On Friday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough suggested there was more than meets the eye to President Barack Obama’s “no strategy” remarks given at a press conference a day earlier pertaining to take the fight to ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Both Scarborough and his guest, MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews, agreed that despite what Obama’s cabinet and other high-ranking officials have said publicly, yesterday’s remarks were an effort by the president to dial it back.

Partial transcript as follows:

SCARBOROUGH: [S]o anyway, so I’m just curious, though, if — so Chuck Todd was on and he said also that this was the president also pushing back on his own people, not just –

MATTHEWS: that’s what I say.

SCARBOROUGH: Right, right, right, right. but isn’t it interesting that you have Samantha Power giving this really dramatic, tough statement calling the Russians liars at the United Nations at the same time the president of the United States, the commander in chief, is saying, well, this is really nothing new. They have been doing this for quite some time. And i am not –

BRZEZINSKI: I found it fascinating.

SCARBOROUGH: This is what’s so fascinating about it. I’m not suggesting that there’s confusion within the ranks. I’m suggesting that there’s something a bit more Machiavellian about this than maybe people on Twitter in 140 characters can describe.

MATTHEWS: Well, I think I look at presidents and their successes mostly going back since you and i have been watching politics – is when they push back. Eisenhower said we’re not going into China in ’54. Kennedy saying we’re not going into Cuba in 1961. A lot of times they do see the cart before the horse all around them and they say, ‘You know, I’m the guy that has to win the war if we get in it. And what would a war against ISIS involve? It would involve a war on the ground. And he’s not going to go on the ground into Iraq and into Syria and fight the ground war because at the end of the ground war we would have to leave. And you know what would follow us after we left? What was left of ISIS. And they would rebuild again. It’s not like going to Berlin or going to Tokyo. When we leave, the ideology creeps up. It’s the big American Satan again. These white guys from the West coming in and kicking ass and all we did was fight them heroically and now we’re still here and they’re gone and you got to fight these things through to the end.

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