msnbc political analyst and the host of the one and only hugh hewitt show on the radio. good to see you, hugh. there have been plenty of suspected leaks out of this white house before, but is this something new? is this a different kind of leak, this kind of information? wouldn t this have had to come from pretty darn high up in the transition structure? good to see you, jacob. it would. i want to begin by saying i ve been listening to a lot over the last two days. about half of what i ve heard is the wildest hyperventilating speculation also predicated by if true. i would like to remind the audience of two things. one, back channels are not unique. they go back to an abc news journalist, john scally, during the cuban missile crisis sitting down with the head of the kgb. they go to february of 91 with henry kissinger and it goes to may of 2009 when president obama
suffering. sandra: ambassador, so much tough talk there in his speech. it was received to well and viewed as tough. how would you compare what you are hearing from this u.s. president, the sitting, to his predecessor, president obama? it s a marked difference. if we compare the president s speech to the predecessor s speech in cairo in may of 2009, there s a great difference. because here i think the president put it as he talked right there in the midst of the arab region, about the is lambist terrorists. and put the responsibility for the moderate muslims to stop and actually they understand. he understands that they understand that the main trouble for muslims is muslim terrorism. there are more muslims killed by muslim terrorists. also, he is very effectively using the fact that there is interest between israel and the arab countries vis a vis iran
a fight that the russian government has never wanted to do in syria, at least so far. but what i have to say, brian, i also worked three years at the white house, at the national security council. i was the guy that briefed president obama before he had his first meeting with foreign minister lavrov in may of 2009. what s most shocking is somebody decided in that close circumstance toll the president of the united states, that this was so important that they leaked this information to the washington post. that is what is most shocking to me. . it suggests to me that people
he wanted to create some kind of predicate for cooperation with the russians in the fight against isis. a fight that the russian government has never wanted to do in syria, at least so far. but what i have to say, brian, i also worked three years at the white house, at the national security council. i was the guy that briefed president obama before he had his first meeting with foreign minister lavrov in may of 2009. what s most shocking is somebody decided in that close circle close to the president of the united states that this was so important that they leaked this information to the washington post. that is what is most shocking to me. it suggests to me that people even close to president trump, not his critics, people close to him working on his national security people, are so worried about what he s doing that they
government has never wanted to do in syria, at least so far. but what i have to say, brian, i also worked three years at the white house, at the national security council. i was the guy that briefed president obama before he had his first meeting with foreign minister lavrov in may of 2009. what s most shocking is somebody decided in that close circumstance toll the president of the united states, that this was so important that they leaked this information to the washington post. that is what is most shocking to me. . it suggests to me that people even close to president trump, not his critics, people close to him working on his national security people, are so worried about what he s doing that they felt compelled to leak this to the washington post. how serious is this? as intel goes, all we know is this was kind of code name protected, or code name referred