attack. everything they may or may have done hasn t proven successful, and we also don t know what russia is doing via social media, via information warfare to actually help candidates in the 2018 election that they have a preference for, like when they have a preference for donald trump during the 2016 election. the question is why does president trump want to meet with vladimir putin? historically successive presidents have successive successfulfully summited with the russian counterparts, but it was for a specific purpose. it was for an arms control agreement or a chemical weapons accord. we are now seeing a cycle where president trump is saying he wants to meet putin again, but with no actual objective that s been outlined.
report that michael cohen claims president trump knew in advance of the 2016 trump tower meeting with russians. that s when donald trump jr. thought he was going to get dirt on hillary clinton from a russian lawyer, we now know has ties to the kremlin. we are joined by bill browder, who is a critic of vladimir putin and his sanctions against russia. bill browder, thanks very much for joining us. great to be here. he have an enormous amount of experience with the putin regime. what do you make of michael cohen s claim that president trump knew about this meeting, the russians offering to give dirt on hillary clinton? well, it just connects up one more set of dots. and i can actually draw the dots from that conversation that michael cohen is claiming to have happened all the way to the putin helsinki summit in which it s basically been about the magnitsky act and all been about me. effectively the russians, the
javers. let s start with you. you talked about this past week and you have the michael cohen tape coming out and all the chaos surrounding that. talk about the white house. again, dysfunctional place from the very beginning. but just talk about just how volatile this past week was with the helsinki summit, trump claiming that he forgot to insert a word, the next day trump changing his term and this weekend after the cohen tape his head blowing up like a character off of looney tunes, explosion off the top. and all cap tweeting this weekend, what s how is the white house trying to contain the damage? look, they re compartmentalizing it in many ways. i was in helsinki with the president. it was a fascinating trip. when we see this fracturing of the michael cohen/donald trump relationship.
june 1972 so there was a year before cox was appointed. so this doesn t happen in a short time it will take some time. it is interesting when i hear young people say this is crazy, i can t believe it had is happening, and i remember when i was a kid our president having to leave the white house on a helicopter. that is crazy. do you think looking at the evidence that we have now is that, is that a possibility? oh, absolutely a possibility. i mean, you got a primea facia case of obstruction of justice. case of obstruction of justice. it s the fact flynn was kept in a long time before he was finally fired. the next day trump goes and talks to comey and gets rid of the attorney general and everybody else and has a private meeting where he says to him, can you do something, stop this
mission. deployed to yemen in the first military operation under president trump, he was killed in a mission targeting an al-qaeda compound. the next day trump called his widow. the president also had a very somber and lengthy conversation with the family of chief petty officer william, ryan owens. the president offered i had sincere rest condolences to offer owens wife, his father, and their three children. we know now that on that same call president trump invited corrine to be his guest at last night s speech, according to white house. two days after the call president trump and ivanka met corrine for the first time when her husband s body was flown to the air force base. but she refused to meet the president that day questioning the decision that launched the controversial tlad killed his son telling the mooichl herald i told them i didn t want to make a scene about it but my conscience wouldn t let me talk