convention, preceding the change in the platform language and with all of the other meetings that happened during the campaign between russians and trump staff and now with the actions of mueller looking at these, i see collusion becoming a major focus we ve moved from obstruction being the main effort of the prosecutor to possibly finally getting to the point of what is the relationship between russia and the trump campaign. and there are so many connections, very evident now and this is one of them. jonathan, before i get back to a tributary off the point jill just made, i wanted you to reemphasize one of the president s favorite expressions, and he has a number of them, a very short period of time. he famously said about manafort, he was with the campaign a very short period of time. during the time manafort was with the campaign, this was his
jill, i ve covered a bunch of conventions and didn t see a single russian. can you help us point out to our audience how unusual any paragraph is that contains meetings with russians in cleveland, a change of the gop platform language to abide by some russian changes. i don t know why it hasn t become a bigger story already because it has been clear from the very beginning that the change in the platform that favored ukraine to begin with and then became favorable to russia is one that should have raised eyebrows a long time ago. and when you combine that not just with sessions meeting with the russian ambassador at the time, kislyak, during the
that s right. as you mentioned, we talked about some of the specific times where administration officials, one of them being rex tillerson had to convince president trump why it is important to be tough against russia. one of the ways is to say putin responds with strength, so you need to be strong. one of the things we reported on is that president trump said why did you show those weapons referring back to putin displaying the nuclear weapons right before the election in the show of strength. trump said if you want an arms race you have one but i ll win. so he used some tougher language but our reporting is that he had
weapons, referring back to vladimir putin displaying those nuclear weapons right before the election in that show of strength. and trump said, well, if you want an arms race, can you have one, you can have one, but i ll win. so he used some tougher language but our reporting is he really to be pushed along. another specific case is this notion that the u.s. would supply some weapons to ukraine in their battle against russia. last summer i wrote a story in august saying there was a $50 million arms package that had made its way to the white house, it had been endorsed by the national security apparatus, including the pentagon and state department for anti-tank missiles. that sat on the president s desk for months. and rex tillerson said it s still there, will you endorse it and president trump had to be
the move came after the u.s. expelled 60 russian diplomats and closed the russian cosolate. president trump has been unwilling to publicly criticize putin. our nbc news colleagues report tonight that behind the scenes president trump has been unwilling to publicly criticize putin. our nbc news colleagues report tonight that behind the scenes trump has recently taken a sharper tone on putin. the shift seems more a reaction challenging the president s strength than a new belief that he is an adversary. putin s claim that russia has nuclear weapons that would hit the u.s. with video simulating an attack.