what happened there, and what do you see are the prospects for any stability in the future? well, again, you know, when we look at crises all over the world, and i think in this day and age, we tend to look at crises as a snapshot without really understanding the journey that actually, for example, jordan has undertaken over the past several years. regional instability, wars, refugees, covid. and we ve had to look at many characters that tend to use people s frustrations and legitimate concerns of challenges that they have in making their lives better to really push on their own agendas and ambitions. what i think made this so sad, that one of the people was my brother who did it in such an amateurish and really disappointing way.
we look at crises all over the world, and i think in this day and age, we tend to look at crises as a snapshot without really understanding the journey that actually, for example, jordan has undertaken over the past several years. regional instability, wars, refugees, covid. and we ve had to look at many characters that tend to use people s frustrations and legitimate concerns of challenges that they have in making their lives better to really push on their own agendas and inhibitions. what i think made this so sad, that one of the people was my brother who did it in such an amateurish and really disappointing way. from our point, the intelligence services, as they always do, gather information, and it got to a point where they had
against them in the party battles being waged by mr. trump and his allies. what the effort accomplished and how much information the operatives gathered is unclear. sometimes their tactics were bumbling and amateurish, but the operations use of spy craft to manipulate the politics of several states over years greatly exceeds the tactics of more political dirty tricks operations. joining us, new york times investigative correspond, mark muzzetti. i had a million questions. i worked on republican campaigns, i won t say dirty campaigns, but there s a norm of what campaigns do. were these people run by campaign operatives and paid by them? no. so about a month or so ago we did a report about an effort to sabotage and discredit the national security adviser, h.r. mcmaster, back in 2018.
president. everything seems to be fly by the seat of your pants. not thought out, just thrown out there, amateurish. i just don t get it. i don t understand it, and it s one after the other after the other after the other. and when is it going to end? do you think that president trump can be trusted with classified information? i mean, obviously, the reporting is here that he was fear about what he said would expose this spy. i would presume not necessarily by putting the spy s name out there to the russians, but sharing enough information that it became clear who was providing it. well, my god, if you can t trust the president of the united states, who can you trust. this is just it s shocking to even think that we would be having this conversation and that it would be the realm of possibility that the president of the united states was in collusion with some unsavory characters that we don t even like to think about. i hope not. i hope not. but, you know, it keeps coming up aga
doing. i want to ask you, overall, how do you think the trump administration is handling this? i ve heard you say before that diplomatic efforts by the trump administration have been amateurish. but how are they doing here? i d give them a b. i think on the one hand they have taken a strong position, which has applied important pressure. it has brought a number of countries into a coalition that is supporting the constitution of venezuela. on the other hand, it has been a hasty and a haphazard approach. they ve made a series of errors. one notably that they waited 24 hours to order the draw down of our embassy and encourage our citizens to leave the country. maybe that was reckless. any indication that the military staunchly behind maduro will stand down? there are. there have been instances both