to manipulation and ultimately control, compromise and control. he s got a giant ego. he lusts for money. he s very greedy. he may not exercise good judgment in his personal life. and he is easily he s easily flattered. as i mentioned, he has a huge ego. so all of these things allow him to be manipulated and slowly or quickly, depending on circumstances, compromised. and i think the russians or anyone else or any intelligence service would look at trump or a person like trump and make that assessment. so he is a prime he would be a prime target if a foreign intel service thought he could do something for them. witting or unwitting. those are the words. they said unwittingly in the reporting of it. max, do most people realize that they re being reeled in by russia or is it more common that they fail to understand what s
seeing it reflected in this report where he s not only urging our allies in nato to do more to support it but he s also saying, not a surprise, that he would like to pull out of it. he would like to destroy the alliance. if the u.s. were to pull out of nato, it would destroy the alliance in its current form. and that helps russia more than any other country. so it s very bewildering in general but not for this president. let s move on now, evan, and i want to talk about the reporting that there was concern that president trump could be a witting or unwitting agent of russia. how would russia go about gaining control of someone like trump? well, it s not too terribly difficult in a case like trump. if you re a foreign intelligence officer or an american intelligence officer and you come across a guy like trump, he sort of checks all the boxes that you need checked to assess that he is extremely vulnerable
quickly, depending on circumstances, compromised. and i think the russians or anyone else or any intelligence service would look at trump or a person like trump and make that assessment. so he is a prime he would be a prime target if a foreign intel service thought he could do something for them. witting or unwitting. those are the words. they said unwittingly in the reporting of it. max, do most people realize that they re being reeled in by russia or is it more common that they fail to understand what s actually going on? so i think it depends. i think in most cases what the russians try to do is try to exploit their weaknesses as evan pointed out. now, one of the things that we know is between 2008 and 2011 donald trump was in the real estate industry. what happened in the real estate industry? it went bust. and donald trump faced severe acute financial crisis. real crisis for his business. there s a real point of leverage that the russians could go and
certainly by the time that donald trump came out of the meeting with sergey lavrov and serg sergey kislyak and said he fired the fbi director because of the russia thing and stopping the russia investigation, they had to assume that there was a nefarious intent in his activities and it is quite possible he could have been turned or was working in his own interest which equaled russia s interest. let me follow up on that. there is all of the terms, that he s run as an agent or witting or unwitting and he s been turned. what does that mean? let s turn this away from a president. if a foreign power manages to acquire an american individual in asset, a person in business or the state department, there are different ways that can play out. what are they? what does that mean? well there are varying degrees and the most common start off with a useful idiot. a person who does something for their own interest, which just happens to align with a foreign
yeah and i don t think whatever the founders meant, they didn t envision this. here s what i think was going on. comey just got fired. the fbi is reeling. the senior leaders are trying to figure out which end is up. seems like the president did it to obstruct an investigation being lawfully conducted. i imagine that a lot of things were said and perhaps done in frustration at the time. i don t mean nephariously or recklessly, but there is no road map for this. there is no way to know how you investigate a president who could be a witting or unwitting agent of a foreign power. i m not saying he is, but there is no road map that shows you how to do this. so from rod s comment about what do you want me to do, wear a wire? i imagine it was said