we spoke about this, i think with the mormon tabernacle trial and i think the college has faced a lot of criticism over the initial reports that it would perform at the inauguration. what do you think the school should do? if i was the president, i would say, you go. this actually reminds me of when jimmy carter decided to boycott the olympics in russia, and you know, ultimately, i think this is a mistake for the kids, for the people, in this case, the musicians. in that case, the athletes. i don t view performing at an inauguration as an endorsement of a politician. i think it s a celebration of the peaceful transfer of power. i think it s an incredible opportunity to be a part of something really big, and i think it would be a mistake to not let these kids
it s pretty powerful that there is a russian link. i want you to weigh in, i want to ask you this question. what kind of incentive does their push back by trump give the intelligence community? are they going to give him information that only he wants to hear? assange said source not the russian government. let me raise an outlandish possibility here. julian assange is playing donald trump, right? he s playing us, because his incentive, right, is to undermine the western system. putin is doing the same thing. i m not investing him with that intention. he s written that in many essays and manifestos, so yes, he can possibly say the source was not the russian government or state actors, but we know that russia, in this hacking, used non-state actors to hack the u.s. system. so it s a very reasonable possibility. what does it mean for the u.s.? and elsewhere? listen, we have to be very
skeptical of those claims, just as we are of any claims, but if there s anybody you want to be skeptical of, it s julian assange on these kinds of issues. i think we just have to take this kind of thing, these kind of charges with a grain of salt. quickly. the point of the question you were asking, the next time we have to do a green strike, the next time we have to convince governments to support us. the president of the united states will be present being the world with the confident conclusions of the intelligence community that he has just undermined. and you can see late-breaking news coming in on fareed zakaria s phone. he s always working. when we come back, donald trump seems to trust julian assange now, but that s not what he said a few years ago, what does it mean for our
is that michael flynn, who so donald trump s national security adviser is one of the drivers of this, and just so we know the history of this, he was pushed out as head of the defense intelligence agency in part by the director of national tleps. so there s some background there. i will say on the other side, i ve spoken to heads at the other intelligence agencies through the last couple years who have bristled at the bureaucracy of having an overarching director of national intelligence. does it work. there are bureaucratic issues and political issues here, and the question is, how does that actually play out under a trump administration. let s discuss more. fareed, what s your take? you know, i think on this, trump has some reasonable suspicions and skepticism. the intelligence community in t united states is crazy large. we spend something like $66 billion, $67 billion on intelligence a year. there are 900,000 people with
let s not forget, this is not just about russia, this is also about the dnc and podesta as well. i actually don t think there s a problem with what donald trump is saying about some of the plitization of intelligence. i think the question is, where is he getting this alternate theory, right, so if you are going to say that the analysts aren t giving you good information and you re coming up with this other stream of information, where is it coming from? who s giving it to you? that s what i don t understand. he knows more. but from whom? he s going to present more in the next day or so. but who is he getting this information from, even theoretically, i don t understand. this is what donald trump said about julian assange in 2010 about the wikileaks documents. he s going to talk about wikileaks, you had nothing to do with i think it s disgraceful. you do think it s disgraceful? i think it should be the death penalty or something. he said he should get the death