until russia and the separatists it supports respect to ukraine s sovereignty and territorial integrity, this crisis will continue. jenna: let s bring in christopher swift, georgetown university national securities adjunct professor, among a wide variety of other titles, nice to have you back. good to be with you. jenna: it s been a busy week, just want to put together a few things. let s start out with last saturday, president trump has a conversation with vladimir putin on the phone, but most of the focus domestically is about the executive order he put out. so the conversation happened, and then 24 hours later, russia launches its biggest aggression into eastern ukraine that we ve seen in months. it just so our viewers know, when we talk about aggression, here s what we are talking about. one group that monitors this region says that over the last several days there have been more than 10,000 explosions, and that 2500 children are caught in the crossfire without basic services
it would certainly be interesting. i think we ve had conflicting signals here, you remember trump fired off a pretty era stated to eat initially about a dumb deal and so on, but it looks like this has been smoothed over. i think the issue is sort of interesting about refugees. i myself am quite sympathetic to refugees, but one question i have and others have is, if these ones aren t good enough for australia, why are they good enough for us? i m sure there is an answer, i just don t know it yet. part of that is that the population in question isn t just these 1200 people in australia, there are more in the camp, and that a variety of nations have offered to take in the refugees. so when you look at the bigger picture, there is more involved than just the people who the united states agreed to bring in. jon: i want to play a sample of what the president had to say yesterday at the national prayer breakfast, when he seemed to reference this issue, listen.
separation between john mccain and george bush when it comes to our middle east policy. i think their policy has failed. the way bush has done it over the last eight years, to take out a credit card from the bank of china in the name of our children, driving up our national debt, that s irresponsible. it s unpatriotic. at this rate, the question isn t just are you better off than you were four years ago, the question is are you better off than you were four weeks ago? for eight years, we have seen the bush mccain philosophy put our country on the wrong track. we can t have another four years to look just like the last eight. sean: he kept blaming president bush the entire time he has been in office. look at this. we are inheriting so many challenges. we knew this was going to take time. because we got this big messy tough democracy.
i think their policy has failed. the way bush has done it over the last eight years, to takeol out a credit card from the bank of china in the name of our children, driving up our national debt, that s irresponsible. it s unpatriotic. at this rate, the question isn t just are you better off than you were four years ago, the question is are you better off than you were four weeks ago? for eight years, we have seen the bush-mccain philosophy put our country on the wrong track.r we can t have another four years to look just like the last eight. sean: he kept blaming president bush the entire time he has been in office. look at this. we are inheriting so manyny challenges. we knew this was going to take ngtime. because we got this big messy tough democracy. the previous administration made an expensive new drug program.
election. we can t take any margin in the polls for granted, and the greater concern i have personally is that the level of attacks that are coming at both hillary clinton, the reality of donald trump s conduct, it could clearly suppress the vote. could clearly convince people just to stay home because they are disgusted. that s not the answer. it s an interesting point about suppressing the vote. kellyanne conway, trump s campaign manager, as you both well know, scottie, was on cnn this week with anderson cooper and he asked her about that strategy. is it the strategy of the trump campaign right now three weeks out to basically suppress turnout from clinton s supporters. do you believe there s merit to that argument and if so, is that a smart strategy? i think there s merit to that argument but let me take off my trump supporter hat and put back on my strategy hat. i think this is a problem both campaigns have right now. as i talk to every day people, the question isn t about am i