i want to bring in fareed sa car ya and james marks. fareed, russia's said there is going to be a reaction, but we don't know what. >> i think russia said they're going to provide a statement rell acting. >> strongly-worded statement. >> but i think, you know, in some ways this reminds us that international relations is really about hard core facts on the ground. you know, there's a tendency, particularly in america to assume that international affairs is a kind of branch of psycho therapy, that if you have these two guys and they get on well and they cut a deal -- the united states and russia have diametrically opposed interests in the middle east, particularly on this issue. russia views syria as its only stable ally, it's one port, it has supported this regime for 40-odd years. perhaps more now, 50 or 60 years. and it has always regarded it that stability in syria was paramount. the united states has a very different approach. russia is allied with iran. inevitably, there was going to be a crash. nations don't have permanent friends a

. >> we are going to bring in fareed sa car yeah. it is day 78 of the trump presidency.happened last night? >> i think this was a big moment because candidate trump had said he would never get involved in the syrian civil war. he told president obama you cannot do this without congress. president trump recognized that the president of the united states does have to act to enforce international laws, does have to have this broader moral and political purpose. president trump realized, as every president has for many decades now, that presidents always believe they have inherent legal authority as commander in chief and they don't need to go to a pesky congress every time they want military force. it is entirely true that candidate trump felt differently. candidate obama felt differently than president obama on these issues. what i think is interesting is the way in which he justified his actions. for the first time he talked about international norms, international rules about america's role in enforcing justice in the world. it was the kind of rhetoric we have come to ex

by this strike, he got a disparate audience such as graham and john mccain on the one side and fareed sa care ya on the other side proclaiming him president of the united states finally and so forth. so from the domestic point of view and lesser so from the foreign policy point of view this strike worked for donald trump. that was the main reason for doing it. >> it's interesting that you say that because there's an interesting piece in the atlantic that talked about the russia side of it and donald trump managed to get russia off the headlines, out of the top headlines this week which i'm sure for him was welcome news. also it put the regime in russia in an interesting position because they are the gauarantor of assad's rule in syria. moscow has acted as assad's guarantor with putin having to assure that they'll no longer use chemical weapons. it gathered an international coalition to dispose of the chemical weapons only to have assad make moscow's effort look less than thorough or gruesomely insincere. so russia is in a strange position, they have to act. do you think the putin regime