politicking on larry king news broke late tuesday that cia director mike pompei all made a secret trip to north korea to meet with his leader kim jong un this to lay the groundwork for a planned meeting between donald trump and king john news of the trip has been mostly was see very well even by trim critics but will it change the current battle for mr crump a go to secure is nomination for the position of secretary of state let's start there with our old friend chris shays the former republican u.s. representative from connecticut he was a senior member of the finance and homeland security committees and was vice chairman of the budget and government oversight committees he joins us from washington what chrystia make of pump ayos trip well first off it's a yes and he has i mean. very necessary trip wonderful that it was done

without the public knowing about it so after the fact people would learn about it will it help him yes it's important because obviously the president has faith in him and it would be nice if our state department and the president were in sync so i think it helps him and i think i think he should be. approved as the new secretary of state president truman seems to trust spies and military officials rather than diplomats well as long as they know their place. has i mean haley got out a little too far ahead but you know what an impressive response she made you know no no both scuse me she just said no i wasn't confused and i love that female pilot who landed southwest airlines and you know with one engine and then we have the first lady so three very impressive women in the news today yeah you know good

point what in your opinion is president trump's asia's strategy. wow. i think one one strategy is clearly to try to get more in line with fair trade practices i'm not saying i'm comfortable with how he's doing it. it's confusing to me that he would be against trade agreements with all those countries in asia so i think it's somewhat of a computer policy but maybe it will get straightened out with a with a. secretary that he's in sync with than others in the administration that he's now hiring he said that. south korea and japan are urging him to go back into the pact with south korea is that it isn't in the pact well that's interesting. what they want is they want to have

a leadership role in asia and not walk away and they don't want china to fill the void if we're perceived as leaving or weak this will be very unhealthy for the world is with growing opposition to pump ayos nomination for state you said that you support him reports are the senate foreign relations committee may split the nomination and take the unusual step of sending it to the full senate for a vote if every democrat voted against him and some republicans do he won't be secretary of state. well then the senate has to ask who's going to be the secretary of state and if it's someone that the president can nominate and get passed but doesn't want to work with will have a disjointed and unsuccessful foreign policy so if you care about our country you know give the president a person he wants as long as he's capable and this guy is capable i mean it i think he was a rhodes scholar. i think he was

a military man as well i'm not quite sure about that but i think that's the case but he's very competent and very bright and. i think will do a good job ok mitch mcconnell has said he will they'll be no senate protecting special counsel robert mueller from being fired well surprises that. have been instructed spiral well i think all hell would break loose and it wouldn't be in the president's best interest because it would just give further sense that the president is guilty in trying to hide things. you know i have confidence and i didn't feel very comfortable with some of what call me said i thought his answers were weak and i thought he shouldn't of clearly with hindsight ever have got involved publicly in the presidential race so. whatever. do you think do you think only heard it was more than her trump i think he did

because it has a little bit of a feel of being vindictive i'm not quite sure what the point is if the point was nobody's looking at trump so i go out of my way to make sure people look at him he's being looked at in lots of different ways so what i was uncomfortable was i began to ask well why wasn't a grand jury panel to look at hillary clinton the purpose of a grand jury is to be able to gather information the fact that he said she didn't lie is is part of the issue the other part is that she committed a criminal act and you really don't know that it to the extent you need to without a grand jury and i began to think that he didn't want to impanel or the prosecutors didn't want to panel a grand jury because they thought it would unfairly impact her presidential race but. fairly impacted or history but having said that she has only herself

to blame because she she and her husband always go to the edge of what is appropriate and if she knew she was running for president why did she do some of these she did when she left state department why did she chargin aversive connecticut two hundred fifty thousand dollars to give a forty minute speech i mean those things just don't add up if you want to be president united states. what do you make of the pardoning of scooter libby. i think it was a message i think it was a message that one scooter libby was treated one way and others were not treated the same but i think it was a kind of a message to potential witnesses who were trumped that you know you know maybe if you keep quiet you can get a pardon and the only thing that could save in my judgment what you're hearing about cohen is because i think he's in t. trouble would be a pardon now he can only pardon for federal offenses so cohen will have to deal with. state offenses as well your reaction to the strike against syria

some are implying that he may have done to divert attention away from his other problems well my sense was i would usually say that particularly if it happened right after but it seemed like a measured approach it seemed like the military had an impact and my sense is that we probably were in communication with the russians to say please don't be here don't be there no need for us to be hurting each other but we have to respond and this is the response we're going to have do you know what our comprehensive plan is regarding the middle east no i mean when you ask me what is our strategy and plan in as well see the president doesn't articulate that when he gives a speech it's usually about what he's done that he's proud of for the things that he's angry about in the people he thinks don't measure up so it's not the kind of president that. gives me a lot of comfort because i do want

a president to outline what we what our strategy is and how we're going to get there and elicit the support of both republicans and democrats to support that strategy and that policy there is no trump doctrine. no there is no trump doctrine why do you think he has such a hard time. criticizing. the recent incident we discussed about nikki haley. why didn't he come down tougher on russia well i have to feelings about this one feeling is that we pushed russia over you know after the cold war it ended and we had won and that wasn't good enough we had to go all the way to ukraine and knock on their door and putin earlier on said why are you doing this to us a back off why didn't we have ukraine for instance be

a neutral party that the russians wouldn't feel threatened that we were going to work our will on it so that's one part of the feeling and i think president has that sense that we did things that we shouldn't have and have are causing problems that we don't need to have but then the other part of it is given his behavior nothing would surprise me and what he did in in moscow and the financial dealings with russians when i travel to russia as a congressman to china i was always told there are no secrets anywhere there's nothing you will be able to keep from the russians or the chinese when you're in their country the implication was make sure you are leading a very moral life there make sure there's nothing that they learn about our country or about your own personal conduct that would embarrass or disgrace you or harm you and your country are you surprised by paul ryan's retirement i was surprised that

he didn't because he had to know that it was. not helpful not helpful at all. and you know if there was someone immediately who was going to jump in it was going to become the speaker and he can announce i'm leaving so and so is taking over i'm going to help that would have probably been the best you could hope for but the way it's turning out i know what happens in a political environment everybody now so he leaves everybody is now thing it's not just the speaker so if the majority leader now leaves who's going to be the majority leader if the whip becomes the majority leader who's going to become the whip and all the vacancies that are happening on the hill people are saying am i going to be the next chairman of this subcommittee in appropriations am i going to be the chair was or maybe should he have quit should he have way or should he have done well he may have had some real challenges in his own district but i think he should have waited. not made any announcement not made any and do you know kevin

mccarthy who he's indorsing i know kevin and you know he was he's an ambitious person that and a talented person. you know he was a it was a leader in the in the california senate with just very little tenure so he's very capable but he's married to trump and and i have to say that's a risky game when people when you asked me earlier about the majority leader you know wanting to make sure he protected. the investigation of trump. the members are taking a real risk when they're saying that he's not going to fire me i mean he may and then they're going to look like jerks. and more or the things are going to happen and that things russian elections this fall. well usually the other side picks up seats and race where the white house is held by one party and so i think

you're going to see some obvious losses and then multiply it times two or three so if it. is twenty four they could lose more. always great talking with you chris i love talking with you larry here's shay's as always we thank him for his time today stay right there we got more politicking after the break.

stay fed prints the money and then the pentagon blows it up in various countries around the world are sends us soldiers out there to get maimed and blown up but you don't die for your country to protect democracy you die in america to stop inflation that's what the soldiers out there are dying for missions replace the american flag upside down dollar sign or something. in july twenty seventh in holland also to the freelance journalist working with on to militant shelling in syria. to own a sucker for this county has established

a holiday memorial they will recognize will reporters who often risked their lives for the sake of the truth comes through that peace you can submit to your old. just works in a video or written form toward the t.v. don't come into now. politicking more now on that super secret trip that secretary of state designee might pump aoe made to north korea over the easter holiday and how it teased president trump for his upcoming summit with kim jong un his new to the board an expert on asia and north korea columnist for the daily beast he's on through the book nuclear showdown north korea takes on the world he joins us via skype what do you make of the pump aoe meeting over the still weekend well i was stunned along with most everybody else i think it says

a couple of things first of all you know pump aoe met kim jong un which means that kim really is serious about meeting with president trump and it also says that the trumpet ministration is taking this potential summit seriously and they're doing their homework which is something that people are concerned about leymah ground where i think that we have at least a little bit of cause for optimism you know of course larry things could go wrong but nonetheless i believe that situation's moving in the right direction i think it will happen soon. while president trump said that it would occur june or maybe even earlier who knows you know it could slip by a month or so when the president first talked about this on march eighth when he accepted kim's offer he had talked about may so you know it could be july but i think it's going to occur pretty soon because it seems like the discussions have been ongoing and so therefore they probably had a pretty advanced state right now seven june sounds pretty good to me troopers

meeting with the japanese prime minister in model argo this week analysts say that the interests of japan and north korea are not aligned is untrue. you know our interests are not perfectly aligned with japan so japan for instance is concerned about short and intermediate range missiles united states is less concerned about you know tokyo is not concerned at all by intercontinental ballistic missiles because it's in within range of other missiles that the north has also the united states is much you know not much less concerned about people who have been adopted by north korea in japan this is a very important political issue whereas the united states even though we have at least three americans held by north korea you know we don't really talk about it so the interests are not perfectly aligned and that's why i think it's good that president trump is meeting with the japanese prime minister because that way they

can buck get on the same page and i have to trump meets with alone apparently the chinese. leader will travel to north korea how do you think all this is going on ravel. well i think the chinese right now are concerned about being left out of all of these discussions and so they're trying to make themselves relevant i think they're also trying to give more support to north korea in the last month we've seen more evidence of china's sanctions busting and that's not good so china is putting itself into a process where they have so far been excluded and i think they're exclusion is probably a good thing because i think we need to talk to the north koreans directly instead of going through beijing where sometimes those messages when they go through the chinese get a little bit garbled and so talking to. directly is a really good thing for us here think there's a split between younger south koreans and older south koreans these of the north

korea. oh definitely the president is sixty five he's part of the so-called three eighty six generation that fought for democracy in south korea they view the united states as a bad actor and many of moon's close advisers are very pro north korean but you know you look at the south korean electorate it's sort of like a donut because older and the oldest south koreans remember the united states in the korean war they're very pro washington and younger south koreans they don't really care too much about us but they don't think that they're the same state as north korea they don't see this korean nationalism that their president espouses younger south korean voters they're just more pro south korea south korean nationalist and so you have a very different population miss mix and the one thing that's going to help the

u.s. in all of this is although blue jay and doesn't like us and working very hard to undermine american interests and indeed the interests of the international community there are a lot of south koreans who are not on board with their president gordon as always i appreciate your time today thanks larry on wednesday donald trump broke his media silence about porn star stormy daniels who claims a consensual sexual encounter with mr trump more than a decade ago mr daniels whose will name is stephanie clifford and her attorney michael have a lot he was here last week were least a forensic sketch of a man she claims threatened her and her infant daughter several years ago alleging telling her to forget her claims on donald trump trump sent out a tweet raising questions about the sketch criticizing news organizations for covering the story legally has he stepped into something he should stay very clear of as to friend trent copeland the criminal defense attorney and legal analyst did

he make a mistake. i think trying to clear a mistake right i mean he had stayed away from this stormy daniels discussion for a while he had managed to i think. against type of voids talking about it but now he's completely opened up the floodgates again larry i mean look what michael of a not a what it is for donald trump to be a part of the narrative for donald trump to reopen this for several reasons one of which it keeps his client story in the news and the second of which is it's really important from a legal perspective that donald trump engages and once donald trump engages from a legal perspective he suddenly is now fodder for litigation if donald trump tweets about strongly daniel stephanie clifford he tweets about her he says something about her and it's negative it's defamatory it can harm her character it can harm her her public persona he then can file what he has what will be a defamation claim and then suddenly get discovery is this is much

a public relations war is it is a legal battle. larry that's a great question this is for the president clearly it's a legal problem of extraordinary right and he's been investigated by a special counsel is now potentially the people closest to him his lawyer who holds his deepest darkest business secrets maybe his deepest and darkest personal secrets is under investigation by the southern district of new york but also from a political standpoint look at what's happening we are now talking about the president being a part of what could be a crime syndicate potentially we're talking about the the the president potentially being the subject of a criminal investigation and the president now having to to larry imagine this the president of the united states is now in a war with his own government his own justice department he intervened in that lawsuit earlier this week he intervened in that and that that issue and from the the judge can but would he intervene say

a listen our government lawyers they're wrong they're trying to get at this. information don't let him have it this is the president the united states and this is his justice department his own lawyers does he have a case about invasion of client privilege he might it's potential if what the communications that he had with michael cohen if they were in furtherance of legal advice legal information anything related to michael cohen working as his lawyer yeah sure there's attorney client privilege those disclosures and those those communications will be protected but if it's not clear if it relates to him negotiating nondisclosure agreements and being a heavy and intimidating people and going out there and politically saying i need you to make this person do this and say this because it's politically good for me those things are in furtherance of the lawyers work as an attorney and those things

on protect me i can't just simply say because i'm a lawyer that everything i say to you can't from talking to you and work on a crime with your client absolutely that's called the crime fraud excessive state raided the office already don't they know of course they know they say why are they in court saying we go to what do we have the right to know since they know we know what they know they know you that's a good question they know what they know but what they're trying to do is they're trying to prevent them from using what they know they know what the information is and they fully are aware of what that is and by the way the u.s. attorneys on the record said to the court we haven't been able just to fully go through this because we might have millions of documents and digital evidence to go through this is going to take us some time they've got a hint of what it is in part because they had to know what they knew so that they could get a judge to go in and to give them a search warrant for covert surveillance or not really this isn't just a normal lawyer this is the lawyer for the president of the united states his

personal lawyer so you know the justice department crossed every dot. every before they went before a neutral magistrate and said to the judge we have a very strong inclination and here's a little bit of evidence of it that demonstrates that there's probably a crime would have gotten that warrant unless it existed didn't sessions have to know about that while sessions might generally have known of the mechanics of what was happening but remember sessions is walled off from the muller investigation and i think you raise a really good point larry that a lot of people aren't discussing this isn't part of the muller investing technically and as a result of not being part of the miller investigation he's not walled off from that but he would be a part of this investigation potentially but again remember he's the head of the justice department he's the attorney general of the united states this investigation was potentially handed off from muller to the southern district of new york and he may not have gotten a heads up until it was too late no nonliteral forty thirty five forty years and he

has total self-confidence and he goes tremendous. and so he would think i could sit down while i get no problem. why are they so worried about him sitting down more if he's got no problems civil war they were wise you can as we anything embarrassing well you know look i think. there's a congressman who made the comment if you don't have anything to hide anything illegal stop acting like it but the truth is the only person in the world larry who thinks that he's can sit down with miller and be ok and come out unscathed is donald trump his entire legal team doesn't think so look dog muller has assembled an all star cast of characters in that legal group these are the best of the best in the justice department and some of these are lawyers who are coming out of private practice from some of their white shoe white color law firms to come back and assist these are the cream of the cream so the fact that donald trump thinks

that he can sit down he's going to do muller i think is foolhardy trent always great having you stay close thank you are we thank trent copeland we think our earlier guests and we thank you for joining us on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me at kings things and don't forget use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of politicking.

we are still living with a lot of conflicting does when you leave the situation in syria to the rest of the middle east to the problem between so did any of you and iran now that american president is the langrune oath to withdraw and done some out of three go dead or we heard that the so did are the go death of the emir underground so it's can be in the end the will to fail the reason is the situation is very very dangerous.

u.s. president donald trump says he wants american troops to leave syria what are exactly washington's goals in syria a partition war for war sake or a means to sticking it to iran and russia all or poorly thought out options. you never know what's around the corner you never know what's in the pub you can walk into excitement it's that mood now and that's where the adrenalin much comes from. and you can use a move by definition an extreme fuel for most of. the violence is a part and it's almost a schizophrenia gang culture where you can do all these things and behave badly.

they're going to be full of all this colorful all for the police of course more so for the last. honest man and for him for an old man knocked out of the role and done policy in the start. of a broader where no piper youse really did a poll down down went up with a good. many reason is that at least if you don't let me evolves it's constantly evolving and.

after signing them as propagandists pink floyd star roger waters reveals the white helmet activist groups had tried to not be his support in this syrian war. somebody was charging that we had to go to the hospital food. when i came in some people grabbed me and started pouring water over my had a russian t.v. channel interviews a syrian boy from a white helmets video that claims to show the aftermath of the chemical attack in duma a child and his father gives their account of what happened. breakout on the streets of paris as transport strikes continue over president might cross labor reforms.