in wars i ve covered, american generals often spoke about winning in enemies hearts and minds. enemy s hearts and minds. so is it possible someone else with a military and great power and traditions could have had the same idea. did we ever stop to think the same strategies could work on americans? maybe they did? maybe they work very well to win the hearts and minds of president trump s most ard ent supporters, the people that back him in poll after poll, gun critics and evangelical christians. many american conservatives seem to want to follow its example. but do they know what kind of example it is? here s a scary thought. maybe they do. [ music playing ] it s almost :00 a.m. inside the
assignment. we tend to hear the same names over and over these days. names like paul manafort and oleg daraposka. g. klein preston the 4th, if you re a regular viewer of our shows, and you have a great memory, it might ring a bell. because last summer we spotted a curious alliance between putin s russia and conservatives like klein preston. we asked my colleague kelly cobiella to go to nashville to meet him. in trump s america. have you met him? have not. would you like to. g. klein preston iii, family man and christian conservative. russia everywhere here.
congratulations on a great spot you just did. i m happy to hear you say that, i m curious to hear your thoughts. what do you think about what we uncovered about simon kukis. you know, that s just another piece in a mosaic that continues to grow. and it fits in with a pattern of big money rolling into trump s coffers during the campaign and after the campaign into the inaugural fund. you talked about the amount of money that kukis gave in january of 2017, a few months later, now we re talking about the inauguration, trump s inaugural fund, trump is getting $250,000 from a guy named andrew entrader who is the cousin of victor veksanberg, a tremendously significant russian oligarch. the same time the inaugust ural fund is getting money from american russians who have
thousands of dollars to donald trump s 2016 run. that got him and his russian girlfriend right up close to the future president. in political circles, no one had ever heard of simon kukis before. he s been an american citizen for decades and he s never given a political con contribute use. robert mcguire worked at the center for responsive politics. suddenly he starts giving to trump allied joint fund-raising committees. and to the trump campaign itself. mcguire and his team tracked donations to both parties. 99.9% of americans give $2700 or less, that s the maximum you re allowed to donate directly to a candidate. but he s donated $2700 to the trump campaign, plus another $273,000 to the trump victory committee which distributed the
you try to find other e-mails, if these e-mails exist, there might be other e-mails out there in the same chain or that go later or earlier, and these are things you can bear down on, depending how far robert mueller wants to go in chasing the russian money trail into the trump campaign, and there s a whole other russian money trail over the years into trump s businesses. we just don t yet have a strong indication whether mueller is including both those money trails in his ongoing investigation. we thought we knew everything about what mueller was looking at, and now there s this story, these names that you mention, simon kukis about more money going in. do you think there s going to be even more names that are still going to come out? listen, robert mueller continues to surprise us. it s one of my least favorite cliches, but the whole tip of the iceberg, you only see one tenth of the iceberg, i think his investigation could be going