MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Foreign Affairs

Interview

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MADDOW: The American president has a new best friend. And it is apparently unconditional love.
Senator Chris Murphy is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He put out this statement today in response to the president`s summit. Quote: The president`s disastrous treatment of our allies makes the syrupy photo op he just gave the brutal dictator Kim Jong-un so dangerous. I have no quarrel with an American president talking to our enemies. But how and when you talk to your enemies, that matters.

Senator Chris Murphy, thank you very much for joining us tonight, sir. It`s a pleasure to have you here.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT), SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Thanks for having me.

MADDOW: So when you said how and when you talk to your enemies, that matters, what did you mean specifically in this context?

MURPHY: Well, what I mean is that the context here matters and coming on the heels of a G-7 meeting in which the president was absolutely brutalizing our closest allies, people who have historically had our back, those that literally responded to our call after September 11th. It makes his over-the-top generous praise of Kim even worse because it sends this very clear message that if you stand with us, you are going to get no credit for that. In fact, you might be humiliated and embarrassed in front of the entire world. And if you engage in the kind of atrocities that Kim has, you get praise from the president without any substantial reform up front.

And so, none of us should kill the president for talking to a country that is largely antithetical to the United States. But when you do it literally in the same 72-hour period that you just pushed aside some of the people who have been closest to the United States and then you go out of your way to praise a guy who literally runs gulags, who has locked up hundreds of thousands of political prisoners and still engages in the open public execution of his political opponents -- yes, the context and the way in which you engage really does matter. People notice.

MADDOW: Do you think that North Korea gave up anything, made any sort of meaningful concession or promise in order to get these declarations of love from the president?

MURPHY: No, clearly they didn`t. In fact, you could argue that they`ve backtracked on previous commitments. It`s all semantics because there`s really no there there to this document. But the language that you referenced having been included in previous agreements between the North Korean regime and the United States and other partners actually included stronger language.

This is the weakest that has been included in any recent document that has emerged from North Korea and the United States. And, you know, even President Obama, when he began the beginning negotiations with Iran, he said in the campaign he`d do it without preconditions. But those early stage agreements, the confidence-building measures involved give-and-take from both the United States and Iran.

There is simply no give from the North Koreans in this agreement. They get a wonderful photo op. They get to run the clock now for a period of months or years as these negotiations play out, and we`re no closer to actually
nuclear disarmament.

MADDOW: The president didn`t include in the written statement that was released at the end of the negotiations, but did sort of casually mention when he talked to the press after that he also wants to call off joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises. And that struck me as interesting for several reasons.

One is that North Korea has wanted that so badly for decades and no U.S. president has previously seen fit to give that to them. The other thing is that it seems like it was the president`s sort of riffing in the moment. I don`t know if he -- that just occurred to him while he was talking to the press or if he actually offered that to the North Koreans in negotiations.

But even the U.S. military doesn`t seem to have known that was coming. As far as I can tell the other entities that really, really want that besides North Korea are Russia and China. Did you know this was coming? Do you think this is significant in terms of U.S. national security? Do you know where this came from?

MURPHY: Well, we certainly didn`t know it was coming. But it`s not shocking given that the president has open pined to withdraw the U.S. military commitment from the peninsula, which as you mention is something that the Russians and Chinese have been asking for for a long time.

There is this very interesting report from earlier today that suggests the Chinese may have announced this cancellation of the exercises before Trump did, suggesting that maybe this commitment was made before Trump announced it, the Chinese may have known about it. It is also very possible, Rachel, that he`s just a terrible negotiator and, in fact, if you look at the reason why he went bankrupt over and over again, it`s because he took a very tough stand ahead of his negotiation with business partners or creditors and then he gave them everything that they asked for once he sat down at the table.

So, if it really was just a last-minute throwaway concession, it would be in some ways completely consistent with the ways that he negotiated as a private citizen.

MADDOW: So, we have total consistency with his business bankruptcy record and total inconsistency and a complete break from all modern U.S. history and presidential negotiation before him.

That`s -- that`s a reorientation of my world. Senator Chris Murphy, member of the Foreign Relations Committee, thank you for being with us tonight, sir. Appreciate it.

MURPHY: Thanks a lot.

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