chaos frankly in the white house and within the federal government. it stems from the way that the president chooses to manage and to lead his team, to lead his cabinet staff. there are vacancies throughout the senior levels of the government. especially at the state department right now that have gone. unfilled in part because of an inability to recruit topnotch talent and retain them. that s been a problem for this administration. but with regards to putin, the republicans on the hill have been saying all along it s okay. we trust the generals, the people advising the president are going to steer him in the right direction. what happened yesterday is they did try to steer him in that direction and he chose to go a different direction. he s the president. he s entitled to make that choice. but it doesn t mean because john kelly is the chief of staff these decisions are going to stay within the mainstream of
guy putin running a criminal oligarchy in russia and fail to say you have to stop murdering your opposition people in the uk. by the way, they probably killed that russian citizen in new york city also. why would the president not instinctively look up for american interests. other strong men, hostile to democrat cannic leaders, this doesn t make any sense. he s not protecting u.s. national interests. one of the things that struck me is a lot of folks who even are concerned about the president, but want to put in a note of caution about the solid people around him, but he has people who are going to advise
it s astonishing situation. those presidential talking points between heads of state come out of the inner agency community. defense, cia, justice all would have weighed in on them. so when they are looking for the leaker to the president washington and better cast their net pretty broadly would have come out of the national security adviser to the president. but look. there s nothing illegal about saying what we have been saying for the last week. don t congratulate this dictator. he didn t just rig the election. he murdered and prosecuted the likely opposition. putin is an obvious threat to nato interests. he s trying to break up the european union hacking our electi elections we had an armed conflict between so-called
out where these leaks are coming from, but they continue, by the way, in all manner. not just on national security matters but our reporting and reporting at other outlets has shown time and again details about the president s mood about what the president is is telling his advisers and his friends in private. just lots of information coming out to paint a full picture. an important part of that is how he approaches things like this. so is it clear if the president ignored those capital letters that said do not congratulate or he just didn t read it or hear it. well, all we know is what carol and my other colleagues reported that he was advised in those capital letters not to congratulate putin and he went on in his phone call with president putin to do the opposite. to congratulate him and not to confront him on the poison attack. so i don t know if he willfully ignored that or why he made that
they said it s not the role of the united states to dictate how other kocountries operate, but the same time, this administration has called out other kocountries in calling fo free and fair elections. now to be fair president obama back in 2011 also congratulated putin on an election victory back then. but the circumstances the backdrop very different. for his part, president trump indicating that the two two leaders could meet in the near future and so a lot of focus on when that meeting might happen and what the substance of the meeting might be when they sit down. we heard that from john mccain, a strong statement he put out. what else are we hearing from members of congress. very few things bring democrats and republicans together up here on capitol hill. quite like their distaste for vladimir putin. so i have heard from democrats and republicans today questioning this decision by the president to congratulate vladimir putin. democrats coming out and saying