election. so as my colleague at the atlantic wrote today, julia yoffey, this is a response 20 times bigger than barack obama, who expelled 35 russian diplomats from the united states. so it s a big deal and the world is going to pay notice. i think it s getting u.s./russia relations back into a sort of no illusion track, and that s, to be honest, quite healthy. do you see this as healthy, rick, and what do you think the message is that vladimir putin was sending? you know, i don t necessarily think it s quite as big a deal as steve said, in the sense that it s not some kind of gigantic world-changing, climatic thing. well, it is something he can do fairly easily. yes. but 755 out of, what, 1,200, we think. there aren t 755 americans at the moscow embassy. no, a lot are rof them are n russians but they do do the job. but it resets the table a