york times which reports that rick gates asked for roles back in 2016 from in company. mark misseti is one of the bylines. can you walk us there you the reporting of what gates was trying to do? this is the spring of 2016 right s donald trump was emerging, and the big concern at the time was the quepgs, this idea there could be a revolt at the question, where delegates didn t go for for trump, but ted cruz. at this time rick gates has a meeting in washington with a guy named george birnbaum, that presents the idea this israeli company can do all sorts of media manipulation. they can create fake identities, botts. avatars to influence the delegates, so they don t do this defection shun towards cruz. gates appears interested in the
forward. jon: you raise on interesting point. the russians truly do punch beyond their weight in terms of media manipulation and outright manipulation of their own citizenry. they re very good at spinning stories to their advantage and you are saying that the u.s. needs to be ready to counter with the truth in a way that, well, tells our side of the story. right. vladimir putin s intelligence officers the other part of his life which is also port to note. he is a black belt in judo and experts at judo likes to use their opponents strength against them. for us its our democracy, freedom of the press. our cyberspace is pretty wide open. russia is trying to exploit it. they know it s the backbone of our democracy. they want to degrade our trust in cyberspace and use it to get their message out. putin controls his media. you want to go to the land of fake news i lived in moscow for five years. that s where it exists.
collect information to provide policy makers information to make policy. the russians focus on subversion, of going after your weaknesses. this is the deception, the disinformation, the fake news, the media manipulation, yes, the assassination. all of these things together are what they do. but the one thing you have to remember underlying all of this and it s been this way in their doctrine since the soviet union is they have human sources helping them direct the stuff. the knowledge that they have of our elections and how to play off our parties and all that stuff, that doesn t just come from good guesses. that comes from having sources inside that tell them where to go and what to do. and that s the shoe that s going to have to drop here. hopefully. now, it s an intelligence service so their job is to keep this stuff secret. but we re seeing the outlines through the indictments, the stuff on cyber, the troll farms. let s hope also we start to see what are some of the people behind t
laura: well, okay, so he s got a big ego. what president doesn t? big deal. isn t trump s path better than the alternative the elites were warning us about six months ago? a north korea that is so isolated it might think to do the unthinkable, hit an american city with an icbm? i say let him distract us all, t them keep going slapping their lips, let them lie and contradict their own analyses. while their audience and ship shrinks and they do in out, more americans i think aren through the media manipulation. trump, at home and abroad, is undeterred by their static. he is too busy winning. is the angle. joining me now for reaction here in washington is christian wyden, former state department senior advisor in the george w. bush and donald trump
shopped picked of former president obama sitting in the oval office with islamic flags behind him. facebook propaganda like this may seem quaint by the time we elect the next president. we are quickly heading to a new frontier in media manipulation. have you seen this video? we are entering into an era in which our enemies can make of the like like anyone is saying anything at any point in time, even if they would never say those things. so, for instance, they could have me say thing like, i don t know, kill monger was right or ben carson is in a sonkan sunken place. i would never say these things, at least not in a public address. but someone would, someone like jordan peele. an oscar winning filmmaker made that video as a psa about fake news. but there is actually a term for videos meant to be deceptive,