Pentagon Side News Today

nearly a decade in a russian prison. good morning. and welcome to "way too early." on this friday, august 5th. im jonathan lemire. thanks for being here. news from last night, senator kyrsten sinema has agreed to back democrats reconciliation bill. clearing the way for a vote later this week. her decision comes after days of fellow democrats lobbying her on the deal. in a statement last night, the senator said she would come on board after the carried interest tax provision was rem...

From syria is actually going to be slowed down so we dont turn that volatile land over to russia, iran, syria, and isis? >> this is one of those issues where literally across the spectrum theres agreement that we should not be precipitously withdrawing from syria, joe, and so i think that message has started to penetrate even into the inner of the white house. here i give a lot of credit to graham whos emerging as a trump whisperer if you will at least on this subject, and yes, from what i can h...

Of immediacy here, but lets also take a moment and think about the diplomatic aspect of this. wherever you go in the pentagon, they talk about a whole of government approach to north korea. secretary mattis and none of his top deputies, no one thinks there is just a military option to this. tillerson is also going to be there, rex tillerson, the secretary of state, hell also be briefing and the key role that they want the chinese to play. thats true on the pentagon side, thats true on the state ...

Here and what the trump doctrine really is. hence, speak loudly and carry a big stick. >> hans, what does patience being over mean in pentagon speak? >> that means they need to be patient, they need to be ready. pentagon officials are always thinking a couple steps ahead. at least what the political leaders are saying publicly. its been three weeks, three or four weeks since this strategic patience was declared dead. whats interesting to me about the pence comments is he twinned it with syria an...

Jared kushner had a quick infusion of knowledge from the pentagon side. >> right. >> then you have steve bannon who wants no u.s. action around the world. hes part of that nonglobalization. so what we are hearing is there has been tension between kushner, priebus, the chief of staff reince priebus, and steve bannon. what we are learning is the three of them had a meeting recognizing all the public reporting in recent days about infighting, who is up, who is down, who has more power, who is less....

but politics. anarchy in cleveland. new information today on the five men plotting to blow up a bridge. reports this morning they were all tied to the occupy movement. payback. walmart the megastore digging deep and cutting a check for almost 4,000 employees. a probe finding the company violated overtime laws cheating workers out of thousands of dollars. and searching for maddie. the parents of missing madeleine mccann going public this morning saying the little girls brother and...

Insolvency as a nation. >> i would want to point out that our budget actually makes cuts in many of those areas. we reduce defense spending by $78 billion over the next five years. we do have savings in health programs to pay for the medicare program. in the area of social security, i want to point out, it is not contributing the the short-term deficit. it is a long-term issue. >> were talking about the long-term debt challenge. we at least have been around here. our concern has been that there ...

Post, and theres a lot of dominos that now take place with general petraeus taking over. >> reporter: there are. and, look, there was a lot of folks wanting mcchrystal to get a second chance on the pentagon side, just as a pragmatic issue. >> exactly. >> reporter: but not out of any other reason other than having to -- they didnt want to struggle with finding a new commander. the fact that petraeus ended that debate and made it easy for everybody to get on board, so thats why there really was no...

Mccain has tried to reform procurement. and on the pentagon side, its also true that the top brass often want to do favors for the friends in the weapons companies because they want jobs after the military careers, advisors and the like. congress needs to do oversight and crack down on the pentagon, but also congress needs to let the pentagon cut the weapons they want to cut. >> glenn: can i tell you something? wed be better off having the military do oversight over congress. i would like genera...

Mccain has tried to reform procurement. and on the pentagon side, its also true that the top brass often want to do favors for the friends in the weapons companies because they want jobs after the military careers, advisors and the like. congress needs to do oversight and crack down on the pentagon, but also congress needs to let the pentagon cut the weapons they want to cut. >> glenn: can i tell you something? wed be better off having the military do oversight over congress. i would like genera...