brutal rules, but you don t underestimate, you know, your enemy. will: right. and i think it s important to see what s happening there. will: let me follow up with one more question. there are reports u.s. intelligence knew this would happen at least with a couple of days notice. i m not sure on the exact timeline. the u.s. intelligence knew this was going to happen. did you, did you or anyone else you know in congress have any advance knowledge something like this could happen inside of russia? well, listen, you need to see that this event s been developing between him and russian minister of defense for a while. even a week ago or more he pretty much was already aggressive when they tried to force i think putin is afraid, you know, that he might have his people turn on him. so they were trying to force him to sign contracts with russian minister of defense because he [inaudible] so that was obviously something that existed. and we need to understand that he has, you know, pu
oligarchs, all who stood to benefit from russia taking ukraine, so he s seen as kind of a robinhood figure. what is unclear is how broadly that message has gotten out with all of his online videos and name and shame of the minister of defense grasamof, the chief general and that could serve as a very powerful kind of foil for putin. that could serve as a scapegoat for putin so i ll be watching whether putin launches kind of an anti-corruption campaign or starts to clean house in his ministry of defence and make them the scapegoat for their failures so far. will: congressman you re on the foreign affairs committee but also a former green beret and you ve been involved in situations like this and you know about foreign militaries. i m curious as you just described pragosian, a robinhood -type figure, he reportedly has tens of thousands of soldiers under his command which i would assume probably
the margin of victory for donald trump, so let s say stein voters go to clinton. those outcomes could be different. will: a lot of this is analysis and guesswork from the supposed experts. it s true that while jill stein s level of vote exceeded the margin of error. there are others that say yeah, but a jill stein voter was going to stay home as though if she were not in it they would have voted for hillary clinton, no, many say they wouldnt have become democrats. pete: that s right nothing is clear cut. exit polls show a lot of stein voters would stay home which is why it s impossible to project how in 2024, a manchin candidacy , or a robert f. kennedy jr. candidacy, enthusiasm really does matter. will: let s go to another election where we have the third party candidates believed to play a crucial role. going back to 2000 it came down to florida and it came down to less than 600 votes, 36 days and a fight there in florida ultimately settled by the
supreme court but in that situation as well, pete, we had a green party candidate. pete: remember this guy a big name at this guy, ralph nader, green party candidate. imagine that. there was a green party candidate running against al gore, mr. green. will: yeah. pete: that s pretty ironic considering what he went on to do. the reason that s also significant is nader garnered 100,000 votes in florida so if that s the margin and this guy gets 100,000, he s also ran, does that determine who was the president on 9/11? you know, it could have been al gore, not george bush. will: and then, perhaps most famously when it comes to third party candidates we can go back to 1992 when texas billonaire ross perot, ended up getting 19% of the vote and most people believe that ross perot s vote tally pulled from george h.
confirmation. it is thought by many though that haven t her d the last of him and he might try to get back in the picture in some way in the future with yet another band of mercenaries or reconstituted wagner group outfit. we ll see what happens but still , a lot of questions still to be answered. it s only about 12 hours since the resolution of this crisis. back to you guys. will: thank you, greg. so those details are what not necessarily are we debating two alternate near lackeys theories. we re trying to figure out the mystery wrapped inside a puzzle and that is russia and if it is a case that pragosian shot his shot and it came up short, on accomplishing whatever he wanted to accomplish, a change in the ministry of defence, if that s the case it s a little bit hard to reconcile vladimir putin s position of no harm no foul. you are allowed to peacefully retire to belarus, especially if it is as greg just pointed out,