Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. Another, oh, 20 yards down field. Which, i dont even know if thats a crime, colluding about russians. Keeping them honest, its not. That much is true, and thats all. There is no anticolluding with russians act anywhere on the United States code. But there is plenty about Campaign Conspiracy and finance abuses not to mention obstruction of justice. Not to mention most would agree, its just wrong to be scheming with a hostile power. Its a touchy subject, as you might imagine. Because of that, its not the first time theyve felt compelled to describe their transgressions downward. Just after the election, Campaign Spokesperson hope hicks said, quote, there was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign. It never happened, she said. Three months later, never became to
but what happened one year later? reagan and gorbachev abolished a whole category of nuclear weapons, the intermediate range. so good things got done, and nobody else knew except the two translators what was said in there. so there s precedent. president trump today talked about meeting with the iranian president, rouhani, with no pre-conditions. does that surprise you? would that be wise? it s not surprising to me at all, anderson. in fact, i predicted it a week ago, when trump came out with that semideranged tweet in all capital letters threatening consequences the likes of which you ve never seen before to iran, based on his pattern. you can pretty easily predict that after threatening these horrible consequences, trump will then try to set up a meeting, glad hand and before long, he ll probably be praising rouhani for being smart, witty, warm and reaching a deal that has no substance to it whatsoever. that s his pattern. the striking thing to me is that although he s willing to
and we ve seen this time and time again. when things aren t going well, you lob a molotov cocktail in one corner of the room and everyone runs over there and looks at it and ignores all the stuff that s been going on that hasn t reflected well on the administration. yeah, and sadly, it works, because we in the media, we need fresh news to chew over. and when the president says something, by definition, that is inherently newsworthy. when he makes war-like threats against iran, you have to report that, but at the same time, you re also inadvertently furthering his agenda, because that s what he wants to talk about now. you also look what happened last year with north korea going to fire and fury to a summit with kim jong-un to, that there is no more security threat from north korea to now things, you know, the timetable now just seems to be kind of moving, and there is no rush on denuclearization. i mean, could the president s rhetoric toward iran be an attempt to have some sort of
just, hey, look at the new shiny object over here? no, thing is that element of trump trying to repeat what he sees as a north korea triumph. now, why he sees that as a triumph, i have no idea, because it s obvious the north koreans did not make any real concess n concessions, all the concessions were on the u.s. side. so all of the tough talk about rocket man and fire and fury, it didn t actually work. but trump seems to live in this alternative reality where he scored a massive triumph in singapore and wants to repeat it elsewhere. that s why it s hard to take his rhetoric against iran seriously and why i think, you know, his bellicose talk is losing its effectiveness, because, you know, in the last year and a half, we have seen that he is not actually launching wars, that he does not follow up on his war-like threats, which is probably just as well, but it also means that the iranians don t necessarily fear that he s going to attack them, because i think they would anticipate that
but trump seems to live in this alternative reality where he scored a massive triumph in singapore and wants to repeat it elsewhere. that s why it s hard to take his red rick against iran seriously, and why i think his bellicose talk is losing its effectiveness, because, you know, in the last year and a half, we have seen that he is not actually launching wars, that he does not actually follow up on his war-like threats which is probably just as well, but it also means the iranians don t necessarily fear that he is going to attack them, because i think they would anticipate that based on the past, within a year, if events hold true to form, trump will be praising rouhani as wonderful, smart, witty, great personality, loves his country. so trump is kind of the president who keeps crying wolf. yeah. as a powerful leader perhaps. max boot, thanks very much. just ahead, plenty more to come tonight, including something we ve literally never seen before. the for the first time, the presi