business investment into ukraine. clearly there s no nato ascension any time soon in ukraine. those are big wins for putin. now that he s the center of all this negotiation, including trade and natural resource poll seerks see, i would say that s exactly where he would like to be right now. remember, he spent maybe the better part of a year getting ready for even the sanctions piece of this, that he s amassed about $600 billion in reserves, improved his ability to sell natural gas through china if he gets cut off. he has a lot of other options now left. he s in a pretty strong position i think in the negotiation table. julia, you note one of the major differences here is in the kremlin s perception of time itself. what do you mean by that?
that they devalue their currency to try to get a handle on runaway inflation, 60% inflation this year. the sanctions the u.s. has put on iran has wrecked their economy. france is coming to the rescue and emmanuel macron will sit down tomorrow to try to engage in negotiations to put this deal back together. the sanctions piece of it is working, the question is whether there will be enough pressure to get iran back to the table. at bret: we are bouncing around the world here, jennifer griffin talked to the defense secretary about these new missile tests. what about these short-range missile tests? is it appropriate to give negotiating with kim? our biggest concern are the long-range missile tests are being conducted. doesn t that give him permission to shoot short-range missiles? i think you need to take a look at the bigger picture. bret: they seem to be
allow them, you know, to use the international banking system, which by the way, they probably don t use anyway. so it seems to me like these are not as effective as what was originally in place, but i think the president finds himself in a position where he had to do something because he pulled back, even though he said he didn t. he also pulled back from beginning the deportation raids that were supposed to begin last weekend. we have seen the president again and again back off the political precipice. on the sanctions piece, he undid the work the obama administration did in the iran deal. now he has to do it all over again. we see tough talk on immigration and deportation. lots and lots of headlines, then he has to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan. so this inability to stick to a consistent message, to think things through in advance, to not just constantly be off the cuff, again and again, we re seeing him pay the price, not just in terms of domestic pol
pompeo say no doubt the russians will try to interfere in the 2018 election and we see what russia is doing around the world trying to station itself in the middle east as the new power since we have retreated. they are trying to put themselves in the middle of the north korea mess that we re facing and the crisis in front of us. and the president doesn t move forward to sanction after the united states congress passed nearly unanimously and the president signed a sanctions piece of legislation and today, ali, senator ben carden and all of the democrats on the senate foreign relations committee have sent a letter to secretary tillerson, what gives and what have you done and how are you held accountable for what the law requires you to do. and this is side by side with the idea we continue to see a weakening of our diplomatic, our soft power. we still do not have an ambassador in south korea and the leading candidate is no longer a candidate for the position. indeed. and i know that
this whole baby adoption thing or the adoption issue has to do with the sanctions piece of it. that was clearly the quit proquo going into the meeting. i m not surprised to see there s a fallout. goldstone is working for the russians, they are his clients and he s following up with the trump people. all sorts of ideas about social media. we find out social media played a significant role in this election. the pieces are starting to fall into place. as the picture that we pretty much knew we had to begin with. this is collaboration, without a doubt. whether it s legal or not is something that bob mueller is going to have to find out. it was collaboration with the russians. patrick, i feel like i have to say, but there s more. president trump and everyone connected said as often as they could, there s no evidence of collusion or conspiracy here, no matter what. now, also coming out in our