contributor to the daily beast. also with me, steve hall, a retired cia chief of russia operations and a cnn national security analyst. good to see you both. let me talk to both of you first about this. issue with iran, the foreign minister and this surprise visit to france upon the invitation from france. so, you know, kim, you first, what does this mean that macron would invite iran to the g7? to the surprise of, perhaps, the other members. we know, at least, it s a surprise, the white house calling it, in fact, a cur curveball. i think it s masterful trickery by the french president to create the possibility of an opportunity, shuttle diplomacy. there are things he can say in person to the iranian foreign minister, get an answer, and then go say them and get an answer from president trump. we might look back at this moment, if there are future talks with iran, this could have been the thing that opened the door because from the european
france. right. so a curve ball is how some white house officials are calling it but was this also a surprise to the other g7 attendees? it sounds like there was not a lot of advance warning far lot of people here at this summit, fredricka. the u.s. seemed awfully surprised by the whole thing. as you mentioned a few moments ago when the president was asked about this, he had no comment so it sounds as though the president even though he has a lot to say about all the other subjects on the agenda at the g7 didn t want to wade into this kind of territory. we should point out treasury secretary steve mnuchin was asked about the prospect of the u.s. or president trump possibly meeting with javad zarif and secretary mnuchin said the president has not put any preconditions in place for any kind of meeting of that sort. so they weren t really ruling out the possibility that that could take place, but javad zarif, the iran foreign minister, tweeted a short while ago that he did meet with
goes out and basically just wings it when he wants to. the iran situation is a complex one. i would agree with kim that i think macron has done a fabulous job, a really interesting job, of not only 3 engineering the situation, but also managing the president of the united states to make him feel, you know, where macron wants him to be on these issues and to open up the possibility as kim was indicating that there could be some contact. so we ll just kind have of have see what happens, it s taken everybody by surprise. maybe it wouldn t be trump, himself, who would meet with zarif but possibly mike pompeo or someone else on that team, foreign diplomacy, who would be able to take advantage of the moment. so, kim, you know, what do you suppose is behind , you know, france s motivation to do this and not give the white house, at least the u.s., some kind of advance notice? i mean, yes, you said it was masterful, but is this also, you know, kind of a finger in the eye of the u.s.? is it m
cur curveball and the very angry reactions from the top democrats. manu, walk us through the breaking story. tonight, devin nunes, the chairman of the committee, creating an uproar by going public with what he learned from a secret source that some of trump s communications with officials were picked up incidentally in communications that were surveilled by the united states intelligence community. tonight democrats are concerned that mr. nunes went public without briefing them first and briefed the white house just as the house intelligence committee is conducting its own investigation, into russia, russia meddling and any improper contacts that may exist between the trump campaign and the russian officials. the question is who exactly was picked up by the incidental collections by the intelligence committee. when i asked to ask mr. nunes committee was the president of the united states picked up?