i was telling maggie it reminds me of what happened in syria where suddenly the pentagon has to scramble and commanders on the ground have to scramble acting as though this is real. >> well, this is the real nightmare the pentagon has which is that trump is simply going to go on twitter and announce that he's withdrawing most of the u.s. forces. and a lot of what is driving the negotiations on the part of khalilzad and his team is trying avoid that from happening. trying to negotiate because everybody knows that trump is desperate to pull out. he even said he wants to cut, by 50%, a number of u.s. forces. that does not strengthen the u.s. posture when you're saying we want to leave but please negotiate and make concessions to allow us to leave in a face-saving way. that's not how you successfully negotiate. >> speaking of jefgestures befo important meetings. cnn reporting that the white house is actually cutting the u.s. contribution to nato from 22% of its total budget of $2.5 billion to around 16%, which