we can only focus on the freeness and fairness of our elections. there is no publically available evidence that she is even 1% smarter than that answer. but some other people in the white house are, and they were no doubt embarrassed and infuriated that donald trump did congratulate vladimir putin after he was told not to. so they probably wanted to put the stain of that embarrassment where it belongs, which is entirely on donald trump. and they wanted to send the signal to the rest of us, and to the world, that not everyone in the white house thinks that vladimir putin should be congratulated for winning a fraudulent election. that s a good thing to know. we are better off tonight knowing that not everyone in the white house is in putin s pocket. there was only one way to communicate that, through this leak. now in my experience in government i found that people who leak are often the ones who
s attacked our elections, continued to do that. continue to hack into us. we know that they re doing that. putin just authorized the attempted murder with a nerve agent in london of one of his opponents. so to just treat which the president also did not mention. and the election itself was clearly rigged. and for all of those reasons you would think he would be a little reticent. i found interesting, sarah sanders said today, we don t get to dictate how other countries operate, we can only focus tonight freeness and fairness out of our elections. okay, let s start there. how about the freeness and fairness of our elections. did president obama congratulate putin? he did. yes, he did. and i don t think it s unusual for a president to do that. putin was just coming back. we had had a fairly productive relationship with medvedev during those years and he was hoping for some continuation there.
homeland security secretary kirstjen nielsen testifies. plus this, check it out. it s clear to me we re not sending the right message to putin about his behavior in our own backyard and had a chance to reenforce some allies and we missed that opportunity. sandra: that s some of the criticism president trump is facing for congratulations vladamir putin for what is seen as a rigged election. cory lewandowski is next. putin has been elected and that s not something we can dictate to them how they operate. we can only focus on the freeness and fairness of our election. something we fully 100% support.
discuss it, i said it didn t come up on today s call. does the white house believe the election in russia was free and fair? in terms of the election we re focused on our leaks. we don t dictate how other countries operate. what we do know is that putin has been elected in their country, and that s not something that we can dictate to them how they operate. we can only focus on the freeness and the fairness of our elections, something we want to 100% fully support, something we re going to continue to do everything we can to protect to make sure bad actors don t have the opportunity to impact them in any way. so many interesting points just in that last answer alone, which somehow brings us to our leadoff panel. michael mcfaul, former u.s. ambassador to russia during the obama administration. ashley parker, white house reporter for the washington post. clint watts, former fbi special agent. and rick stengel, former
relating to the 2016 presidential election or the upcoming midterm elections also was not discussed. never theless, the white house says the call was quote, very good. look, we re going to continue to maintain the position that we ve had and be tough when necessary. at the same time we want to continue to have dialog so that we can work on some of the issues that concern both countries. does the white house believe that the election in russia was free and fair? look, in terms of the election there, we re focused on our elections. what we do know is that putin has been elected in their country and that s not something that we can dictate to them how they operate. we can only focus on the freeness and the fairness of our elections. why does the president in the white house believe that s something they should be discussing with the russian leader.