defense chuck hagel about russia. let s watch that. mr. putin denies there are troops in russia. when mr. lavrov says today they can t withdraw russian troops because there are no russian troops in crimea, does that have some echoes to you of cold war? well, i think secretary kerry addressed this pretty clearly in his comments specifically about your point about no credible i was asking for your view, sir. i agree with secretary kerry. which is? he laid it out that we don t accept anything as putin said as fact about why they had to protect the so-called ethnic minority in crimea. you know, howard, it s amazing to watch john kerry we were talking during the quotes there. i have a feeling kerry s very formality the way he speaks even
a situation that the russians can take advantage of? is it to keep their morale up so they don t give in too easily to putin s pressures? what is it? definitely to cool their jets and i think the ukrainian government has behaved responsibly given the circumstances. secondly to shore them up. they re on the verge of an economic collapse. our european allies need to help them. and if critics of president obama wanted to help them, that s what they should be focusing on. an aid package to ukraine. not unlike the billion-dollar aid package to georgia. and third, to find a way for putin to get off the offramp. find a way to back away. that s the third element of the diplomacy today. of course that was the way we got through the cuban missile crisis. kennedy said we take out the jupiter missiles in turkey under the table there. the senate hearing today, john mccain grilled secretary of
motivation. that was already stated. and we have now interviewed in a bipartisan way 38 witnesses from irs. they spent $14 million over the past nine months answering subpoenas from chairman issa and other republicans. and there is no evidence, but they want us to believe and that s what this is all about, i think, that the president that is, the white house had something to do with these efforts on the part of the irs. now, keep in mind, if we were really looking for the truth, we would bring forward the man who said he started all of this. the conservative republican 20-year veteran of the irs who said he was the one that started it. now, chairman issa has refused to bring him before our committee and the country so he can explain what he was doing and even he said there were no
without contractions, i am concerned. normally we laugh at that stuffiness but it s working here. it keeps things calm and professional. he s like that with sergey lavrov. he s known lavrov for a long time. they ve talked many times behind closed doors together. kerry at least thinks he has a pretty good relationship with lavrov. and they re talking. these are old pros here. kerry knows lavrov going back to the foreign relations committee way, way back. lavrov s been around forever. and they re probably sitting there thinking, okay. how do we cool this situation? i think that s what s happening. lavrov s not going to say that publicly, i think that s what s happening privately. according to people i know who know the region well, the provisional ukrainian government now is very shrewdly appealing to the wealthy businessmen in the eastern part of the ukraine to stand with the new government, to stay with the new government.
there is no topic too out there for them to cry benghazi, by the way. here is just a few of them. we re tying this together. benghazi, irs, health care, and now ukraine. let s watch it again here. this is a symptom of greater problem. it really in many ways started with benghazi. when our consulate was overrun and our first ambassador was kicked in 30-something years. one of the problems with the focus on syria is it s missing the ball from what we should be focused on is the grave threat from islamic terrorists. this is the one-year attack on benghazi. the president promised to hunt down the wrong doers. yet it s disappeared. in the case of the talking points composition. we ve been totally stone walled throughout that process. we ve had a couple of years in washington with a lot of situations like that irs thing, benghazi, et cetera. we have a president that runs away from press conferences like this, never takes accountability, never fires anybody. you know, it s like bein