a statement of urgency about trying to stop them in the 2018 elections. the president of the united states could not bring himself to say anything like that. yet we do see the emergence of a defense messaging strategy from the president and his surrounding people. what is striking to me is there is no effort to appeal to moderate minded people, people in the middle or undecided at all. it works in the short term when you say things to your core group like we re vindicated in a document that doesn t vindicate you at all. you can persuade your core group to believe that. but there s nothing to the rest of the country. that s a self-defeat that has happened quite early. neera, i wanted to show something that the the russians paid for specifically. the indictment said they asked a u.s. person to wear a costume portraying hillary clinton in a prison uniform.
indictment and what will it mean for russian activities going forward? well, i was wondering about that. on the one hand, of course, he can t be too pleased that all of this has been uncovered. but on another level, you know, this was a very, very successful, what we would call in the kgb days, it would be called active measures, this kind of campaign turned out to be extremely successful. they managed to get their man elected president of the united states. so i think at some level mr. putin is probably feeling kind of proud. what about that, malcolm, other leaders might be looking at vladimir putin now thinking, what happens when he comes after me? well, the same thing is going to happen. i mean, putin has gone after many other world leaders. he has an entire network of these sort of alt-right
the presidential campaign describing exactly what was described in this indictment today. amy knight i want to get your reaction to what you read in this indictment today. well, i was surprised, actually, at the extensiveness at this campaign. i mean, i had heard that the russians were doing this, but to be honest with you, i was quite impressed at how they managed to penetrate so deeply into our whole system. and so, yeah, i was i was surprised. malcolm nance, i m marking you down as not surprised since you wrote a book. what is it now 18 months. 18 months before this indictment, which is the short version of your book. well, to tell you the truth, you re right, i m not surprised. simply because what we ve seen here in this indictment, besides the fact it appears we have
limited subject matter. right. it is not simply only about the russian side of the equation. it is only about the social media side and within that it is only about the non-governmental side, the private sector actions of the internet research agency and associated people. the allegations in the indictment make no reference to the activities of russian government or intelligence agencies. so i think the fact that there is no specific collusion allegation is simply a reflection of the subject matter of the indictment. now that doesn t mean there will eventually be a collusion allegation, but it sure isn t evidence that there won t be in my view. lawrence, just briefly to echo that. it s further than that. the prosecutor s not really supposed to issue wider opinions about other people that aren t indicted. so if you read the manafort
one coming and it will then be set out as to who cooperated with this. benjamin do you agree with jill that this indictment protects rosenstein and mueller? it certainly should. if the goal is, you know, to establish the importance of the investigation, it certainly does that, right? and you know, i agree that this is a speaking indictment that tells us a story. it s not simply a spare laying out of charges. it s a document of remarkable forensic detail that describes a major intelligence operation or covert operation against the country. whether it will protect rosenstein and mueller requires you to spend predictive time in the mind of donald trump, which