obama. h.r. mcmaster didn t like a number of things obama had done in terms of not responding to the use of chemical weapons in syria and putting a withdrawal date on afghanistan. so there was a combination of factors why they said yes. and you make the point when it comes to foreign policy, president trump has more in common with president obama, what do you mean? the rhetoric, both of them come outside of the traditional app rat russ. er not machine candidates and they saw themselves getting elected to get out of the endless wars and obama did that in the end of 2011 and in afghanistan here we have president trump thinking about it. he s gone back and forth. but at the end of the day, they re not sending big conventional armies into the middle east as president bush did in 2003 and they re using drones and cyber warfare and careful with the use of force. and this is a pivotal moment that we ll be watching with you,
what we know is that the president often conducts policy and foreign policy by whim by personal preference not necessarily the national interest as we usually think about it. and he hides things from the app rat russ. and it s very possible that he has the right to do this. but it does underscore the problem that come the call is coming from inside the house we do not have a lot of mechanisms to correct it. ellen, i hear you need to go get to your typewriter. any last thoughts? no. just we ll have to see how this all plays out. chairman schiff today said that he s not ruling out the option of taking this issue to court, but stay tuned. we will. and we always are everything you and your colleagues report. thank you so much for your reporting on this and for spending some time on us. sam stein, just picking up on nick s point and once made by harry and frank, the system isn t designed for the president but neither was the system
your first impression from what we learned from the eight republican candidates? i think there were a couple of really explosive parts of the debate for me. the first one was obviously iran. i thought that perry and gingrich led the way with strategy when it comes to iran. but the thing that sort of blew up in newt gingrich s face, i think, the discussion on immigration. he had a rick perry heartless moment with this. i think this is really going to impact him tomorrow. it s really going to impact him with grassroots conservatives. i can see both sides of the argument here. he was reaganesque, 84- 86, reagan signed a huge amnesty bill but i don t think he made that differential during the debate. this is one of the most substantive debates, we really were able to see a lot of different sides on the candidates on this side of the issue. ron paul did surprisingly well on a couple of different parts. perry talked more than normal. it was good. i think gingrich gingrich prob