battering down the hatches? absolutely not. richard, i think that s remarkable and fascinating reporting, and is why you have to be there sometimes to understand what s actually going on. let me ask you this. you ve got a lot of sources in the ukrainian government and in the larger sort of ukrainian intelligence. it sounds the way you re presenting it, are they resigned of letting look, if putin wants to an exparts of the country that are not being governed by ukraine anyway, go for it? i don t want do they seem resigned to that outcome? is that why there s such calmness? reporter: no. i don t think so. it s that sometimes and by the way, i ve seen this in other conflict or potential conflict areas before. when i was in kabul, by the way, i spoke with people, and many of my friends, and they didn t think the taliban were going to enter the city. they always thought the taliban was far away, and the government
standpoint or are we living in this place where violent extremism is at that intersection with elected republican officials. fpz. i think you re turning your laser to a really important question, because just as the antidefamation league s report comes out telling you that, hey, by the way, these people are run ing for senate, but also running to try to control state and county elections, what about whether these folks will be in charge of deciding american security decisions? how will they make good decisions if they automatically revile exparts who spent decades in understanding china, in understanding russia, in figuring out the geopolitical pressures that could come to bear and harm our country. we don t want people rejecting what they decided is the deep state and is actually the group
you, putin has met with three very different presidents in the past. look where that has gotten the world. we ve seen russia meddle in the united states election, annex crimea during the obama years and use military force in syria during the obama years. an exparts of georgia during the bush years. who to say the trump style won t work? to play devil s advocate, why not take a different approach? certainly the other approaches have been unsuccessful but there s no reason to suspect this won t be frankly a disastrous approach. he s sitting down with a man who just ordered intervention in our own election and rewarding him for doing so. there s no way that brings about a successful result and you can certainly say these other approaches failed so maybe we just ought to go to putin hat in hand. i don t think that s the answer. if anything, the reason these prior approaches failed is they weren t tough enough, jake and
prominently right now in yemen that are hard to reach. our long-term goal has to be able to stabilize these areas so they have no safe haven. in order for us to do that in syria, there has to be an end to the civil war. there has to be a government that has a a police capacity and a structure in these areas currently aren t governed. and it is my firm belief and the belief of the exparts in this administration that so long as assad is there, we cannot achieve that kind of stability inside of syria. and the history over the last several years indicates as much. so that s going to continue to be a top priority for us moving