trump s shoot somebody on fifth avenue crowd, that segment of the american public predisposed to support him no matter what, to believe his lies no matter what. they ve got a favorite word for the unknown surrounding trump s relationship with russia, and you know it. they call it a hoax. it s been like that ever since the republican-led senate intelligence committee published factual, certifiable evidence of business dealings and suggestions of political cooperation in the lead up to the 2016 election. again, to them, it was always a hoax. but recently, after further scrutiny of the steele dossier, that wholesale dismissal of everything we know about trump and russia has caught on with the anti-anti-trump crowd. those outside that trump bubble who sometimes see common cause. the result, what david frum called a project of retrospective denial from his piece in the atlantic. quote, the steele dossier undertook to answer the question, what the hell is going on with trump and russia? it
that s complicated, jason. here s what i would say, though, because i think what this comes down to at the moment is the fact that people are questioning the steele dossier, and they have every right no question the steele dossier. but the steele dossier had nothing to do with russia interfering in our election and trump cooperating with russia. in fact, i think it makes sense to divide it into those two categories. the first one is absolutely indisputable. russia interfered in our election. they didn t meddle in our election. that s what your grandmother does in the kitchen. they interfered. they poisoned. they tried to disrupt our election and they are continuing to try to make people not trust american election. the question that mueller looked at is, was trump cooperating in a kind of conspiratorial way with russia s efforts? and that is still not completely clear. and mueller said that trump, you
contributors. so rick, i want to start with you and i want to tread lightly on this but i think this is important. this group of anti-anti-trump supporters, the way i define them, a lot of them, i saw as part of the sort of former online left, right? the people who, they may have not liked trump, but they disliked the democratic party and they disliked the media so much that even with their own failings, the sort of crystal balls, those sorts of people, they wanted to justify anything to attack the mainstream press or attack the democratic party as a whole, and they are part of these attacks on what are the real facts of the steele dossier and what happened in the russia investigation. my question for you, rick, is, how do we combat the sort of disinformation not just from your far-right people like, you know, anybody on fox, but also from the former fake lefties who have now decided that attacking anything that has to do with trump and russia is another part for them to achieve the gr
that the outgoing trump administration appointed a special counsel of its own to investigate its investigators. jon durham has now issued three at the same times, all for lying to the fbi about various as pekts of the steele dossier. it remains fact that russian hackers and spies helped his campaign. it remains fact that the trump campaign welcomed the help. it remains fact that trump s campaign chairman saw to share proprietary campaign information with a person whom the senate report identified as a russian intelligence officer. it remains fact that trump hoped to score a huge payday in russia even as he ran for president. it remains fact that trump and those around him lied and lied and lied and lied again about their connections to russia. joining us now, former u.s. ambassador to russia, michael mcfaul and rick stengel, a former top state department official and member of the biden transition team. lucky for us, both are msnbc
know, cooperated but whether it was witting or unwitting, i don t know. but a lot of this comes down to the fact that people are using the steele dossier as a kind of stocking horse to try to question everything else, which is, by the way, exactly what putin does. he takes a small lie and then he tries to blow up the larger truth and that s what trump is trying to do. so, rick, i want to follow up on this because i think this is key. we re not just seeing that with the steele dossier and the trump investigation, because again, as we said at the beginning of this show, what trump was doing and the relationships that his campaign had with russia would have made it impossible for anybody in lower levels of government to get a security clearance. like, let s be clear. what he was doing was unethical, you usually can t get away with it, he only managed to get away with it because he managed to get himself elected president of the united states. but we re seeing this former attitude from t