Take the actions needed to protect the American People. Theres Political Action on capitol hill americans who are serving, fighting along isil. Is that the measure we expect to hear more from the president about on wednesday . Is that something he would support . Ive read about some of those pro pose sales, but the administration is interested in working in a partnership with members of congress, democrats and republicans, as we confront this threat. American combats boots on the ground yesterday in response to chuck todd of nbc news. Ive heard of that guy. President chuck asked him whos going to go into syria and the president said syrians like the Free Syrian Army, are going to occupy that space assuming that the president is successful in pushing isil back. The Free Syrian Army, the administration has been reduck tant, to send them shoulder launch groundtoair missiles and man pads. Some of the equipment has shown up in isis hands. Why is the Free Syrian Army now a more viable and trustworthy fighting force than it was just q we have for more than a year now, been providing nonmilitary and military support. Providing military support is the term of art. So now, with lethal military support if theyre going to be carrying a fight as a proxy for these coalitions. Its important for people to understand that support from the Obama Administration has been flowing to the moderate Syrian Opposition for more than a year now, and that includes military support. The president has sought and this was in the context of the west point speech, that the administration has sought Additional Resources using our Title Ten Authority to ramp up that assistance to the Syrian Opposition. That certainly would improve their capacity and success in taking the fight to the assad regime and to isil to essentially or to effective ly wage that battle, so there is an effort that has been underway for some time. We have as you point out, sought to increase that assistance. Now, the question youre asking though is a more complicated one, why them. Right . Why them. And who else . Its complicated, but not illegitimate. Why them. Its their country. Again, the president is, i think the president again in the interview described it as a profound mistake to commit american combat boots to being on the ground in syria. This is not a fight that the United States can take on for them. The United States is willing to be supportive as they try to put in place a government and were going to continue to support them their country three years later, 162,000 people are dead. Millions of refugees all over the region. Again, why not them . Why didnt this plan i would say a couple of things about that. The first is, the United States has been engaged in an effort to support them and we have been for some time. For more than a year at least. Separately, the concern that was expressed by the administration at the time and has been is something thats been offered repeated is often a concern we didnt want to provide assistance to every individual who said they were fighting. Had we done that without thoroughly vetting them and building the relationship necessary to understand who were providing weapons to, we would have provided weapons to the people we are now fighting in iraq. So, there was a question of who exactly was included in the Syrian Opposition and which of those elements were interested in putting in place a government that reflected the will and diversity of the Syrian People and which were members of the opposition who were extremists hoping to use the power vacuum thats been created by this civil war in syria, to try to carry out their own vision in this region. So, the reason that the administration was interested in carefully vetting the individuals who are part of the is Syrian Opposition is because we wanted to make sure our stance was landing in the hands of the people who were trying to that carrying out acts of violence throughout the region. So, this challenge certainly contributed to the policy to ramp up our assistance after we had vetted these individuals and get a better understanding of their intentions. Very direct questions and i didnt hear a direct answer, so, can you ill try. With a yes or no. Ill try. Does the president intend to ask congress for authorization to expand his campaign against isil. Just a yes or no. The president was asked this question didnt give a direct answer either. I covered congress for years and i dont know what you mean by buy in. That seems to me to imply a vote. Is that what you want from congress . If you want to get insight into the president s current thinking about this, then i would refer you to the answer he gave to chuck in the interview 48 hours ago, but the other thing i would point out thats also part of your question, if the president decides to expand the operation and these are the kinds of questions that are best answered after the president s made fundamental decisions about what he wants to do there, that you know, that if there is an expansion in the operation that takes place, what consequences are there for a whole range of things. For diplomatic relationships, what kind of assistance are we going to seek for our partners, for our governments in terms of the role we can play here and what role does congress have. So, its hard to unless were talking about a specific order from the president , its hard to talk in very specific terms of what we Want Congress to do, but as a general matter, what i can say is that the president is is interested in their buy in, in a congressional debate and is interested in consulting closely with leaders in congress so they feel bought into this process and they feel like the partners that they are as the elected representatives in the American People. The president did make a decision on air strikes of syria under different circumstances previously and his decision at that point was he need ed congressional authorization or wanted it. If he were going in that direction again and wanted an air campaign in syria were necessary, safe to assume he would have the same he would ne need. The situation related to the protection of american citizens, the president believes that he has all of the authority necessary at commander in chief of the United States. All the military action necessary to protect american citize citizens. Including strikes in syria. If there is an expansion, the president s military orders or if there is an expansion of the scope of operations the president s willing to consider, at the point the president s made that decision, they can make decisions about what sort of role is require d if any. Give you a sense on the timeline . Something the president s when you say this . Well, the president has been regularly consulting with his National Security team for weeks now. When they are confronting these meetings iraqis trying to form a Central Government. Theyve made tremendous progress in a cabinet. There are, theres important work being done by the secretary of state. Hes traveling to the region this week where hes going to be consulting with regional governments. I think the president was pretty powerful in explaining the role that these governments have and the stake they have in resolve ing this conflict. The president highlighted that so often these sunni dominated governments perceive shia led governments as the principle threat the to their able ility lead their country and to remain in power. Takes a greater threat for more extremist sunni elements that have demonstrated significant capacities to wreakty. There are a number of priority, talked quite a bit about the beginning of this situation ordered an increase in intelligence as;cxisets to get better sense of what sort of what was happening on the ground and to better assess the capability of the isil and Iraqi Security forces. There are other elements, theqs use of military force. The reason im running through this long list here is to illustrate to you that this broad strategy is president has put in place is regularly discussed and theyre discussed every element in each meetinging. On wednesday, first of all, is this a prime time address, daytime speech . Were still working through the lodgistics of the speech. We have more details, well let you know. Is the purpose to announce a new phase in this military operation or outline what he has already outlined . The interview over the weekend, the press conferences, what his strategy is . The speech isnt written yet, so i dont want to get ahead of describing a speech that hasnt been written. I wouldnt rule that there might be something new, fwu principle goal here is to make sure that people understand what the clear stake is for the American People in our nation in this ongoing violence were seeing in iraq and syria. He wants to describe what sort of tools are at the disposal at the American Government as they try to protect our people in the region and the president wants to have, wants to lay that out clearly. Does that mean the president may have something new to say . He might. But ill wait until the speech is written before i start guessing about where hes going to end up. Asked a moment ago, has the president decided to expand the war to syria. You said the president will go where necessary. That sounded like a very near confirmation. Do you interpret it that way . No, because the president s made a decision like this to expand our military operations, you can expect the president himself would announce a decision like that, not just little old me. That is the statement of the president s view, in terms of what soort of authority he has as commander in chief to confront these challenges and hes determined to act where necessary to protect american citizens, both in the region and homeland. And that principle, that principle continues to apply in this situation as well. Its not a matter of whether, just a matter of time. If and when the president s made a decision along these lines, it will be something the president wants. Wednesdays speech . No, the purpose of the speech on wednesday is broader than that. Again, military action is one element of our strategy and the president has this integrated strategy that relies heavily on americans forceful diplomatic mite and a range of other assets that we have in our disposal and the president s going to use all of them. Would you say for the sake of argument, i was an american who watched the president s press conference at the nato summit and watched the interview yesterday. After seeing wednesdays speech, i say to myself, wow, its like 70 brand new or like that is a a particularly creative way to ask that question . I think what i would say if, i would encourage that american citizen that youre describing to tune in to the speech and evaluate for themselves just how surprised they are. Give us Something Better than that. At this point, i cant. Its mostly going to be what weve heard before. There might be something new. Is it to try to gather the American Peoples attention and say, in case you havent heard, heres what im thinking, but it isnt the declarative speech on how im going to wrap et this up to a higher military level and heres how much its going cost and heres the timeline ive put together to envision goals x, y and z. Were still a couple of days away in the speech, so im not in the position to provide guidance on what the president may or may not say. Well have to opportunity to try this again tomorrow. The president and his team are working on the speech as we speak. So as question get more details locked down, i will try, i probably overcommitting myself now, but i will try to provide at least a little bit greater insight for you and your viewers about what the president intended to talk about on wednesday. I want to follow up on immigration. I want to be clear, what the president decided saturday was that he wouldnt take executive action until after the november election. Decided to revisit the entire question of taking executive action until after the election because my mind and many advocates who have been pushing for this are different things. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to clarify. The president has decided he will will take executive action within the confines of the law to fix those aspects within the end of the year. That is something that will occur. Now, some of the static you might say in the media over the weekend was related to the president s earlier commitment to acting before the end of the summer. What the president has decided is that he will act now before the end of the year. The president has not altered his commitment or interest in taking executive action within the confines of the law to solve to act where congress hasnt. More specifically, to act where Congressional Republicans have blocked congressional action and the president s commitment to acting on this before the end of the year has not changed. He said yesterday is that he needs to explain to the American People. Why does he need until the end of the year to explain something . Isnt it true that the dominant factor you want to call it static, was static from Senate Democrats saying this is a maybe a good idea, maybe you think its a good idea, but its terrible politics for us and we want you to wait until after the election. The president clearly doesnt need nine weeks to explain this to the American People. If he wanted to explain it, he could, just like hes going to try to explain the strategy on wednesday. Seems to me the only rational explanation for this is an intervening Midterm Election and fears from nat democrats that they did not want to take this on in the teeth of an already tough environment. The reason the president has made the decision to delay his announcement about executive anchors that hes going to take is specifically because he is concerned mostly about ensuring the solution he offers is both sustainable and enduring. But if its executive action, it is sustainable, by definition, until the end of his presidency. He doesnt have to worry b about congress. He wants to ensure that all of the work that has been done over the last several years to build this powerful Bipartisan Coalition in support of Immigration Reform is sustained and by injecting an executive action in the midst of this hyper partisan political environment shortly before the midterms, that will have a negative impact on the broader public support and sustainability of Immigration Reform, so i guess the short answer to your question is the president s willing to take a little political heat from the pup edits, from some of the advocates and Hispanic Community in particular. In order to ensure the policy he puts forward is one that can be sustained and the fact is we havent seen a similar willingness from Congressional Republicans to take a little heat to do whats in the best sbrens of the country. Weve seen them do the opposite. They dont want to take any political heat even though they know that acting on bipartisan Immigration Reform would create jobs, expand economic growth, reduce the deficit. Thats why its strongly supported by the faith community. By the Law Enforcement community. The Business Community. The labor community. These are all reasons why comprehensive Immigration Reform should move forward. Thats why it passed in the senate, but there is a small but vocal group among Congressional Republicans who are blocking this kind of reform and thats the only reason were having this question. What he said he was going to do on the timeline, he said he was going to do as an act of courage. What the president has done, look, major, its not a surprise to anybody at the white house, its not a surprise to me there are some people in the newspaper who were critical over the president s decision to announce these executive actions between before the end of the year as opposed to the end of the summer. Thats not surprising. It was anticipated. But the president is willing to take on that criticism so that we can ensure that the executive action the president takes is enduring and that we continue to have public support for it. For all of the disagreement there may be around this one issue, there should be no disputing the fact that injecting this issue into the current political environment would be really bad for the issue. Theres some disagreement about whether or not, well, maybe it would help some democrats, hurt some others, maybe it would galvanize base democratic voters. Maybe it would provoke republican candidates into doing outrageous things like shutting down the government in a way that would benefit democrats. There are a lot of people with different views, but theres no arguing about the fact that injecting this issue into this sharply political polarized environment would be bad for the issue. And the president believes tha the most important thing. No where you knone in washingto invested more in this than president obama. If that means the president has to take more heat in the next few weeks in order to make it more likely that these solutions will be enduring and sustained and successful, the president s happy to take on that heat in order to get that done. Mo justin. I guess i wanted to just follow on that. And maybe argue with the idea that thats why were here. That injecting it into the current Political Climate is bad for the issue. We just went