killed in front of me. but certainly it s more of an interesting tid bit of history they just happened to be there. yes. it certainly was an extraordinary eyewitness account there. jeff franza, thank you very much indeed for joining me. jeff green field you ve writ then fascinating book if kennedy lived based on the premise if they d had the right kind of shield and the president wouldn t have been assassinated. he would have had a second term. what would have been your conclusion? it would have been very different. principally i think based on the evidence, not wishful thinking he probably would not have gone in vietnam. without a major land war in asia the whole 1960s becomes very different. without a water counter culture
i think he was he saw civil rights even after he had thrown the president s power in back of it as a political problem. not just in the south, in the white working class neighborhoods of the north. i think we would have gone the there because the moral force was strong but it would have been less successful. your gut feeling, would he have become a truly great president, do you think? it s very hard to cut through what the death meant and how that put him in a different category. i think he would have been seen by historians as a reasonably successful president. . and avoiding world war iii gets a lot of of points from me. jeff greenfield, thank you very much indeed. called if kennedy lived fascinating thesis. we ll be right back. i got this.