Exploring issues that affect leaders in the U. S. And around the globe. Exploring issues that affect leaders in the U. S. And around the globe. Or distorted what happened in the election campaign. But what is Donald Trumps core point that he wants to say even more than no collusion, no collusion, no collusion . It didnt change a vote. So this is a problem. So if they had stepped up their game in 2016 and the Obama Administration was asleep at the switch, maybe they did change some votes. Trump is not stupid well, i wont say stupid or not. Trump wants to deny that russia could have had an influence in 2016 and theyre saying russia could well have had an influence. I understand that some of us are being too cynical about this briefing, but again without the president on it, how do you take it credibly. If makes a big difference. If it were the president , it would be Something Else. The white house continues to want to say and they say this repeatedly, this administration has been toughe
there s a reason the director of national intelligence needs to know what was discussed privately. he s got to actually task people to find out certain things. he s got to task certain people to go against russian disinformation campaigns and talk to foreign governments, so does the secretary of state. it s a real problem in terms of actually having a policy. think about this. but that is policy. both of you have been in government and so you know this. as we ve learned, it s possible our intelligence folks have already had an idea of what the president and putin discussed. the problem is our intel guys know. dni may know. but because of russians that were surveilling, right, lahnee? that s exactly the problem. you re in a situation now where you re not armed fully with the information you need to combat the problem. we know russian disinformation. this is not a surprise. oh, the russians are meddling in elections. they have been meddling in elections around the world for almos
you know that s coming tonight because they said they ramped it up in 2016. what do you think, bill? we ll see. the degree to which he s already undercut this message by his behavior in helsinki, both private and public i would say, is really a problem. and again, if there had been i mean that s why he had to personally come out actually to compensate, to fix begin to fix the problem of helsinki? what was he doing? my point is he could have been out there today. did this follow from an actual meeting with the president where they spent two hours going over and talking about options? he chaired a meeting last week. which was 25 minutes long or something, in the middle of which he sent a tweet, if i m not mistaken. so john bolton got them on the phone and they re professionals, they re trying to do their best. but they do not have serious presidential leadership on this. well, after this, he was able you do wonder if he s getting the best advice because he did tweet out
sources. i have the sources too. that s what they re telling you. i have no reason to believe, as you said, i think the president is claiming this because it s not as if he hasn t sat for depositions before and been comfortable looking ridiculous not answering questions. the interesting question is whether this back and forth continues to a point where then it becomes, well, look, mueller s got to wrap this up. it s going on too long. and mueller says i can t wrap it up until i talk to him. he could say that. but mueller realizes as he gets closer to the election, he has a comey problem. if he puts out a report, he s got to put it out early enough before the election. i don t think he s worried about that. i think he s seeing what happens with manafort. manafort is key. see what the manafort trial does, and then maybe reassess. we actually came to a conclusion. bill, maria, loni, you re free to go. (phone ping)
he said essentially he made it clear, we re prepared to start going on offense. but it was almost like i m waiting for the order. that s what it sounded like to me. well, this is the problem we have is that there actually is a unit at the state department, the global engagement center, that s responsible for countering disinformation and allowing us to sow discord in other countries if we wanted to. that agency, the funding was not utilized by secretary tillerson. now the question is, is the administration going to push forward and do all these different things? because they have the tools. they absolutely have the tools. just go. nobody is giving the order. and part of it is this definitely was a pr stunt for the american people. but part of it you start wondering, was this also a pr stunt for trump. this is the briefing memo from his security team. or tonight he has his rally and he says, and by the way, i didn t need the russians to help me win.