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Throughout his first year, charges of collusion between his campaign and the russians. so with inquiries in both houses of congress as well as special counsel robert mueller s sprawling probe, just what have we learned so far about the trump/russia connection, and are the investigations likely to heat up or fizzle out in 2018? so, kim, take up that question. stepping back, let s look at what do we know right now aboutç trump/russia so-called collusion? here s what s notable, paul, is that you ve had all these inquiries the fbi, intelligence agencies, special counsel robert mueller, endless numbers of committees in congress and yet what we ve found is the same names that come up again and again and the same episodes incidents. so you have a couple of satellite russian advisers, carter page and george papadopoulos, who went to russia. but these were public meetings. ....
Two men to put evidence forward to wild an ab instruction to build an obstruction case against the president. the problem with that is a very highly political and legally dubious thing to suggest that you can go after the chief executive of the country on an obstruction charge. paul: well, and what the obstruction charge is about is because he fired the fbi director, jake comey. that would be it. and james comey. and presumably because he wanted to stop an investigation into the russia probe, i mean, intoç russia/trump collusion. but there s no collusion, it s kind of hard to prove an obstruction case against a non-crime. mary. yeah. the problem here is that the fbi seems like and mueller seem like they are just casting the net as wide as they can to find something. we know that this is what happens with special counsels paul: right, they all do a lot of people think it was of a mistake in the first place to even name a special counsel for this. the likelihood that muel ....
United states as the preeminent global par in the world, this will power in the world, this will occupy american presidents for most of the 21st century as the major, major challenge we have. it will dwarf our challenge with the soviet union. and, yes, they ve identified the regional threats of north korea to regional stability along witç iran, and they know that radical islam is thriving. paul: well, and so let s take let s try to break out some of the differences on specific policies or regions where, other than the rhetoric, where the policies have changed from the obama era. and i want to push back at you a little bit, because as i think about how they ve approached russia, for example, i haven t seen a really big difference with obama on, say, syria, for example, a big change. now, they re just recently changed and they re going to send lethal weapons, at least moderate lethal weapons to ukraine which is a change, but where s been the other policy shifts from russia? no. wh ....
Have been largely rhetoric, and enunciation of a changeç in policy with very little implementation, in my judgment. and when you point to syria, the real issue in syria is less russia, it s more iran. iran is dominating syria. they have now established a land bridge that the institute for the study of war forecasted they would do paul: i remember. between iraq, going through iraq, going through syria and going to lebanon. and this is a very dangerous situation because iran fully intends to encroach on israel. they will begin to bring missiles into syria. they ve got 160,000 in lebanon. i think it will produce a crisis maybe in 2018, but certainly likely in 2019 where israel will have toç take some action. and we have no strategy to contain this threat. paul: okay. i want to look ahead now a little bit on 2018. you mentioned that potential israel/iran flashpoint. what else should we be looking ....
Iran as two rogue states who are a threat and, of course, then you have the trans-national threats. but it s that overall what i read was they think this is a very dangerous world and getting more dangerous. do you agree with that? oh, i totally agree. i don t think there s a period of time that compares with this. we have to go all the way back to the end of world war ii with the rise of the soviet union. when obama wrote that document in the second year, i mean, it had all sorts of ambiguity and a lack of clarity about what the problem is, much less what to do about it. this principledç realism, as te trump team calls it, i mean, it is refreshing. they are calling it the way it is. we re back in an era of big power competition again, paul, with russia which is a near-term, dangerous threat to us and china, without any equivocation, is our long-term strategic challenge which i think given its economic engine and its desire to replace the ....