[Tapper:] Welcome back. My political roundtable who is here with me again. Bill Kristol, let me start with you on the news that Stephen Bannon, the president's chief strategist at the White House, has been removed from official membership in the National Security Council. What's going on?
[Kristol:] I think some of the reporting suggests that the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, wasn't getting along with Bannon and thought he was doing some damage to his father-in-law and urged that Bannon kind of be relegated to a lower profile. That may be true. I can't tell. Kushner seems quite powerful. But to me, this is a story about H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser, who now clearly has control of the National Security Council, who is bringing in pretty mainstream Republicans and some actually bipartisan senior directors into that body. I think he's taking charge gradually, very quietly of foreign policy to the degree he can. If the Trump administration ends non- disastrously, I believe historians will look back and say that the day that H.R. McMaster replaced Mike Flynn was a huge moment. He went from having a national security adviser who is problematic in all kinds of ways to a really experienced and savvy professional who is used to assuming responsibility as a general in the Army and who has really stepped up on this case, I think.
[Tapper:] On the subject of foreign policy, let's turn to Syria, if we can. Tony, you were a deputy secretary of state during John Kerry's term as secretary of state. Obviously, Bashar al-Assad is the one responsible for the actions committed by Bashar al-Assad, but there has been criticism leveled at the Obama administration. One tweet from 2014 from the State Department from John Kerry noted in 2014: "Today, the last 8 percent of declared chemical weapons were removed from Syria. Great work done by all involved." Apparently, Assad was hiding some chemical weapons still.
[Blinken:] Well, two things. The vast bulk of the chemical weapons munitions were removed and destroyed. The vast bulk of the infrastructure that Syria had was destroyed. And, as a result, Syria no longer represented a strategic threat to countries in the region with chemical weapons. And, God forbid, if that stuff was still there today, as horrific as what we have seen is today, imagine how much worse it could be if all of that stuff was still floating around Syria. But there were some residual chemical weapons that were left that we were trying to account for. Mostly what's happened in the intervening years is they used chlorine as a weapon which is not
[Jake Tapper, Cnn The Lead Anchor:] Not on the list.
[Blinken:] It's not on the list although it's used as a weapon is banned. But what we saw in this most recent attack appears to be something well beyond chlorine. It appears to be a nerve agent. Russia needs to own this. The administration needs to put Russia on the spot. It's Assad's guarantor, there should be a very tough Security Council resolution, make the Russians veto it. Second, we should condition any counterterrorism cooperation with Russia on them grounding Assad's air force, getting him back to the table and having a real cease-fire at the very least. I'm also hearing rumblings that the administration is actually contemplating some kind of use of force in Syria against Assad. That would be an interesting development.
[Tapper:] What does the public make of all of this? There I always sense that there is a lot of outrage among types of people that are sitting around this table, including me. And a lot of people in the public who are upset about it but nobody really wants there to be military action because they are exhausted after 20 years of war in which men and women were killed abroad in Afghanistan and Iraq.
[Diane Hessan, C Space Founder And Chairwoman:] Yes. Well, you know, the public is appalled over all of this. I mean, you don't have to read a lot of newspapers to have a negative reaction to what's going on with those children. I think people are watching this a lot, unlike some of the other issues, like the ultimate reality show. And, you know, for people who admire Donald Trump, you know, it's baseball season, and David Ogilvy once said don't bunt, swing for the fences. And I think people who admire Trump feel that he doesn't bunt, that he's clear and bold in his decisions and what he does, so those people are very nervous because they know he doesn't want to look like a pushover. That's not his style. So what does he do? How does he finesse this, and how does he do something I mean, this is not a situation in which things can go wrong and he can blame someone else.
[Tapper:] Let's hope he let's hope he chooses wisely whatever it is. Thanks one and all for being here. We appreciate it. Coming up, peace in the middle east. U.S. relations with China, LGBT rights, climate changes, just some of the things on Jared Kushner's plate at the White House, but the real estate project that put the President's son-in-law on the map, well, that's in deep trouble. Is Kushner really ready to take on the world? Stay with us.