A package of 45 noncontroversial bipartisan amendments was added into the bill this week. But Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee unsuccessfully pushed amendments prohibiting indefinite detention of U.S. terror suspects to the bill after steadfast opposition from Sen. Lindsey Graham. A measure spearheaded by Sen. Bob Corker requiring Congress to sign off on President Trump’s steel and aluminum trade tariffs also did not make it to the floor, despite Corker’s impassioned floor speech charging fellow senators with being afraid to “poke the bear.” The bear in that analogy being Trump.

McCAIN HONORED: Not all amendments were blocked. The Senate unanimously voted in favor of a measure by Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, that designates a Pentagon fellowship created by the NDAA to the John S. McCain Strategic Defense Fellows Program. Sen. John McCain tweeted that he was deeply honored. “This program will help the next generation begin career paths toward senior leadership in the Department of Defense,” he wrote. The defense bill also bears his name.

ENDING EXERCISES A ‘MISTAKE’: It took a couple of days, but McCain, who is at home in Arizona undergoing treatment for brain cancer, issued his verdict on the Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un on Thursday. “Suspending U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises is a mistake. Making unnecessary and unreciprocated concessions is not in our interests — and it is a bad negotiating tactic. Parroting Chinese and North Korean propaganda by saying joint exercises are ‘provocative’ undermines our security and alliances,” McCain said in a statement.

“I continue to hope that President Trump will be successful in his diplomatic efforts to achieve the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But we must not impose upon ourselves the burden of providing so-called ‘good faith’ concessions as the price for continued dialogue,” he said.

Reed issued a statement moments later calling Trump a “weak student” who used “North Korea’s preferred propaganda term” to describe the bilateral exercises. “It is unclear if his announcement to cancel the joint exercises was made impulsively, or if he simply failed to consult with our allies, who were caught off guard by the decision,” Reed said. He cited “alarm and confusion within the president’s own national security” when Trump speaks extemporaneously.

BUT FORMER TOP COMMANDER DISAGREES: Retired Adm. Harry Harris, until recently head of U.S. Pacific Command, thinks the suspension of “war games” makes sense, as the U.S. waits to find out if North Korea will keep its denuclearization promises this time around.

Harris, who has been tapped by Trump to be U.S. ambassador to Seoul, endorsed the president’s controversial concession in his testimony yesterday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“In my previous capacity I spoke strongly about the need to continue exercises, most notably in 2017, but we were in a different place in 2017,” said Harris, as reported by Defense News. “North Korea was exploding nuclear weapons, they were launching ballistic missiles willy-nilly, and if war wasn’t imminent, it was certainly possible and maybe even likely.

“I think today, following the president’s summit in Singapore with Kim Jong Un, we are in a dramatically different place. The whole landscape has shifted, and I believe that we should give major exercises a pause to see if Kim Jong Un is serious about his part of the negotiations.”

Harris did appear less sanguine than Trump on the question of whether North Korea still poses a nuclear threat to the homeland. “We have to continue to worry about that,” Harris told the committee.

On Wednesday, minutes after Air Force One touched down, Trump tweeted, that “everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”

MATTIS ASSURES ALLIES: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is traveling today, but he was working the phones last night to reassure South Korea and Japan that the U.S. commitment to defend the two U.S. allies remains “ironclad.”

In separate phone calls to South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo and Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, Mattis made the assurances, according to the largely anodyne read-out provided by the Pentagon.

“Mattis and Minister Song discussed their mutual support to ongoing diplomatic efforts, to include how we are working together to fulfill the President’s guidance on U.S.-ROK combined military exercises,” said Dana White, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson in a statement. “Secretary Mattis reaffirmed the ironclad U.S.-ROK alliance.”

Good Friday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre), National Security Writer Travis J. Tritten (@travis_tritten) and Senior Editor David Brown (@dave_brown24). Email us here for tips, suggestions, calendar items and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list. And be sure to follow us on Twitter @dailyondefense.