[ slurring ] whereas the packers are americas real team and will always be winners in the hearts and minds of the people of wisconsin, therefore i, tommy thompson, governor of the great state of of wisconsin do hereby proclaim january 27, 19 98 all over Wisconsin Green Bay packer day in blue honor of all of you boo fans. Awesome. But you see what i mean about sounding a little bit tipsy. Our soon to be new energy secretary, the man in charge of americas nighty arsenal of nuclear weapons, he also at times has had a little touch of the seems drunk when hes not problem. That little plan that i just shared with you doesnt force the Granite State to expand your tax footprint. You know what i mean. [ laughter ] like 9 expansion. [ lauger ] i love herman. Is he the best . I have fun with him. He is a great and interesting guy. And thank you, herman, for helping pay for the event tonight. [ laughter ] who else would you rather have in charge of Americas Nuclear weapons and National Labs but our new president picked him. But this problem, he sometimes seems drunk when hes not actually drunk, problem, its not only a american phenomenon. In europe, in the European Union theres no exact equivalent for our position of president , theres no president of europe but this is Juan Claude Juncker and he is the president of the European Commission, thats close to being the president of the United States of europe and he, too, has this same problem. He, too has this seems drunk when hes not problem. Jean Claude Juncker is the former president of luxembourg. Its possible everybody in luxembourg is like this. I dont have any reason to know that. I dont think so. But whats clear is that he enjoys his work as president of the European Commission. He maybe enjoys it too much. Also when hes happy and in a good mood he likes to slap people. Here he is shaking a politicians hand at a big eu summit in latvia, all very normal until thwap. Smacks him upside the head. Here he is walking up to another man. He slaps him, too. Why not . Im the president of europe. Smack you upside your head. The president of the European Commission also likes to compare ties. Here hes tie touching with one gentleman. Here he is with another foreign leader doing the same thing. This is the eu summit that happened in latvia last year. Everybody had the same idea about what kind of tie to wear. He didnt let them forget it. But its this next interaction i want you to watch. This is jean Claude Juncker again and check out how he says hello to this guy. This part has sound. The first part is in english. Watch. The dictator is coming. Dictator. The dictator is coming. Whap. Then he slaps the dictator upside the head. The man the president of the European Commission is calling a dictator in that video is the Prime Minister of hungary and when they march against him in the streets of hungary they actually call him not the dictator, they call him the victator because his name was victor. He started an anticommunist movement in his country. By the time he was 35 years old he was the youngest every Prime Minister of his country. He was elected Prime Minister when he was 35 years old in 1998 but its interesting, he only served one term. He lost in the next election and that apparently made an impression on him. He apparently decided that not only would he come back to power but if and when he got a second shot, he would not want to lose that power maybe ever again and viktor orban did get another shot. His party won twothirds of the sleets in parliament. And with that power they decided to rewrite the rules. That i rewrote the constitution. Among other things they cut in half the number of seats in the parliament. They redrew the boundaries of the election districts in the country all at once. Viktor orban said his way was much simpler. It made impossible to remove him from power. Support for Viktor Orbans party shrunk, they dropped from 53 to 44 of the vote but wouldnt you know it, thanks to these new simpler rules, even though Viktor Orbans party got less sport and fewer votes, they kept the same seats. Held on to the same twothirds majority in parliament. Magic thanks to the simplification of the rules that they rammed through and that only benefitted his party. He also changed the legal supervision of National Elections in his doubtry so instead of an Election Commission with representatives from the parties now its just run by seven guys from Viktor Orbans own party who oversee the elections. And hes done things we know to watch for in circumstances like this. You know basic political science, you know what creeping authoritarianism looks like. Doesnt matter how you got there in the first place, we know what it looks like when you consolidate power so you never leave. Hes had Senior MemberParty Officials arrested, hes ousted independent judges, packed the courts with his loyalists. He tried to get away with a big new Voter Registration requirement his country had never had before. You have to submit paperwork and sign up with the government. Observers said that requirement would guarantee people likely to vote against him wouldnt be allowed to vote. There that case trying to Institute New documentation requirements for voting. In that case whats left of the independent judiciary was able to shut that part down for now. They tried. Hes also thrilled his right wing populist supporters by inveighing against refugees and immigrants and he has also built a wall along his countrys southern border. So, yeah, they call him the victator. Or if youre the pleasantly drunk seeming european president you can call him the dictator before you smack him upside the head. Hungary is part of europe. They have gone along with the european side of the sanctions that the United States government organized against russia in 2014. But now viktor orban is looking at Vladimir Putin and seeing a Kindred Spirit thinking maybe we wont go along with those sanctions anymore. Viktor orban sent his foreign minister to moscow last week and he declared the sanctions on russia may now be counterproductive. Now maybe the european part of the worldwide sanctions on russia that we organized, maybe those sanctions are going to start falling apart. Thank you, viktator. Today russian president Vladimir Putin took his first foreign trip of the trump era, the trump era the russian government has been so excited about. Naturally when Vladimir Putin decided to go abroad for the first time in the trump era, he went to go see the viktator, he went to see viktor orban in his country. Part of that is nationalist right wing authoritarian strong men dissent crushing would be leaders for life. Those kinds of leaders tend to like each other. But part of that is also the unraveling of this International Tool that we led the west in using against russia, the sanctions regime may be falling apart if putin can pick off individual members, especially on the european side, get them to stop supporting it, that may be part of it, too. Part of it broadly is russia trying to peel europe apart. Russia would much rather go back to having countries like hungary in its orbit. Russia doesnt want nato. Hungary is in nato. Russia would prefer nato broke up. Russia doesnt want a European Union. Russia doesnt want an International Order where the United States is the leader of the west and the International Order that stands up to russia when russia does things like murder their dissidents and invade other countries and steal other countries land. So russias interests are clear. And this trip today, putin leaves the country for the First Time Since donald trump is president , the trip to hungary its a nice clear as a bell geopolitical signal, geopolitical move to welcome us to the trump era where russia starts expanding its influence on its western borders again and, frankly, when they want to take something they just take it. Were going to talk this hour about a little bit of the some of the i dont know, hairy stuff thats going on in American National security right now . Cnn is citing a white house source today saying President Trump might have hung up on the australian Prime Minister a couple of days a and started a major diplomatic incident with that country, with our close ally because he was feeling some fatigue after having other phone call with other foreign leaders earlier in that day. To clean up after that mess thats already under way with other politicians including senator john mccain reportedly calling the Australian Government to smooth things other. Its reportedly the president s soninlaw, 35yearold Jared Kushner who has been tasked with cleaning up the mess President Trump made with mexico. The white house now says President Trump was speaking light heartedly when he threatened to send u. S. Troops to invade mexico in his conversation with the mexican president. Maybe even more worrying than Jared Kushner being sent to clean that up is the fact this Real Estate Investor was directly involved in the decision to launch the disastrous special operations raid in yemen this weekend which killed a navy seal and wounded three others and which the pentagon says says killed numerous yemeni civilians, including, they believe, children. They apparently in the white house they did not make the call on launching that raid from the situation room with an assembled formal National Security team weighing the hard calls and complexi complexities. Know know what that kind of night looks like in the white house. No, the yemen raid, this disastrous and ultimately fatal yemen raid was apparently signed off on over dinner with jared and steve bannon from breitbart news. So were going to have more on that ahead tonight but theres also one now thing that i want to stick a pin in tonight. Its under way right now. Its extremely urgent. Its something that has happened exactly this way once before in recent memory. We know how the previous government, how the Obama Administration handled it. Tonight we have absolutely no idea how this new administration is going to deal with this circumstance. And looking at the circumstances around this, i think theres reason to rry. And i dont say this that often but this is also a circumstance that is literally life or death. Two years ago almost exactly, february, 2015, there were protests in russia that were genuinely threatening to Vladimir Putin. Now all protests threaten somebody like Vladimir Putin to a certain extent, right . Authoritarians dont like dissent of any kind. These ones two years ago, they were particularly scary and threatening to putin because they were led by a credible, viable, wellliked highprofile opposition political leader, a real political threat who was a former deputy Prime Minister of the country, known nationwide, very popular, very charismatic, very credible. His name was Boris Nemtsov. And if you remember that name at all, you might remember how this ends. This is Boris Nemtsov in happier times and im going to show you a slightly disturbing image here, sorry, theres your warning, this is the same man, Boris Nemtsov, murdered. And in the pictures here of the site of his murder, you can see the kremlin in the background. His murder was a friday night in moscow. He was due to lead a major protest march can we go back to that first picture there . Can we go back to the first all right. This was a friday night, you can see the kremlin in the background there, there you go. Stop that picture there. Thank you. That is Boris Nemtsov there on the ground. Nemtsov was due to lead a major protest march against Vladimir Putin and government corruption in russia the day after this happened. This was late friday night. Is he was 100 yards from the kremlin. He was walking on that sidewalk with a friend, car drove up, guys jumped out, bang, four shots, they killed him there on the street 100 yards outside the kremlin. This is the leading opposition politician in russia at the time. A genuine threat to Vladimir Putin. They killed him on the street right outside the kremlin the night before he s going to lead an opposition rally in moscow. That was Boris Nemtsov. Three months after that in 2015, in may of 2015, they tried to do it to his deputy, too. The deputy in his Opposition Party was a former journalist, fluent english speaker, worked in the United States for years, his wife and children live in virginia, in centerville, virginia. He traveled back and forth between virginia, between the d. C. Area and moscow and three months after they shot Boris Nemtsov dead, shot him cold in the streets outside the kremlin they tried to get his deputy, too, and they tried to get him with poison. Midway through a meeting with fellow dissidents, beads of sweat dotted his forhead, his stomach churned. He recalled it went so fast, i went from feeling completely normal to having a rapid heart rate, high Blood Pressure to sweating and vomiting all over the place and then i lost consciousness. Doctors later told him he had been poison. The poison threw him into a weeklong coma with a puzzling range of symptoms, swelling in his brain, kidney failure, his legs and arms turned blue. He had multiple organ failure. He barely survived. He was in and out of a coma. He was 33 years old. And he was a u. S. Green card holder, he also held dual citizenship in britain as well as russia and the British Government, because he had british citizenship, they were able to help directly as best they could they were able to keep the pressure on in terms of his medical care and the diagnosis of what had almost killed him. His wife and kids in virginia did everything they could to raise the alarm about this attempted assassination to try to keep him alive, to try to save him. High level people in the u. S. State department were reportedly deeply involved as well basically trying to stop what appeared to be an assassination in progress. Deputy secretary of state anthony blinken, the assistant secretary of state for the region, the senior director for russia at the National Security council, when the guy got poisoned in russia, when another opponent of Vladimir Putin turned up mysteriously almost dead this time two years ago the u. S. State department was on it and they finally got him out of russia in july. When they got him out of russia he still needed to be hospitalized. They got him to the United States, they had him hospitalized for further weeks at a place in virginia. He basically had to learn to walk again. Did i mention he was 33 years old when this happened . But he did survive. That was two years ago. And now today literally this morning it appears they may have gotten him again. He was back in russia, he was screening documentaries about the life and assassination of Boris Nemtsov and he collapsed again, same m. O. , sudden unexplained collapse and now multiple organ failure. Same thing that happened to him two years ago with what doctors say was an untraceable poison. We reported a couple of weeks ago on this show on two senior russian intelligence sources being arrested, one of them getting dragged out of an fsb meeting with a big over his head. Its been widely reported the two russian officials and others are being charged with treason specifically for leaking information to the u. S. Government. Even more specifically theyre being charged with treason for leaking information to the cia. If thats true, if thats whats happening, then the russian government clearly is taking this moment to wrap up what it believes are american sources inside russia. If this is a second assassination attempt on this leading opposition figure then putins government is also taking this moment to resume knocking off some of its opposition figures. Even ones with family in the United States where the u. S. State department weighed in to help him the last time he was almost killed. Putin is taking this moment. And why not . Its a new day. Its a new era as viktor orba