russia launches a criminal investigation into the attempted murder of yulia screwed paul the daughter of the former double agent who was also poisoned in the u.k. . foreign secretary boris johnson claims it is overwhelmingly likely it was responsible for the attempted murder of the former russian spy an allegation the kremlin calls shocking and unforgivable. more than fifteen thousand civilians managed to flee syria. as fighting rages between government forces and the rebels in the stricken region. u.s. central command says it has no idea how resources allocated to the saudi led coalition are actually being used in the war in yemen. my colleague you know neil will be here in about an hour's time with

a breakdown of today's top stories on the st paddy's day but up next crosstalk considers what. taking over the state department could mean for u.s. diplomacy stay with us. hello and welcome to cross talk we're all things considered i'm peter lavelle the firing of rex tillerson at the state department surprised a few how he was fired if something well completely different tillerson was often described as bland and on numerous occasions out of step with donald trump the nomination of mike to replace him is anything but bland.

ross talking foggy bottom i'm joined by my guest michael flanagan in washington he is president of flanagan consulting and a former congressman also in washington we have morgan much niek he is a republican strategist as well as founder of the mtu group and in williamsburg across to andrew langer he is president of the institute for liberty as well as host of the andrew langer show on w b l baltimore all right gentlemen crossed rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want michael let me go to you first in washington well we know what kind of secretary of state donald trump doesn't want does mike pompei o fit the bill of a secretary of state do you think he does one go ahead michael thanks peter i think yeah i think trump is a dynamic person there's a lot of energy in what he does but whether you like the energy or not it's up to you but there's it's not a circumspect approach to problems like maybe obama had or even bush it's much more

energetic it's much more lively and certainly fits that character better than rex tillerson just from a from a sociological point of view if you'll permit morgan you know i've looked at his history former military many actually graduated first in his class at west point. you know obviously he was in congress but he's he's not a very diplomatic guy his statements in public life are very very strident is that is that the kind of person the united states needs it at foggy bottom go ahead morgan well in terms of the united states needs or not that's open for debate i agree with your former speaker that it's what president trump once i think president trump is very much of the mind set of being a proactive problem solver and i think you can make the argument that if you look back through generations and generations of diplomats all being the sort of prototypical diplomatic figure not making waves and you can say sort of. or the

world is in the north korea isn't any closer to being resolved you know iran deal we can talk about that and you know what i want to get let me as an ordinary me yes i let me let me ask you something real quick because i think it's kind of important that i absolutely agree with you are you serve at the pleasure of the president absolutely ok however i think it's all fair to say and it looks like you guys are all pretty much republicans conservative i don't necessarily dead if i with the party but you know and it's not an insult donald trump is not. very knowledgeable about world affairs ok i mean and i sometimes get the impression he's not really quite interested in i think the the united states at this time particularly really needs a strong secretary of state so let's throw that back to morgan. well ok so fine yes you have so that you don't think this current person is strong i mean if anything he's going to make an argument that he might be too strong i think it's a matter of how you approach problem solving if you want to approach

a problem solving from america first american strength and let's bend the problem the world issues to the will of what this president is trying to achieve rather than what has been turned the case from both parties in the past which is let's do our bast best in the typical diplomatic dance yet again and keep going back to the fact that what has that dance brought the world from the american point of view i mean it is korean peninsula and the better off from the traditional diplomatic dance that both parties have been doing for thirty forty fifty years is iran a more stable place you know is the world well many of the world more have been sworn in you can make the argument you can make the argument that diplomacy has never been applied and tillerson actually was and by the time he was fired trump it come around to tillerson his point of view and to let me go to important question here i mentioned the pump a it was used to be a military man it seems like now this circle is been completely closed. trump is surrounded by military people ok

a very high rank and experience here and i think my producer sent out the questions through to all of you and there's times really really need a top diplomat because it doesn't seem like that's part of the his vision for america first in the world go ahead andrew trump trump doesn't it's up to the you know let me get off of something that morgan was talking about in terms of problem solving because there are some internal problems that have needed to have been solved with regards to this administration and relationships with our foreign affairs community generally and so i think it's very interesting that pompei was over at cia in an era in which the intelligence community has been essentially at war with the president since before he took office now with the appointment of a career cia officer. as head of cia and pompei a moving over to state one wonders if a lot of that of that fence has been mended in many respects the pompei was brought in there to really try to build those relationships and fix the problems and to get

get cia and the intelligence community generally in line with what the president is looking at in terms of a world agenda and now the president takes my comp aoe solves the problem over at cia and the i.c. and then goes he brings them over to a state where you have a core of career diplomats i know a number of them i went to school with a number of them who are not big fans of this president so there are mixed messages being sent abroad and so my pompei i was over there in no small measure to help bring the diplomatic corps more in line with what this administration objectives and goals are ok we'll see ok michael that's a very interesting point but i think it can be problematic as well i mean my pump a.o. is seen by many at least i will say you know very neal conan in his approach to foreign policy and presumably he will be bringing in people of the same caliber and as we just heard from andrew i mean the state department i would say is kind of liberal i think that would be a fair thing to say so i mean i'm not sure of the problems of the sake of the

department of state is going to be resolved in any form whatsoever ok michael it could be very ideologically driven i think i have that impression go ahead. you might be right peter but the hiring is not done at the secretary level it's surprising in this administration having been someone from mill year with the hiring going on at the white house is that it's at the white house so pompei is not going to bring in his cody a of his friends to run state it's still going to be hiring is done at the trump level at the at the on b. level also state is a unique place and i think we have to really talk about that for just a second to discuss state it at the department of defense for example the functionaries that run the department of the fence or generals there's a veneer of political people on top that make policy and enforce policy and think graham thoughts but the place is run by generals the same is true at foggy bottom it's run by ambassadors of most people at foggy bottom work for an ambassador somewhere in the world or at foggy bottom in bed unlike generals who don't change

with every administration ambassadors do change with every embed administration and the president puts his thumb print on state every president does by saying state is going to have a policy that looks like me and that i look like it more so than probably any other federal department and so when you have this change over of the functionaries of foggy bottom there's going to be some resistance because many of the hirings were from the previous guy or the guy previous to that and there's some reason that they were hired because they are hired in an ideological stream and so i think you're right foggy bottom is a little more liberal than most but trump is putting his stamp on that place as every president does and i think from peo is a great step forward for him to have it look ok trump like which is absolutely necessary and of trump's going to have his place in the world ok but let me go to morgan here but will it it will kind of. footprint fingerprints it will pump elite because again i can say he's extremely bombastic and we'll talk about some of his

views in the second half of the program here martin i mean is is to is going to treat pump ale the same way i i mean. and whims like walking into and often say i've decided i'm going to talk with the koreans i mean everybody gets. when it comes of that i mean how do you think the chemistry there is strong enough for a pump able to say ok yes sir and i said because this is the secretary of state should also give counsel not just you know execute orders go ahead morgan. right so first just very quickly on that point i don't think anyone in the world is strong enough to do that i think to be a senior person under this president is extremely difficult matter what your world view is so just that whether it's pompei or whomever might feel and the like but one thing you said a second ago i would just want to respectfully disagree with i strongly believe this president is far less ideological then people believe he is i believe he often uses ideology as a process or a tool for negotiations so there's i mean there are

a few issues in which he is i think the iran issue of them that we'll talk more about it we're going to have lots of very well i know that's a very fair point and i like it ok but at the same time i think there has to be a method to your madness i mean i think there has to be kind of world view of how the world should work and the place that the united states that after all he is representing the united states and and i think that you know when you look at it like at the middle east it seems like he's kind of caving in to a lot of interest on the ground look saudi and israeli and what not and and they don't necessarily in the american interest but again like i said i think it's a general a general lack of interest in these things that he has you know around people that are very powerful or he thinks that will do what you know what they mean the united states. is is very you should be very wary of putting so much faith into the israelis and saudis after all it's america first not those two countries andrew before we go to the break jump in and we'll get back to in the second half go ahead

and i'm just going to say. now listen i was just going to say that you know this is a president that does not take for an adventure ism lightly i think we'll see which of the allies and we'll see and by andrew we'll see we'll see it's still early keep going and i'll listen i was just going to say i mean we went through we went through eight years of america sensually ignoring our alliances with israel and we saw very little progress done in the middle east peace front in fact a lack of american involvement created a very much of our that you know i like that being said i think this president is going to. go i really really disagree with that statement the u.s. has given israel every single year more and more money ok the biggest arms deals in history to saudi arabia it remains needlessly in afghanistan it remains needlessly in iraq and iraqis want the u.s.

to leave but they won't leave the parliament passed a resolution doesn't even make the papers there now i think that you know i like donald trump andrew because of what he said during the campaign not what he's doing as president ok i'd like you to respond that andrew go ahead. and i'll listen i mean there are movements afoot to pull the u.s. out of yemen to sort of change what's happening on the ground in the in the between saudi arabia what they're doing on the horn of africa there are movements there as well do you agree with reality is do you agree that you know the end did you agree we had no idea that she had very much do agree with that and i think. i think i think there is i think it's early and i listen and i think congress certainly needs to read. ok we'll get on that we're going to go to a hard break and i think after that short break we'll continue our discussion on american diplomacy stay with r.t. .

american. human rights abuses notion. of yemen you see. the genocide there were there going on then just some porting who american then british and a number of. european countries they are very generously lend their support to the actress so what kind of human blood she sat in which to live a million children a woman does not count. the far right and britain isn't just on the march it's taking violent. action by young white. i see these organizations which are all usually

split into which we take different names how do you view the. complex web of british fashion. welcome back to crossfire all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind we're discussing president trumps government reshuffle. ok right before we do the break and you and i were having a go back and forth here and andrew i'm sorry morgan you wanted to jump in washington go right ahead. oh sure the only point i was trying to make was that it's true that america is still evolving involved in the first likely in certain areas of the world i mean i just think it's unrealistic to expect any president to

be this sort of isolationists version from one hundred some years ago the world is still a dangerous place and i think there's a room for a president trump to have a last interventionist i strongly like prefer that word to neo con less interventionist role in the world but still not be literally zero it is not realistic in the world for the superpower of the world to have literally zero footprint and i know you don't necessarily mean zero but i do strongly believe that people need to look at it compared to the former administration or the mission before that and have a more realistic understanding of america's military role in the world you know i don't disagree with that i mean the united states the most powerful country in the world and of course it's going to have a footprint i absolutely that's true all right let me go to michael here and that kind of brings us to where i want to go i mean you know if you look at of course the conflict in syria trump inherited but there's no real reason for the american military to be there whatsoever ok quote unquote trump defeated isis which is not

true the united states played a role russia played a role iran's played a role has played a role and most of all the damascus government did ok that is winding down but the american footprint stays there and nobody in the country wants them to stay and they're playing the role of a spoiler let's go to south korea there's two careers they're talking together and the united states wants to be a wedge in that i say more diplomacy let's have someone that will say let's sit down and resolve this ok because and but no and that's the kind of adventurism that i think the u.s. needs to get away from because it doesn't have any benefits from it ok go ahead baikal they're talking because of their talking world has always been going to mike let me go to michael let me go to michael go ahead michael. the. venture isn't. talking about peter the adventurism you're talking about peter is is far less than the neo cons under bush and i disagree with you i don't think there are a lot of neo cons in this administration driving foreign policy either militarily

or the civilian side with with the views and. from foggy bottom i think that the advisers and other helpers that are in iraq are very small in number and the reason that we're staying in spite of the iraqi government is because of the great influence of iran as for south korea the only reason they are talking is because trump was involved i think that he has actually moved the ball on the peninsula more than any president has ever and so i think the intervention is to the extent that you want to call it that that's a fair word i think is been productive even though it's something that's rough going on a little rocky but these things are going to be rough going into iraq and i think trump is just the guy yeah i mean that happened if you look at this if he's what he's emphasizing up to be one of the best foreign policy presidents we've had. that will ok the jury is still out on that because you know mentioning yemen why should it be here why is the united states supporting the saudi government in yemen it's

committing genocide i mean it hardly is ever covered in american media it is a real disgrace there is no reason for that you have an expanding military footprint in africa again no barry lynn few people actually talk about it in the mainstream media so all of you guys can do about interventionism is good i don't see it at all i think it's been a abject failure for the last fifteen years or so ok i mean i had a lot of it's not for i'll tell you one word to me tell you one more thing you know you know america wants to start winning again because it hasn't so i'm tearing a page from donald payne donald trump's campaign ok i'm sorry you want to jump in there but morgan you want to jump in there and then i'll go to andrew let me let me give one quick one or i don't know where they are that it ok that i'm saying all right go ahead michael go ahead. sorry go ahead rick real real quick and just one quick sentence we're nowhere in the world with the possible exception of iraq that we haven't been invited where we're nowhere where we just say we're here get over

it and so if we're in africa or wherever else we are we're there with the permission understanding of the country so having said that you have let me tell you they did ok but at the same time in the sanctions and is there an authorization from congress to be there that is so important to ok that when you see the entire congressional powers in war making or being a what you wrote it it doesn't matter what administration what party they are that is that is a trend that is very very dangerous ok and you go ahead jump in all right i don't think it's going to be this it was only when i didn't tell you that senator go ahead real quick senator mike lee and and and patrick leahy have gotten together and of and introduced legislation to reassert congress's powers under the war powers act got dropped last week we had a dinner about a couple of weeks ago and talked about it i would listen with the issue with saudi arabia you know there's a real question as to what our treaty obligations are with saudi arabia those are those are going to be examined but as to the issue of south korea the some of the reality is that the diplomatic talk over the last fifty years hasn't worked in

terms of bringing any of the cameras to the table the u.s. reasserting the they hemispheric defense over there by putting anti-ballistic missile technology in along the north the mid range anti-ballistic missile technology that we're developing here at home that has what has brought the north koreans to the table that's not interventionism that's not adventurism that is the u.s. pushing forth and trying to actually accomplish something possibly bringing the koreas together listen corrina vacation is within our grasp for the first time in about thirty years and we should all be applauding that ok well that of that's a top if i didn't get one rogue rahm because if there's unification on what terms that's an interesting topic ok morgan you've been very patient go ahead go ahead jump in and thank you. and just the last thing is and you mention this a few times a few people here that time will tell and it's true and it's fair listen this president is trying different tactics tactics that are not traditionally tried by

any political party in american modern history so it's true time will tell if we look back in a couple years and there is unification in north korea and the iran situation the danger there as last and then were guard list of the process how can you not say that well that is not being we have brought you this is very important and i'm glad you went there it's exactly where i want to go i want to go to michael now so trump wants to rip up the iran deal but he wants to make a deal with the north koreans why should the north koreans believe trump if the united states is good breaking. chairing up an internationally agreed treaty when there is no violations whatsoever against iran why would north korea trust that you know what i'm this is what i'm well you know of courting to the united nations inspectors yes ok and the and the i.a.e.a. yes i don't care what american media says and political hacks in washington ok i listen to experts ok so michael think about that scenario you want to tear up an

agreement the previous administration signed and you want to sign a new one with another country why should the north koreans trust the united states and go ahead. let's burnish my own credentials for just a minute i spent two years in iraq on the iranian border so i know a little bit of granular level what we're talking about but nowhere near mr much next experience in the region but let me say this the iranian deal was signed by a previous administration with the which this president particularly and republicans generally have fought against and have said that it needs to go and have used those words in and out of congress apart from hacks in washington like me so. this update that the this president would want to get rid of that deal is not. that should not be too surprising to the iranians and i think that north korea is i think that's a that's a personal thing i think what's going on in north korea they any missile defenses of course very important and we're right there but what's going on in north korea

is is little kim and the big d. are interpersonally mano a mano working together working apart fighting each other fighting together and this is a very personal thing which is unique in foreign policy right peter this is not how we usually do it but this is how trump is going to do it and i think that's what's bringing the koreas together is that we don't have the layers of diplomatic talk that we've had well ever having lunch tomorrow with ambassador tranny who's done this for years he's great man but this is a new dynamic dynamic you have going about it that's unique to trump and it's going to you know let's let's make sure the we give agency to all the koreans here it's their fate it's their future and i think the united states hopefully will play a positive role because the united states says it want to leave south korea it's too important geo politically for it and it doesn't matter what the will of the people are both koreans are that's another angle of all this here let me go to and andrew the same thing here you know how can you trust the country that rips up an

internationally agreed i mean you got all the europeans in and they want this agreement to stay with the rand that you're always worried about you know tribes creating divisions with europe and the european allies well that's exactly what's going to happen the europeans are adamant they will stay with this deal go ahead and do well and the europeans are welcome to stay with that deal europeans are staying mum many european nations are staying with the european union despite the fact that that is not working properly and so what we're talking about here is the issue of of of north korea as michael was saying this issue of the two leaders talking but it's also remember it's also the fact that donald trump's pressures and the america's pressures on the peninsula have got the north and south talking and that's really what this is all about. you talk about two nations solving problems that is really what is going to happen and what's going to wind up happening is kim is going to be offered a deal in which he is able to leave power peacefully to go into exile somewhere.

i don't think so i don't think that's going to happen and that is i don't get that is he i mean i talked to ok well i don't think that's going to happen you know ok it will be and we have to point out again the media doesn't like to talk about it but there are talks that will have been agreed to without preconditions that's exactly what the north koreans wanted ok gentlemen we've run out of time many thanks to my guests in washington in williamsburg and thanks to our viewers for watching us here see you next time and remember. this baby and. this. vote with your remote. special coverage of the russian presidential election exit polls opinions real time results monitoring and much more.

this is. a church secret indeed priests accused of sexually abusing children can get away with it quite literally i like to call this the geographic solution so what the bishop needs to do then he finds out that the priest is is a perpetrator is simply moves him to a different spot were the previous standards not the highest ranks of the catholic church help conceal the accused priests from the police and justice system to that end if that's known as the i intend to. use this out in.

this. case both. i am ask out of this as the kaiser apart piece l l o. so you see i thought this episode was about quantum theory oh ok it's all about quantum theory . of. well you know everybody is always mentioning the fact that what happens when we have quantum computers and then big queens destroyed and one theory actually i saw was that somebody suggested that will know that quantum computers exist if not most of the real one the real suppose she had his

bitcoin every move the million bitcoin that he mind so that's an excellent point it would be a safeguard it would be a signpost it would be an indication that quantum computer had hacked into the because of protocol and a significant way what about all those quantum computers are here are we in danger is it all happening is unraveling it's tweet i saw from stacey her birth and oh that's very. crypto is already quantum whoever looks at it observes whatever they want to see and this is in response to all of these regulators in the u.s. you know we have more regulators in united states that we have intelligence agencies and they all want in on coin and crypto currencies and they're determining what it is so here's a succinct tweet from mines fiction and he says crypto is considered property by the i.r.s. money by the treasury department commodities by the c. f.t.c.

and securities by the f.c.c. in before c.d.c. declares crypto a pandemic. isn't this fascinating they can't really decide what it is you know all these regulatory agencies are looking at it and they see it as a reflection of themselves in some way there is a case to be made that it does resemble to some degree a commodity i've said since two thousand and eleven it is a but it is an emerging asset class that is no. one of the above somebody made the comment that it's like a duck billed platypus right it's got features from all these things in one thing and you would think it would work but it does work so it's not really any of those things it is a unique asset class we haven't seen anything new in the world of finance and as a classes and hundreds of years really this is the first thing we've seen new in such a long time and that's why it's.