in general kell log whose been there quite a long time as a matter of fact. very well thought of, but he s not a big time strategist. and what you need in that job is a big-time strategist. we ve become enyoured to people who knowed president, not just this one, but the person who s the national security advisor needs to rise to the level of, colon powell, condoleezza rice, kissinger. does that kind of person want to work for this administration? that s a fair question. i ve had conversations with people who currently in the administration and have been in previous administrations, even though they did not agree with the president. and when you ask them why are you doing that, their answers are always the same. somebody s got to do it. i think the perception that you have to serve the public, that you need some adult supervision in leadership, especially in an environment in which there isn t a lot of it, i think motivates a
michael flynn had been in contact in communication with them before the election. so sit back and think about that for a moment. that means that when the putin regime was trying to subvert american democracy and undermine our election to benefit trump, trump s top national security guy was talking to the putin regime man in washington. so what was he talking about? what was he saying? what was his signaling to the ambassador about what trump might do if elected president? that gives motivation to putin to continu this operation. those arehereally, really big, dangerous questions for the trump white house, a question that sean spicer at the briefing today completely ducked, and we have evidence now that when trump and pence have said in the past there were no contacts between the campaign and the russian government, that s completely wrong, and we need deeper investigations to get to the bottom of that, not just what happened in this one conversation about the sanctions. yeah, we shou
trump administration and russia. and this goes back to the issues raised in many cases during the campaign. you have roy blunt, republican senator roy blunt, member of the senate intelligence committee, look, the senate, the intelligence committee needs to be looking, launching what he calls an exhaustive investigation into ties between trump and russia. is that something you d favor on the house side? well, i tend to agree with senator blunt, i believe there are ongoing investigations by the intelligence committee. looking into russian meddling and this issue of general flynn s communications with the russian ambassador which certainly be part of that type of an investigation. i think you could easily include this recent situation in the broader investigation on russian meddling. and is the the timing here in terms of we have this report that the justice department went to the white house, the trump white house, and they said hey, we don t think this adds up. what flynn is sayin
kplanled back in 2014 that the testing of this missile violated a 1987 arms control treaty that banned intermediate range missiles based on land. russia s moving ahead deploying a fully operational unit. it comes as the president searches for a new national security advisor and struggles to fill positions at the state department and pentagon. michael gordon wrote about this today, he joins me now from washington, michael, thanks for taking a few minutes. i think everybody sees this story, pays attention to the timing, obviously the turmoil of flynn, the new pthd coming in. the president about the u.s. changing it s posture towards russia. is this a test by putin and russia and the administration? well, i think it s something that the russians have been determined to do for some time. they gbegan this program some years ago. it is interesting thathey deployed this system in december in between the two administrations, perhaps they were thinking that was the best
that he lied to the vice president, but i don t think that that s sufficient. you re not allowed to do that sort of stuff. nobody has been prosecuted under the logan act, ever, but that s beside the point, just because you can do it doesn t mean that you should do it. and i think that it s taken the administration a long time to come to grips with this. and if every time there s a problem, it s going to take the administration this long to make a decision that it indicates a far bigger administrative logistical and leadership problem than we know so far. and this may only be the tip of the iceberg, more stuff involving general flynn we might find out later on. what happens now? flynn even in the campaign was a big lightning rod, certainly for controversy, he was very close to donald trump to replace him, to be the national security advisor now, what happens? well, you re got an interim national security advisor.