against us there. this was part of his continued effort to polarize americans, pit us against each other and most importantly reduce our confidence in who we are as a people and in our democratic institutions and processes and to suggest to kind of moral equivalency, you know, between his murderous actions and repression of his people and his aggressive acts abroad and his enabling of serial episodes of mass homicide in syria, for example, suggesting a moral equivalence between us and russia. it's ludicrous, but he's brazen and he's a very smooth, savvy, liar and operator. >> and you were president trump's national security adviser. he doesn't seem -- he didn't agree with you on these kinds of issues, what russia was really up to in the united states. he almost sided with russia, and we certainly saw that very vividly at helsinki. why do you think he was like that? >> well, wolf, what he did is he