the berlin wall had just fallen. all over east germany angry crowds roamed the streets, lashing out at symbols of communist rule. that night in dresden they found a target, the local kgb headquarters. a mob surrounded the building. as the hour grew later the crowd grew larger. inside peering through the curtains was a young kgb lieutenant colonel named vladimir putin. he was terrified that they were going to storm the building. putin was a junior officer. but the boss was away. he was in charge. the berlin wall in come down. police weren t going to help. and he called for instructions. desperate for help, putin dialed kgb headquarters in moscow. over and over again. finally one official told him simply, moscow is silent. and i think it felt like a deep betrayal to him. vladimir putin was on his own. he went down into the bowels of the building and fired up the furnace. he finds himself in the basements at a furnace shoveling documents as he hears demonstrations
we have enough that do exist. i thought it was much ado about nothing. look, i know you don t want to talk about it. this is why this is the reason i wrote the book. this is why you have conversations with people who don t look like you so that you can have a degree of comfort with them to be able to discuss these things and you know their intentions. so as i always say and i ve said to you since i met you, and you know that, if you don t have a friend who looks doesn t look like you, you re not doing it right. i hear you. look, i got a lot of black friends, but none like you. i tell you why i thought it was relevant, one, always happy to talk about what i say. i m more inclined to talk about what i do versus what other people do when they want to talk about what i said. say. but we ll leave that to the side. people don t follow these issues. the reason i thought meghan markle was really impressive to me was, one, talking about your pain ain t easy. it s not. even
the only question now, where will the russians go next? in 2014 putin struck again. armed men who may be tied to the russian military. a dozen trucks. the sovereignty of another country, and that is ukraine. he seized crimea with its nearly 2 million russian speak zbleers this is the thing that adoll of hit letter did in the 1930s. we thought the days were gone. gunman. removing all identifying marks from uniforms. unidentified soldiers. can we ask you guys where you re from. russia s little green men crossed the border secrecy. known by the nickname, little green men. russian special forces. these were not ukrainian troops. putin made bold-faced denials to western leaders. [speaking foreign language].
doing so much, and that the u.s. doesn t want to get to a point where it could cross that line and escalate things with putin and create an even bigger broader worse situation? well, first of all, at the beginning of the world war ii there were people who were saying we should not escalate with hit letter and really make a deal with him. what is important is carry but important to understand that appeasement never works with dictator the level of hit he letter. that s putin these dayis. you have to remember that ukraine did nothing, nothing to provoke this war on us. we were never a threat to putin. yet he came up with a reason to attack us. in the same manner unfortunately he can come up with a reason to attack poland to the baltic state of finland, for instance, who is not a nato member. putin does not really need a real reason. in his psychotic brain he can come up with a reason. and he will keep on coming up with reasons when he keeps on
but in the book there is a description of how general mark milley of the joint chiefs of staff quote saw trump as a classic authoritarian leader with something nothing to lose. he earlier described to arids that he had stomach churning feelings that some of the 20th century faces of fascism were replay manage america. he saw parallel between trump and adoll of hit letter s followers at the newsroom rk rallies that he was a victim and their savior. and one of the points here, hays in the like stag fire in berlin, hit letter said to everybody it s the communists and leftists who did this. and it was the moment in which germany turned from being a democracy into an authoritarian regime. yeah, for sure. and there were milley was worried about this being moment.