time, he's a man of action and decisive leader. if you use chemical weapons on children, we'll lower your airfield to a pile of rubble. that is what should have been done. it was the right decision it's a stark contrast with the foreign policy of leading from behind where the professorial red line drawn by president obama was ignored. senator paul has the wrong application to this issue. lou: the contrast is so magnified. here president trump did not threaten, he did not talk about what he would do. he did it. and he did it because in his judgment as he arctic late it, bashar al-assad crossed many lines in his words. the idea that president obama

would draw red lines then disappear for years on end. the difference couldn't be greater. charlie: it took donald trump to enforce barack obama's red line. barack obama is all talk. and donald trump demonstrated that he is as gayle said, a man of action. i think the world probably woke up regardless of whether you want to get fully involved in syria, and i don't, i do think this is a good message to send to people, that you don't gas people, and you don't gas children especially. in terms of sending that message, he did do that. i guarantee, china, north korea, iran, all these countries are standing around saying this is a different guy now. they will be a lot more careful how they treat this guy. lou: today to have neil gorsuch

confirmed to be the 113th justice of the supreme court, this is a big, big moment for the trump administration, for the country, for the court. your thoughts. gayle: it's a big triumph for the country and the administration. president trump kept one of his vital promises. most of the republicans who voted for president trump cared most about the supreme court nomination. this is fork karma when the democrats were able to block this leading conservative intellectual by using senate control. now they a kri fightsed the filibuster to prevent an ultra mainstream nominee to the the supreme court. so next time there is a vacancy to the supreme court, president trump can nominate scene outspoken leading conservative.

this is bourke karma coming back to bite the democrats. lou: watching senator schumer perform in the senate as he attacked gorsuch. talked about him not being mainstream. i think that he -- i think he store what little credibility and integrity of the public might have adescribed to the democratic party, tore it to shreds. >> this is if a colossal whiff. his back was up against the wall. the outside groups were demanding they put up a maximum fight now, even though it would have been so much smarter to keep their powder dry, fight next one. not only might they have gotten a lesser sterling nominee than neil gorsuch. but also there is a good chance it will be for a seat that could

do a lot more damage to the left since the only thing the left had is these liberal judges that they are stacking the courts with, and they have four of them on the supreme court who believe the constitution is a whatever they want it to be, and they just make things up. the notion that neil gorsuch -- lou: it also sounds like the media. gas require many effective especially. charlie: it's effective. lou: turning if wee may to the u.s.-china summit. the president sounded supremely confident progress had been made and that big potentially bad issues were going to be resolved. in the president's tone and language, he's saying that he expects big things in this relationship with president xi.

gayle: that's great. when you think about the actions he took with regard to syria, they not on the have a direct effect in the middle east, they have an indirect effect for our allies and competitors. the leader of china respects strength. president trump has shown he can take action with it's proportionate and necessary. that bodes well for a lot of the issues we had with china going into the territorial seas of other asian nations. they may rethink that strategy. lou: the other huge story is devin nunes, the chair of the house committee on intelligence recusing himself from the investigation of russia and its speculative charges that there was some relationship that was nefarious of some kind with the trump administration.

that is -- i have heard person after person on this broadcast say that that was just a terrible decision on nunes's part and he should never have rolled over for the george soros influence in washington, d.c. charlie: it's retro back to what republicans have been for so long where they get so afraid of the other side and afraid of fighting these things, and they care so much about the accusations slung at them. the lesson they should learn from donald trump is you suit up in your suit of armor, your teflon, and keep on moving and keep on fighting. i feel the same way. i understand why jeff sessions recused himself. because he was have much involved in the campaign. but even that, nobody -- no normal people actually are upset about any of this. and they are not upset about the russian thing.

there is no evidence of anything. lou: it's just about an 8-month long investigation. charlie: and you have this whole other thing -- lou: with susan rice. charlie: that's a true constitutional crisis scandal. why republicans are not prosecuting that case every single day. it should be the only thing they are talking about all the time. gayle: i have a slightly different take than charlie. i think it's fine that he steps aside because the republicans keep coming. so we are not going to let all of these criticisms distract from the real investigations that need to take place. and we are not going to let someone become the target of all of this controversy. the important part is to move forward and talk about the collusion that may have happened with the nsa and unmasking of names. that is what needs be pursued. lou: already we know that the

director of the f.b.i. lied before congress. before that very committee, when he said there had been no surveillance of donald trump or the campaign because the nsa was doing it and he had to be aware of it as the director of the f.b.i. and there is the possibility that susan rice in fact now fox news is reporting this, an extensive paper trail is likely to exist for rice making requests unmasking various subjects within that surveillance, and that's according to information sharing procedures approved by the obama administration in its very final days. this gets worse and worse. gayle: the spreadsheets of calls should become the new binders of women. the mainstream media should attack that and make that known. but i doubt that's going to happen.

charlie: you also have dni clapper who lied to congress about this very thing. so the idea that obama officials can now just say no we didn't do it. that doesn't kit. you people have been lying about this and knowingly lying about it. so we need to see evidence here. lou: the real question i have as we are about to wrap it up here is why in the world isn't jim comey ex-director of the f.b.i.? i can't imagine why the president want to keep him on that job with these questions. they are really not questions. but these slurs against his integrity and one could argue his basic competence it's extraordinary that he has a job or as he put it another 6 1/2 years in the directorship of the f.b.i.

charlie hurt, gayle trotter, thanks for being with us. we appreciate it. up next. president trump taking swift action in syria. his administration blaming assad's allies for the chemical attacks. >> the iranian government bears heavy responsibility. it h proppedp and shielded the brutal dictator for several years. the russian government also bears responsibility. lou: naming names. john hannah joins us next. authorities are investigating another terrorist attack in europe. a hijacked truck ramming inhe a busy department store in stockholm. stay with us. we'll be right back. dear predictable, there's no other way to say this. it's over. i've found a permanent escape from monotony.

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lou: a terrorist attack in sweden. a man driving a stolen beer truck plowed into a department store in stockholm. the swedish prime minister said everything so far indicates this was a terrorist attack. police have been forcibly detaining individuals for questioning. two suspects are in custody, but the search goes on for others.

joining me now, john hannah, let's start with the missile attacks against the airfield in syria in retaliation for assad's use of chemical weapons. there was no discussion publicly, there was no i'll do this, you don't do that. the president simply acted. john: no, it was very powerful, decisive, swift. and i think it's going to be incredibly effective at achieving the well defined limited but extremely important political objective we were trying to achieve, which is to reestablish the principle that you cannot go around gassing innocent men, women and children. i think that point has been proven entirely, incredibly

effective way in a message that will ring loudly around the world, lou. lou: implications for the region for the course events in syria, for the role of russia in the middle east, and iran, not much attention paid to iran. nikki haley at the united nations did bring attention to iran and what she called the culpability of iran in this attack using chemical weapons on assad's own people. john: this message can't be lost on a lot of these players. iran included. but as well as north korea. or the chinese, lou. to have this all go down as the president is eating dinner with the chinese president, solving north korea is not going to be easy. when the president says you can solve it china or we'll solve

it, i think president xi will be more attentive to what an american president has to say about this problem. lou: to what degree can he be attentive, and to what degree do you think he can or will deal with kim jong-un and constrain him and eliminate any potential threat for north korea? john: that's the $64,000 question. the chinese for the last decade and more have refused to exercise the absolute economic power they have to collapse that regime if they want to. they haven't exercised that power. but now we are getting to game time. time is running out. these north koreans are about to acquire an intercontinental ballistic missile capability that will threaten key american cities. we have a president who just in

the last 24 hours with the chinese president in attendance and a clear, unmistakable message, that we are prepared to act in defense our national interest against rogue regimes brandishing weapons of mass destruction. we never had a chance of getting the chinese to do something about this problem constructively, now is it. and president trump has created the leverage for us to be able to try and do that. lou: he's trying to do that which is more than any president previous over three administrations previously have tried to do. this president also is dealing with the $350 million trade deficit. trillions of dollars. as the president himself said on the campaign trail. the united states has funded china and its progress in the world community. made it wealthy.

we are still at a $350 billion deficit. and we have a congress, a senate, and other institutions and corporate america, the banking system that have eagerly rushed to shuf wealth across the pacific to china. that is going to be far more difficult to resolve, is it not? >> these problems are deep, structural, they have been around a long time. finally we have a president that is very focused on doing something about this. it may take time. but my guess is if the president stays at it, if he continues to live up to his word, and to do what he says he's going too and not to brandish threats lightly, i think the line close will get a lot more serious about taking american interests seriously. >> we are asking a lot of this president, and by the way, we

are both sincere and might. but it's also fascinating to think this is only the 11th week of the trump presidency. >> extraordinary, lou. lou: susan rice leaving a paper trail of unmasking requests, despite denying the obama administration politicized intelligence. >> the allegation that somehow the obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes, that's absolutely false. lou: something was false, but that isn't it. a cia operations officer says the intel community has been used as a tool of political destruction.

lou: new reports show that susan rice's request to unmask campaign officials was rare and anything but routine as she has claimed. documents examined by fox news state such requests involved extensive and complex procedures which means rice likely left a paper trail. my next guest says the rice

unmasking is an abuse of power. one that violates the spirit of the law it should be further investigated. joining me now, scott, eulinger, thanks for being with us. fox news reporting they expect a long paper trail. these requests began in jump last year. what about accountability? how about getting to the truth here. she is going to take fifth amendment if she is called before congress. this is a difficult thing to try to get ahold of somebody like a national security advisor highly placed in the executive office. how do we get accountability? >> it's clear to me she violated the spirit of the law by her tis.

as of yet we haven't seen she has broken the law. but repeated requests for unmasking seem to indicate more than national security tints and more digging up political dirt on somebody. in early january she began to receive and everyone began to receive in the obama administration large amounts of raw intelligence not gone through by the analysts that shows there is something strange going on there. lou: across the intelligence agencies themselves. there are 16 of them. but we are also looking at an administration which now has disappeared from public -- their public voice has been lost. they were very out front. now the president hasn't been heard from. susan rice has decided she made a mistake when she denied everything on msnbc, then two

weeks later was caught in her own reality that she made while there. >> when i was a cia officer overseas, one important thing we looked at when we were handling foreign agents, obtaining secrets fr them, was to ok at someone's record, their task performance and current deeds. i'm not a lawyer. i'm an operations officer. i don't see a lot of veracity coming from miss rice. lou: she lied in the benghazi -- that turned into a scandal which was a tragedy throughout. it's sort of extraordinary that more objections weren't raised about her being anne a national security advisor at all. >> for any professional officer

in the federal government, we are always lectured, especially imagine the, about the idea of the appearance of impropriety. the very appearance of it must be avoid. in this case we certainly have the appearance of impropriety at a minimum. there are different standards for the higher political employees, and the hard working people in the government have that accountability. lou: your former agency spied on the senate intelligence agency. john brennan said it had not. he had to apologize. think about this. spying on the senate intelligence agency then having to say he lied about saying he didn't do that. scott: dni clapper was also seemed to be lying under oath or 23569 and easy with the truth. lou: this had nothing to do with you getting out of the racket. scott: one reason i was able to

get out, i saw what was going on and you could see the writing on the wall, and i thought i might be spend my time, retire, and depart. it ruins morale for the junior personnel in the agency wanting to protect their country. lou: give us your sense of this. how pervasive? how pervasive is the politicization of each of these intelligence agencies. scott: i think it is a problem. the more washington insiders say it's not a problem, the more i'm inclined not to believe their claims. once you remove the political appointees, people who reached seniority in the government. people who reached seniority because post past 8 years of the obama administration, they are still there, they haven't departed. lou: this any way to root them