the russians were trying to cut valt and senior members of the trump campaign knew about it. senior members knew about it, but also didn t carter page all along he was sort of saying he was there giving a speech, talking to a man on the street, that wasn t thes. no, no, no, he had and he s been forced to acknowledge that he had encounters with senior russian officials. now, he continues to say this was meaningless and it wasn t about collusion and the things it said about him in the dossier are not true but nonetheless the account has significantly changed from when we first heard about this trip. ken, thank you so much. i need my panel. vanity fair special correspondent my friend bill cohen and msnbc contributor and executive editor of bloomberg view tim o brien. you know what i m going to start with, will burr ross. but, i mean, across the board, president trump can say russia, hoax, no connections, no connections, but whether we go will burr ross, don jr., paul manafor
with the military to ensure that those threats weren t visited on our shores, so i ll leave it to others to grade the administration. but what i would say is that, you know, 70 years ago, george kenyan wrote that famous article in foreign affairs about the sources of soviet conduct, and it was really a clear blueprint for how we needed to contain soviet influence. and i think that we need something similar against russia. we need to be transparent about the threat and then what we plan on doing about it. russia s been resurgent ever since putin became prime minister, particularly the last 20 years. we need to counter his nefarious activities in our own country and in this region. daniel, i ve got about 30 seconds left, but i want to get this in. an op ed you put in the new york times in august, you said this wasn t about collusion for putin, it was about something else. are we exactly where putin wanted us to be with regards to the mueller investigation, with undermining the demo
well, we ve known since monday that jeff sessions and donald trump preside over this meeting in march 2016 at which this low level campaign add george papadopoulos according to court records floated an idea between putin and trump. what we re learning now is sessions rejected this idea. trump according to a witness to nbc news, did not react. but sessions took it on board, rejected it and according to one account said we should never talk about this again. the reason it s important is, as you said, sessions has been grilled under oath in congress about the campaign s contact with russians. because he had to clear up his testimony. he once said he never met with any russians. then he had to admit he met twice with the russian ambassador sergei kisliak. now, he may have some wiggle room. he was very careful to say in more recent testimony i didn t talk about collusion with any russians. this meeting wasn t about collusion, it was about a
potential head to head between trump and putin. the reason papadopoulos was able to offer that meeting is because he was collude, according to court document, with russians that the fbi believes was close to russian intelligence. you can bet jeff sessions will be asked about what did he know about what papadopoulos had. the other big news is that carter page, another low level campaign aide with ties to russia, is now telling nbc news that he informed jeff sessions last summer when he met him at a republican dinner, that he was on the way to russia. he shook jeff sessions hand and said, hey, by the way, i m headed to russia in my personal capacity. according to a source close to sessions, sessions did not react, simply shook his hand, said nothing, moved on to the next person. but that is going to be another significant issue, you know, mr. sessions why didn t you remember that this campaign aide said he was going to russia, stephanie. well, i take significant issue with that fishing