the white house says president trump is ready to approve a new round of sanctions while both responds with expulsions. the u.s. secretary of state accuses russia and china of enabling north korea's ballistic missile program. testifies a rocket into the sea of japan. human rights watch claims an american trained iraqi army unit carried out extrajudicial killings in mosul plus. at least three palestinians are injured during bryant's in the west bank off the israel introduced entry restrictions at the holy signs in jerusalem. kevin turner

would bring you your next news bulletin live from here studio until then it's call still talking about the infighting within don't said ministration. hello and welcome to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle for many particularly his critics to trumpet ministration is nothing less than chaos on steroids for some who know the president this is merely business as usual for him is this a winning strategy for the president america and the world. crosstalk

in the trump presidency i'm joined by my guest james jatra in washington he's a former advisor to the u.s. senate republican leadership in williamsburg we have andrew langer he is president of the institute of liberty as well as host of the language house on network and in london we crossed to interject palmer he is a professor of international politics at city university of london all right gentlemen crosstalk rules and in fact that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate jim let me go to you first in washington an article in politico a couple days ago caught my eye and it it really said a lot to me about the presidency donald trump good and bad and in between and the title is to america it looks like chaos for trump it's just tuesday i think that really kind of sums it up because he there is some kind of method to his madness the left and the democrats they don't understand and they don't like it but there seems to be something to it we also had throwing into the mix here this ban on transgender people in the military which of course everybody's on fire in liberal

media is how intentional is this on his part because a lot of people say it's irrational and it's chaotic but then there be a lot of his supporters say he's just being himself and that's what we elected go ahead james. i think part of it is intentional that he now it's this thing about the transgenders very soon after the congress passed this bill about russia sentients which i think we can talk about more detail but on this transgendered thing i think he i think he is trolling i mean i think he was baiting them i mean after all who could forget that classic film you know trannies on. or are they fighting trying to be would be more feather boas on omaha beach i mean it's this this idea of this sexual revolution that has to be institutionalized in american society and it's not just in the military a state of little kids being pumped full of drugs to change their gender identification when they're still minors i mean there's there's a kind of

a craziness and american society that i think trump is is baiting when he does something like this not only does he take the attention off of this ongoing campaign against him russia russia russia but i think he throws into relief or let's say the core of the american people the people in flyover country his constituency just how to out of touch with reality his critics are you know and to weigh in on that because the story that was getting a lot of traction we of course you know russia russia russia in the background that's what. the fake news channel c.n.n. and m s n b c they make their money that's their business model but the story that was being a lot of talk about i think was very very interesting it was about jeff sessions the attorney general and in a flash it well i should say in a tweet that story went away again jim said trolling is i trust trolling the media because he wants to control the narrative he wants to control what's in in

in the storylines for the major broadcasters and newspapers. you know i don't necessarily see this trolling i do see it is entirely intentional and yes it did take the jeff sessions story off the front page but i thought that this was all directed at sort of getting people's attention focused away from the failure of the obamacare repeal it measures in the senate and sort of the the gilded nature of the trump legislative agenda there the reality is yes the president knows that he can reset the agenda any time he tweets out something in something that's very controversial my sources are telling me that this transgender band issue was at work for some time several weeks to at least a month that sort of inside gentles there was chatter that this was coming down the pipeline and that it was just a matter of picking the right moment to make it known it up listen personally someone who's been involved in politics now for what almost a quarter of a century what i rather the president didn't do things this way yes but then again

i've been proven wrong time and again when it comes to this presidency and the impact of what he does and how it plays with the american people so it's one of those things where yes he is out there he's trying to reset and control the the narrative that's out there i don't think it's trolling per se i just think it is a matter of of sort of setting the stories of the day introduced can you weigh in on that because you know one can make the argument that you know what comes out of the white house is chaos is really the there is it's not stable this person may be leaving there's always a rumor that someone's going to leave like pre-vis or something then we hear the rumor that the secretary of state tillerson might leave but you know on the on the other side of the coin is that this is the kind of behavior that got trump elected unexpectedly i would i think all of us would agree so if it worked during the campaign it should work now or maybe a campaign and a presidency are two different things and should remain two different things go

ahead in london. well i think there clearly is a personal style which runs right through the campaign but also runs to. the presidency as well but i think one of your other guests raised the issue which is this is a this is a part of the if you like a particular logic and that logic largely seems to revolve around them the media narrative and the kind of debates and issues that come up there which keeps everybody very busy analyzing what he just tweeted or said but i think it also is playing to the kind of voter base as well you know and i think now the issue is that this is where the differentiation has to come between the campaign and the presidency now is the time when more and more people are looking to the president to lead and to act because you will recall the twenty sixteen campaign was one about the way in which the system of government was broken that the american dream was read out of reach of more and more people people who are basically screaming

for change and quite frankly no i think there are more secular trump supporters who are beginning to question whether this president is actually capable of achieving anything so trump can set a particular kind of narrative but unfortunately he seems to be playing the game which was the one that he criticized during it and pain which got him into the white house may not work too much longer for large parts of lots of people only jump in here real quick go ahead go ahead jump in go ahead peter if i can you know because there's a there's an ancillary impact of this which is to say that as the president does these things and as he sort of antagonizes some of the folks up on capitol hill there's a real fundamental issue here in terms of the trump agenda which is now in the white house just released a report yesterday about nominees being slow walked in the senate if you alienate the legislative branch and the legislative branch retaliates by not by not approving your nominees it becomes very difficult to implement the trump executive

branch agenda then as part of the reason why the obamacare vote failed was because there wasn't a decent team pressing the issue for a while in light. a slate of affairs from the department health and human services but all of these other agenda items the president has which by virtue of precedents and the way the government works go through the executive branch they're all at risk if these nominees don't get approved ok ok james let me go back to you in washington i think it's really interesting here is that the left has always or lisa last thirty years or so used the identity politics card to keep in power and you know what just in what we just heard from. and to. some of his worst enemy sort of the republican party unfortunately that's true for this president here and so i think it's really quite interesting is how trump is flip this identity politics card to his own advantage because you know all the liberals in hollywood and all the liberals or new york and washington are up in arms about this transgender thing but the fly over states probably aren't and he's speaking to his base and then he's

using his is instrument of communication twitter i think this is a very calculated move and again if he wins on so many different counts of course he's not going to make people in hollywood and new york and washington love him they never will love him so why should he care what they think go ahead. you know i think you're exactly right i'm actually a fan of his twitter he's giving great speeches around the country like he did in the campaign but you know at some point people say well that's a great speech hey this guy ought to be president oh wait a minute he is and i would turn andrew's comment around i don't think his style or his tweets are what's in tag and izing the republicans on capitol hill the fact the matter is a large chunk of the republican party didn't want him they agree more with the democrats than they do with trump's populist agenda whether it's on foreign policy trade immigration and a number of other things they're slow walking this because a they're incompetent and b. they don't like trump very much not because they're offended by his tweets they don't like his constituency and the proof of that is that while they are slow

walking his nominees while they are not getting obama care repealed they're not getting tax reform done they're not doing anything they're supposed to do they play in favor and plenty of time to join hands with the democrats who are engineering a soft coup against trying to pass this russia same bill that guarantees for a generation a new cold war and ships the president of his fundamental power to make america's foreign policy well let me go back to you in london i mean it is very interesting here is that we with this new russian sanction believe it handcuffs him and he now if he signs it he's going to be basically signing he'll be putting himself in a little jail cell at least on the issue of russia because he has to get permission from congressional committees to make some changes that is really unprecedented that the executive that controls corn policy would surrender those parts of those powers to the congress go ahead in london. well i think that's an important point

but i think we have to bear in mind that although president trump and candidate trump's words and some speeches and rhetoric were about resetting relations with russia and becoming more kind of maybe warmer or whatever the key issue is that since his election nato has continued to deploy forces into the baltic states saying it has i think you'd effectively to pursue a policy which actually is. is actually much more anti russian and contributes with the past and nikki haley u.n. ambassador has kept on about sanctions no sanctions have been changed or removed and so what i would say is this is actually i'm not sure that he's put in a prison cell i think he's been pretty much applying the sanctions already this just suggests that the congress wants to tie him up a little bit in case there should be any room for maneuver so i'm not sure he goes much against what he's already been doing and i think to some extent the kind of political theater which goes on is actually drawing attention away from that and i

am not sure that i really see that much change really ok gentlemen i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the trump presidency stay with r.t. . the knot winds up. on the flames off let down one might have snakes on the definitions and i'm back and the. one seeking i need. taken in equal city in the south. and then you're going to bring. how we think i'm. young would be right now i think. i'm going to be no one at beach. south.

in this just feeling if one means a leftist i know be deep. in the face numb tokio find it is going to happen keep going. to let me ask how. does work with because did a piece of dancing coral cultural freezing cold the premise. you can see the border from here was a. steel fence on this side. like i said this is this is all time land. and this is all. you have every right to be

here have a right to call collect my food be a part of my family on both sides of the border. play started an organization called the arizona border recall we are a standalone into t. . that is doing good with these to be done in the five years it's getting worse the violence. it is escalating because this will be a. bridge is really good with them because i. believe their range is that they don't believe the. responsibility for their security. anywhere else. welcome back across the uk where all things are considered i'm peter remind you we're discussing the trump presidency.

ok let me go back to you in washington one thing that i want to go back to jeff sessions because i was i was insulted by behavior towards the attorney general and it seems to me that jeff sessions was a trumpet's before trump knew he was a trump a stoke a and treating your close political ally the guy that came out for you first in the senate when nobody would even get close to trump and to treat him this way in public i think is unconscionable and if you have an issue with your age he you should talk to him personally about it and not be airing it like he has jeff sessions is a very polarizing figure i like him very much have an enormous amount of respect for him. his entire time in the senate i think is commendable and to see him treated this way i think was absolutely wrong and maybe this is again maybe this transgender band thing good you know he goes out there and knew everybody was going

to go you know you just go crazy about it which they have it has changed the story but i really hope that trump is going to say something publicly because since he has been so public about jeff sessions that he should make amends that would be because he's talked a lot about loyalty does he have loyalty to his people and a lot of people are going to be asking that question right now go ahead. i agree with that one hundred percent i don't think these critics criticisms of mr session should have been public i along better than meyer of just jeff sessions that said i do think it was a mistake for him to recuse himself i think they're just going door to this endless probe by by bob muller that's going to drag in the next year and be used to essentially as a as a way to bring down the administration and also the very first day he walked into office he should have set up a test task force to seek out leakers and indict them and throw them in jail where is the secretly impaneled grand jury handing down indictments as far as i know it's not happening or else that would have been leaked and said he's giving speeches

talking about nancy reagan just say i don't know drugs and stepping up civil forfeiture is those are not the things that should be the top of his agenda so if these criticisms which i don't think should be done publicly can focus him on what the president's agenda are and start putting some of these deep state leakers in jail that would be a good start you know and do the whole issue of loyalty and not in the old lordi way of the jim comi i thought that was just absolutely clownish of him going in front of the congress but you know they were the biggest the biggest the biggest problem that trump has actually outside of members of his own party that won't support him slow walk everything again is unconscionable the american people spoke . but you know it his dealing with how to move his agenda forward while you know you have all these people that are leaking behind him i mean in his own white house this is his real problem here and he better address that and

he should have addressed it weeks and weeks and weeks ago i think that it's been estimated there are more leaks in the deep state than during in the last six months of the last eight years during obama and that's really kind of interesting there's a lot of leaks did come out go ahead andrew. well that is certainly what one of the issues that we've been we've been tracking which is this issue of the deep state but i but i want to go back to this issue of the sort of the public dressing down of jeff's. because i think there's a greater point that's being missed here and sort of go back to what you guys were talking about earlier in terms of the new way of doing things you know trump i think it's fairly clear you know the least to me that the the agenda here is to get jeff sessions to step down so that a new attorney general could be appointed an attorney general who wouldn't have to recuse himself from the russian investigation herself from the russian investigation and thereby that attorney general could fire bob muller and you sort of we would have a special investigative problem the issue of course being that if the president wants to get the attorney general to either resign or in fact the attorney general

gets fired that needs to be done in a very very public fashion and the president needs to lay out in a very public fashion the reasons why he is concerned with his attorney general i know you know the old way of doing things was to make sure that stuff was done behind closed doors it's certainly the gentlemanly way of doing things it certainly doesn't help with this perception that the administration is in chaos and it certainly doesn't help with you want to make sure that your other cabinet officials are you know staying in line or working with you but on the other hand the up side is making sure that there is a very open and transparent record of the president's dissatisfaction with the attorney general yeah yeah that's it is the way i've been. and go ahead going to be judge and peter go ahead gentlemen up here. andrew i understand that i don't think it's the gentlemanly thing to do i can understand maybe he wants mr sessions to go but but i don't see how he gets a new attorney general past the senate yet he's not going to be able to sell and

it's going to be able to fire muller he'll have to swear on a stack of bishops during this conflict. that he won't do that he'll have something a little worse situation than he has with sessions right now energy let me go to you in london i mean james just said what i was about to say to you i mean. first of all you the next attorney general everyone's going to assume that he's going to have to fire the special counsel that's going to be electric ok also anyone that comes in now can expect to be publicly criticized by the president who wants that who wants to be treated that way. but equally someone of a distinguished politician as jeff sessions i mean you don't get more distinguished than that so who wants to step into those shoes and whoever steps as though she was going to be expected to press for a special problem council the course is already out of the gate trump is going to have to deal with this big special council is there he claims that he does thing wrong here sarah gets it done thing wrong we'd have to let it go through we don't

have any other choices and if he tries to push it then people are going to say obstruction go ahead interested in london. well i think the president has made his bed i think there are lots of forces which want to destabilize him that is no question there's very few people in the political establishment who wanted the candidacy to succeed for donald trump but i think president trump also has not helped himself very much has a narcotic style is a very personal kind of style as well he demands personal loyalty but does not often of offer it very easily to others if you look at general mattis his national security adviser rex tillerson his secretary of state he has let them down on many occasions he's got an autocratic style which is the right if you're running a big corporation because you own the corporation as he did as he did and but the thing is this is not a private government this is the government of the united states and he's the president of the united states that requires

a very different way of behaving both publicly and privately with your colleagues and outside and i think he has basically undermined himself and anyone who now accept a senior position in his administration has got to have realized that effectively you are a. president you are not to really exercise your own judgment on this he says you can and i think he's going to find it very difficult to see anybody of integrity accepting such a senior position from now on you know it's very interesting i want to say it all you really when you had the obama administration the most secretive in american history the troubling ministration is one of the most transparent but for the very very odd reasons ok i want to i want to we already had mentioned here a palace coup and i. asked in a security forum of what their former obama cia director john brennan was talking about the possibility if the special counsel were to be fired and he said this and i think it's very interesting i think it's an obligation of some executive branch

officers to refuse to carry that order out i would just hope that this would not be not be going to be a partisan issue that republicans democrats are going to see that the future of this government is at stake and something needs to be done for the good of the future he's calling for a coup jim he's calling for a powerless cohesive at ease saying that it should be a bipartisan coup against the president of united states he said this it doesn't get coverage at c.n.n. or at m s n b c he said this at that asprin conference go ahead. that's absolutely correct and this is where i would disagree with our colleague in london you know john mccain on the floor of the said the other day said we are not the president's service we are a co-equal branch of government that's absolutely true but constitutionally the executive branch consists of one man that constitutionally the executive inferior officers as the constitution calls them are servants of the president not to him personally not to donald trump personally but to the president and to his policy

direction for them to actively seek to undermine his policy direction is is is is unacceptable bob under under a circumstances i think part of the problem is that at least on foreign policy some of the people he has appointed a national security and so forth are people who do not agree with anything he said during the campaign and i think he does find himself somewhat boxed in by by people that he has themself put in place you know but and you know again we go back to jeff sessions here i mean i agree with what jim just said there i mean he's appointed people that are out on the same page with him but the only guy that really was on the same page with them was his attorney general again you know i am flabbergasted by this ok i mean how can you explain it because it seems to me that it's maybe already been resolved privately because jeff sessions is still vare ok maybe the sessions moment has passed maybe they have patched things up somehow i don't know or maybe what trump is wanting he wants more investigations into hillary

clinton the clinton foundation the e-mails ukraine and maybe the president is right and only giving yeah go weeks giving sessions some direction you know if i were to feel the heat that everybody else in this whole town is going to feel the heat with me go ahead andrew. well that's exactly right and the fact is that the jeff sessions was focusing on things that the president did not want the attorney general the department justice to focus on the nobody nobody asked for civil asset forfeiture to be revived nobody asked for jeff sessions to sort of pick up and go and do a war on on state based marijuana industries i mean this is not what the d.o.j. should have been doing according to this administration's agenda so the president goes in engages in this very public dressing down and i listen i was always under the impression there was some behind the scenes conversation but i do want to just take a step back peter for a second i want to talk about this issue of the deep state because you've got folks in the deep state who have made very public rumblings over the last eight months

since long before even long before donald trump took office that this was coming to a head john schindler the former d.i.m.a. official former professor at the naval war college has tweeted out almost incessantly in a blog almost incessantly about taking down the trump administration and the thing about john schiller is when you when you hear these issues of an identified intelligence former intelligence officials almost certainly that these are the ramblings of john schiller who has a vendetta against the russian intelligence services for forcing him out of his job at the naval war college and so this is this is you know a deep state that is very antagonistic towards this president ok well ok we only have a few a few seconds of you know what i think is very very interesting is that trump really needs to step back and see what's most important a for his agenda to get past i like his style sometimes but sometimes i get the impression that it really is in spite of his behavior to move his agenda agenda forward or examine would run out of time many things and i guess in washington williamsburg and in london and

thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see a next time and remember the last time. that is if they feed. you. so that you can be of this. company these statements not just to get you ready but. that's. about the.

same wrong. all just don't all. get to shape out. and in. the trail. one song. is worlds apart. to look for common ground.