Here at the table for the hour, Steve Schmidt and matt miller. But first, to react for the first time, single threads different threads of a single story. Questions about russians and contact with people in the president s inner circle. Former cia director john brennan, lucky for us, now a Senior National security and Intelligence Analyst for msnbc and nbc news. I understand now, sitting here today, why donald trump a week or so ago said dont believe what you see, dont believe what you hear on the news channels, because when you take all these events just this week together, they paint a very compromising position for this president on the question of russian influence. I think thats right, nicolle. I think weve seen over the course of the last two years basically an effort on the part of President Trump and others to pry to inoculate Public Perceptions of what actually
happened during the campaign. First, there were no meetings. Then there were meetings, but they were focused on adopt
functions of the american intelligence community and law enforcement. i do want to get to the manafort trial. jeremy bash on this program once said that it was possible that there was a russian plant, that there was somebody who was who sought out employment on the trump campaign. we know that paul manafort sought out tom baric and asked to get in front of trump and paul manafort served as the chairman when the platform at the republican national convention koicoincidentally perhaps, maybe it s president trump s one true intellectual impulse on foreign policy, changed to a pro russia position. what do you make of the fact that paul manafort, while i understand this trial is about financial crimes, is one of the first characters who could have been perhaps planted or placed there as a russian agent inside the trump campaign, is that implausible to you?