Bloomberg's Greiling Keane on Obama's ISIS Strategy (Audio)

and one oh five point seven h D two. Angela, thank you for being with us. Tell us why is the President going to the Pentagon in order to tell the nation about the efforts on the administration's part to battle ISIS. The President has been meeting with his National Security Council this afternoon at the Pentagon. He's done these meetings with the National Security Council at a variety of locations. This time he returns to the pen gone where he's

done them before. Sometimes they're at the White House, sometimes they're at other parts of the defensor intelligence community, but he likes to move them around, and this time he's taking the different step of having a press conference afterwards, so we expect him to address not only national security concerns in Islamic State, but also all the other issues

of the day. Well, let's start with Islamic State UH and the the expansion of the US led coalitions military UH mission against ISIS IS, the US bombs targets in and around Uh, a key Libyan city. Undoubtedly, Libya will be one of the questions. This will be the first time that President Obama is likely to address Libya at a press conference. We expect him to be asked about his decision to use more US UM air power against

Islamic State targets in Libya. It was a key decision to expand the US mission and take air strikes in Libya, and clearly that's not been well received by everybody, and he will undoubtedly be asked about that. As far as any new policies, will there be any indication of any other UH sort of roots or strategies to battle Islamic State or waves of terrorism around the world. We don't

expect new policy announcements out of this press conference. He lucinely speaks after these meetings and does not denounce any new policy. But it's unusual for him to take questions from the press, so that that's what's different. But there's been no telegraphing of any changes in strategy or other increases in the US involvement against Islamic stage. Is there any particular reason to to do this at this time?

Is this routine and this is the right time to talk about isis you say you haven't been telegraphing any big announcement or he hasn't. That's what you're got picking up on. Uh So what how should we understand the messaging? And I guess we would say the optics of the

president's appearance today, Well, the meetings are routine. He meets with his National Security Council regularly, and these meetings at different locations have been happening approximately a quarterly basis that what use has chosen to draw attention to these meetings, and part of that is making sure that the president is out there and people are paying attention to his message against Islamic state. The President is about to head on vacation for the next two weeks, so starting on Saturday,

he'll be on Martha's vineyard on vacation. A lot of golf and for sure the White House wants to keep the optics that the president's working hard, that he's paying attention to world events, and that I would guess as part of the timing of this particular meeting in press conference,

tell us about the questions. One question sure to be the authorization of the four million dollar cash payment to Iran that coincided with the release of those American prisoners that was back in January around is likely to come up. We've heard a lot from the White House in the past day and a half on that. The White House line is that they did announced this payment back in January when they released the hostages. Of this payment wasn't the secret and the White House line is that this

also was not ransom. Of course, the President is likely to still be asked about that, but he may not say anything different than what his administration surrogates have been saying already. The other topics that are likely to come up are Russia. He talked a little bit the other day about to be increasingly tense relationship with Russia and President Putin, And of course there will be some sort of question or questions involving the presidential election and Donald Trump.

President Obama had a press conference just two days ago, and he declared that press conference Donald Trump quote unfit to service president. But he will surely have more to say on that topic today. Well, certainly our reporters are gonna question on on that and it's always hard to tell in his on some mean, occasionally when the president has a press conference, he goes and goes and goes until every last person in that room has had the

opportunity to ask at least one question. So in all that, we've got a figure that there will be maybe even more than one version of that question asked. There certainly could be. We're expecting about five to six questions today, which is but an average amount of questions for a full press conference. It's it is fairly unusual for a President Obama, who can go a month without a press conference,

to have two in a week. Just on Tuesday, he held a press conference with the Singapore Prime Minister Lee at the White House and both Obama and Lee took uh They took a total of four questions too, from each country. So this is a fir amount of questions for the press for the public from President Obama in a single week. Will the president also be asked about Russia's influence on US elections, he very well could be.

He did address Russia on Tuesday. He said that, Uh, he certainly did not link Russia to the hacks of the Democratic National Committee in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, but he didn't steer away from those either. He said it's too early to say for sure. He also said that he essentially said that anything that Russia does won't

make the relationship any worse. He said things are already pretty bad between him and putin between the US and Russia, and that even if Russia is found to be responsible for that hack, that he doubts it will change anything. The US wants to work with Russia to improve things in Syria, but beyond that, there's fairly little cooperation right now between the two countries. Uh. You know a story that you also were part of this week has to

do with political hacking. Uh. And this possibility of actually designating elections is national critical infrastructure right after the recent hacking attacks on obviously on political groups on the d N. See, how is this just something that you know? Someone answered in been a question Homeland Security Secretary Johnson actually or is there some serious push in this direction. Do you think, uh,

it is important? Um, you're right. So Homeland Security Secretary J. Johnson is the person who talked about whether the US may designate elections as quote national critical infrat structure and that means that they would get extra homeland security protection. Um what J. Johnson was talking at a breakfast for reporters, So it was certainly not something he mentioned off hand. You don't mention something like that to a table full of reporters if you don't want it to get attention.

So that was definitely a calculated move by the administration to say that they are paying very very close attention to election security and probably that they're concerned about it. Well. One of the things that has changed, at least this week is we all were able to learn about the interview of a German Man who joined the Islamic State and then really revealed the workings of the various lieutenants of Islamic State and their plans to carry out its

tacks around the world. Will that whole idea of radicalization be a focus of the President's strategy. It probably will. Lone wolves are something that the President and many other world leaders are very concerned about. We saw just yesterday here in Washington where a Metro Transit police officer was arrested for trying to um cooperate with or work with Islamic States, and that that was not a lone wolf incident,

but it certainly could have been if it progressed. So the President will likely talk about the lone wolf issue, maybe some of his strategy. UM. That's for sure something that was discussed with his National Security Council. UM. He normally at these sorts of events, he's taken a sort of reassuring tone, telling people to you know, carry on with their daily lives, not not be afraid or curtail their activities because of risks or threats posed by Islamic

State or um it's adherents. Uh. I don't expect him to change that today, but given what we've seen in Europe this summer and this arrest yesterday in Washington, that got to be front of mine for him as well as for the reporters who will be asking him questions. In addition, the United States has about five thousand troops

in Iraq currently in a few hundred in Syria. Will it be further calls to either increase in American presidents in those countries, or will there be a sort of concerted effort to try to, you know, to have him draw those numbers down. Uh, inasmuch as there's political opposition around the world to having those troops there. Yeah, President Obama faces pushing pull from both sides on the troops issue.

He ran for president promising to get the US out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the administration would say they've been largely successful given the number of troops today versus the number of troops eight years ago. But clearly we're not out of u Ghanistan and Iraq, and like you said, there are now some troops in in Syria. So the President has said that he has

backed off. He's publicly said already that he's backed off of plans to completely draw down troops, and he uh may he could potentially increase numbers, but that's fairly unlikely. But he for now is sticking with his plans to to keep the troop levels that we're at, and we

have seen him increase slightly numbers of troops overseas. So I I don't expect announcements along those lines today because he's unlikely to make that sort of announcement in this public of a forum, but he he for sure is under pressure from some people that think there should be no troops and from some people that think there should be a lot more. And he's resigned to not making everybody happy. That's part of the job of president. You

only have at this point. How much in fact, how much at this point are President Obama's hands not exactly tied, but you know, maybe restrained by the fact that he's got a few more months in office and someone else is taking over. If he makes a significant move up or down in troops at this point, is that is that the correct thing to do is that presidential etiquette, right, absent any big, big shift in the external factors that

he's dealing with in the Middle East. Right, And under a normal presidential transition, of course, we could look and be looking at a fairly unique presidential transition depend on who is elected. But under a normal transition, the successor will follow on for a while at least what the

what the predecessor did. Clearly when President Obama were to ramp up now and certainly if he keeps the same levels, no changes happen the first day that a new president takes office, so anything he does now last for at least a little while. Is this also an occasion for the president to reiterate his comments about the Republican nominee

for president, Republican candidate Donald Trump. I mean, he has said previously, and you've reported this, that he had never had a reason to question the qualifications or fitness of other Republicans who ran against them, such as John McCain, Senator from Arizona and former Massachusetts government Romney. I think it's very fair to assume that the President will continue

his line of attack against Donald Trump. He has had increasingly strident language against him, including calling him quote unfit for the presidency on Tuesday. It's hard to get a lot stronger than that. What will be interesting to see is whether he continues today his line of reasoning from Tuesday about encouraging prominent Republicans to back away from their support of Donald Trump. What the President seemed to be doing was to ask Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan

to back away. Even though Ryan has criticized Trump, he's still officially supporting him, and the President Obama was basically challenging those sorts of Republicans about whether they're going to keep publicly supporting Trump. Angela brylantein Think So Very Much, White House reporter for Bloomberg News in Washington,