others said it was politically motivated in an attempt to cover up political problems and power struggles at home and president trump s own domestic concerns. that is a condemnation but a fairly weak one. there is no indication that the syrian military plans to retalia retaliate. there are hundreds of american troops in syria. no talks of potential strikes against him. when you look at the syrian reaction, they seem to be grumbling but not intending to do anything. the russians, pretty much the same. there have been some statements from top russian officials, a statement from putin saying this is a violation of a sovereign country. when moscow wants to express its anger, it knows how to and we haven t seen it so far. if there is a danger right now, it would be that the u.s. is expressing too much confidence. not accepting what seems to have
that we can hit aircraft on the ground, we can hit their revetments, their shelters, facilities that support the air force, but also there are both iranian and most significantly russian advisers down there, russian maintenance people, it s difficult to envision how we could hit an airfield in retaliation in punishment and not kill some russians. play that out. if that is the road this goes down, if russians are lack for a better term, collateral damage in a u.s. air strike, what would happen? i think there ought to be, if there are not, there ought to be, conversations in back chach channel right now, talking to the russians saying, look, we re serious about striking back, we re going to strike back. most likely you have people where we are going to strike back. recommendation is you pull them out right away. so that there are some conversations. we can t wait for them to pull them out because you can t retalia retaliate, can t conduct punishment unless it is very closely related
the iranians the same way, very sophisticated. they could hit us when they want. they choose not to. our defenses are bad. weak. our software, our hardware, the rest of it, we haven t put a lot of money into it. yes, they can definitely hit us and this is the whole problem with russia that if russia gets away with this during our elections or in our power grids, who is next? and that s why the senate and the house and the president has got to face this and come up with a strategy to counter, retalia retaliate, whatever it takes to get people to stop this. bob, i imagine that the united states is also probing the vulnerabilities of these essential networks like power grids in other countries. is the thought here the strategy is that the u.s. doesn t use that information or that technology until it is put into a position where it has to go ahead and retaliate? well, it s an act of war. if we went after the kremlin, closed down communications, took
to leave the country. trump tweeted this response to putin s decision to not reta retalia retaliate. great move on delay by v. putin. i always knew he was very smart. back with me, joining me now is charles senate, executive director of the root project and syndicated columnist, bob. trump refuses to implicate russia for interfering with our election. instead, this is who he thinks the culprit is. let s listen. i think we ought to get on with our lives and i think the computers have complicated lives very greatly. the age of the computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what s going on. we have speed and a lot of other things. i m not sure we have the kind of security we need. i m sorry, bob. what do you make of that, bob? maybe when he makes america great again there won t be any
that base and arrested ukrainian soldiers. this happened just hours after the russian president vladimir putin signed a treaty as he called it to make the krimian peninsula part of russia. he s also threatening to, quote, retalia retaliate, unquote against the united states for slapping financial punishments on top russian officials. over the weekend crimea held a held a referendum on whether to join russia. analysts say the voters really had no choice on that referendum. and surprise, according to president putin, more than 96% of those voted in favor of reuniting. today thousands of people from moscow to crimea gathered to watch president putin s speech at the kremlin. he said, and i quote, in people s hearts and minds crimea has always been part of russia. he also claimed he does not plan to invade any other areas of ukraine. translator: don t believe those who scare you about russia, who say that other regions will follow after crimea. we don t want a division of ukraine. we do