he was fooled, anderson, no doubt about it. he still supports the president, obviously? he does. but not as enthusiastically as you might assume. he tempered his comments on the phone saying he likes how trump has restructured the economy. he struggled to support some of the hostile comments the president keeps making. but explained to me that, he says, is how blue collar america talks. and anderson, you and i don t understand that. that s what he s saying, all right. thanks very much. with me, retired cia chief of russian operations, cnn national security analyst steve hall. these 13 russian individuals may have been name the in the department of justice s indictment but we know russian interference doesn t end with them. there s russian bots still pushing divisive hash tags, accounts on social media, even now. yeah, anderson. it s as it always has been a multi-pronged attack. now that we re learning more thanks to the work being done by doj and mueller s team and others, we r
own phraseology. these are things we know they can t go against us conventionally, nato is too strong, nobody wants a nuclear war. this is russia s new version of a war against the united states and western democracies writ large. to have the leader of the free world, president trump, sort of sit back and take it all personally because, oh my god, we don t want to talk about something that might imply that i wasn t legitimately elected, i can t risk that. i can risk the it is amazing how personally he takes it. he portrays himself as a leader of strength. but it is a sign of weakness that can be exploited by others that he can t separate himself from you know, what should be done for the country. he can t separate it as being criticism of himself and delegitimizing his election which no one seems to be saying it is. look, in my assessment, anderson, this president is an opportunist. he doesn t care about the republican party, he doesn t really care about the democratic party, and i
president obama could have done more in those waning months. fair questions. when you look at the whole sum of what he did, everything that trump is doing now, and it ain t much, builds on what president obama started. in 2014, it was president obama w who, who at wales pushed for 2% defense spending for nato. 2014 at the crimea annexation and invasion, it was president obama who put in place a series of military moves that we re still doing today. more troops on the continent, more robust training to try to pushback on president putin. you mentioned things he did in the lead-up to the election when we found out they were election meddling, he slapped more sanctions on russia, in addition to the sanctions he slapped on after ukraine. by the way, it was the white house push for sanctions, not today, which is congress pushing for them and the white house not implementing them. yes, he was very robust and there s very little that trump has done that hasn t been just building on what presi
there s so much looking in the rear-view mirror as opposed to looking at what s ahead. what s ahead is we have a big national election with huge stakes coming up in seven months. and if, if the republicans carry the house, there is going to be a lot of speculation on the democratic side that this was fake news and the russians really determined the outcome. which is not where we want to be. and of course if the democrats win, then the republicans are going to claim it s cnn and other fake news, mainstream organizations that have cost them the house. that is an extraordinarily divisive way to approach an election when the country just seems to be under such pressure and people are so unhappy and so disgusted with what they re seeing. admiral kirby, when the sitting president of the united states tries to blame his predecessor for something his campaign is under investigation for, when he publicly undermines via twitter his own national security adviser on russia and the white house br
and you can t solve a problem if you refuse to talk about what the problem is. anyone who will not name our enemy is not fit to lead our country. words to remember. joining me now is former pentagon press secretary and state department spokesman during the obama administration, admiral john kirby. david gergen, former individual tore four presidents. you see sarah sanders trying to clean up the president s tweet, foremost his attempt to use the florida massacre to degrade the fbi s participation in the russia probe. any excuse, any valid explanation for that? no. none. none that we ve heard of, anyway. i thought a cnn viewer put it well this weekend, anderson. our high schoolers are looking like leaders, and our leaders are looking like high schoolers. we re an increasing threat to our democracy because the president, the white house, and the congress have not tried to