he used extra order nir extr extraordinary measures and stealing data and publishing it and using hi social media platforms to help sway voters. but what we don t know and now i want to put my political science professor hat on and take my ambassador hat off, to measure the independence causal influence of what the russians did against the back drop of literally dozens of variables that influence the outcome of that vote, that is a hard social science question and therefore, i can say definitively they did something. it is probably in the margins, but this election was won in the margins. 78,000 votes. and in the book you talk about u.s. and russia relations, the hot peace but perhaps seems here to stay. there is flo w there is no wa hot peace will be broken. you think this is how it will be between the u.s. and russia for ever. not for ever.
you ask, the answer will likely be the same. i can t talk about it. i will tell you, i think the american people have a right to know this. as you know, james comey has faced intense criticism from democrats for publicly reviving the fbi s investigation into hillary clinton s e-mail just days before the election. that is something that did not seem lost on independent senator angus king who caucuses with the democrats. he was not satisfied with comey s response to senator widen s question. mr. comey, did you answer the question that there is an investigation under way as to connections between either of the political campaigns and the russians? i didn t say one way or another. especially if a public forum, we never confirm or deny a pending investigation. the irony i m not the irony of your making that statement here i cannot avoid, but i ll move on. the republicans on the committee did not press this issue, but, one republican,
and we told the story, but it requires more than that. it requires during an election season the opportunity to have people in communities, in small town first and foremost saying that democrats appreciate and recognize what rural people do for this country. yeah. and then secondly, this is what government can do in partnership with rural america. i think the problem has been we have a list of programs yeah. and people sometimes interpret that as well, maybe they don t think question do it on our own or don t think we re self-reliant. i think it s the message. it s the messenger, it s a combination of a lot of things, and it really is going to require the party to do some really deep thinking about this. you re going you re an obama presidency lifer. all two terms. so you have an interesting seat to have watched this. in ten years, the domestic legacy will be what? he saved the economy. he brought the troops home. he protected natural resources
rnc em fat that i can hey, they weren t successful. and that doesn t appear to be evidence that they were successful. how do we know? that s the question. a, how do we know, and b, give me your standard take in how he would operate. first of all, let s remember, they have tremendous cape whblt it comes to gathering intelligence through cyber and other means. they re really good at this. we re a little bit better. but they re really, really good. uh-huh. so the idea that we didn t discover that they did or that we were unsuccessful, we don t know that. you don t know that. i don t know that. and maybe our intelligence community doesn t know that. one theory is the reason they acquired the information if the republican party took it away from donald trump and embarrass the party if working against sanders. and that was what that were
he contradicted trump on so many things trying to get confirmed. but we ve seen up until now, republicans, particularly something in the hot seat like that hasn t gone against the guy who was going to be the president of the united states next week. and jeff sessions did. elise. i think we re going see this tactic continue through a lot of other confirmation hearings of democrats pressing the nominees on positions that are trump, of trumps that are particularly uncomfortable like we saw patrick do today with the question about is grabbing a woman assault. i think we re going to see this over the course of just because there still is such a strong divide within republicans over some of trump s most controversial stance like a muslim ban. it does seem to me jonathan, there s different there may be one of these cabinet secretaries that does run into