Episode 144 - The Time President Trump Made the Press Compare Brennan and Clapper to Putin
Date: 2018-07-17 | Duration: 50:25
Topics
The truth-free summit had an objective, find a path to progress Did pundits REALLY not see President Trump’s “wink wink”? Understanding President Trump’s use of leverage with Putin Does President Trump believe what Putin said? President Trump can take the heat like nobody else when necessary Russia has to be part of ANY denuclearization deal with NK Russia also needs to part of ANY solution for Iran The press now comparing, Brennan, Clapper and Putin’s credibility Rand Paul, trained Doctor diagnoses TDS in Wolf Blitzer
Transcript
[0:06] But a pom pom pom pom pom pom pom pom. Well, what a 24-hours. Sure, I’ll tell you: the news doesn’t get any more interesting than it has been lately. And I’ll tell you something else you need to know right now: you need to know Morning Joe is freaking out. Good. So if you’re not watching this Periscope either live or on replay, you’ll have no idea what’s happening in the world. So I’m gonna give you a little trapdoor to get out of all this stuff that’s happening, to get to a little higher vantage point, kind of look at it with some perspective. Some of this is very funny. My favorite part of the morning is—I just retweeted so you can see it in my Twitter feed—well,
[1:09] there was a patient meeting. A lot of you don’t know that Senator Rand Paul is actually a physician. How many of you knew that Senator Rand Paul is actually a trained physician? And I did a clip in which he’s diagnosing a case—a really bad case—of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Normally you don’t get to see a video of an office meeting between a physician and his patient, but I want to show you a little bit of a clip from it. His patient is this guy named Wolf Blitzer—like that can’t be a real name—but Dr. Paul joining us, let me get right to the question: do you believe that President Trump’s meeting with
[2:10] President Trump’s meeting with Putin made America safer? I think engagement with our adversaries, conversation, is a good idea, even in the very comfortable—let’s hear from the patient. Sounds like it would be an example of derangement. He’s getting
[3:51] excited. I see some spittle. He’s melting down. Doctor, save him, Doctor!
[4:52] Full meltdown. Oh, full TDS. Well, it goes on like that, but if you haven’t seen it yet, you have to watch it until the final sign-off of the interview. It’s a classic. So there you have it—and I’m not making this up—Senator Rand Paul is actually a trained physician and he’s diagnosing Wolf Blitzer. Now, what’s interesting is that the little label on this clip from CNN says, “Rand Paul sides with Trump over US Intel.” Does that look like what happened? First of all, this is absolute fake news. Rand Paul did not side with Trump over US Intel. Nothing like that happened. Nothing. So you’ve got CNN with just the most obvious fake news because
[5:54] you can just listen to what people said. Nobody said anything like that. Let me tell you how to sort this all out and keep your sanity. So let’s talk about all the lying from yesterday, and there was some good lying yesterday. Let’s start with Putin. Many of you saw the interview in which Putin talked to Chris Wallace. Chris Wallace, by the way, gave a great interview; he didn’t hold back a bit, and it was pretty great. But remember what I told you about detecting lies: if you say to somebody, “Did you murder the deceased?” and if the person says, “No, I didn’t. Are you crazy? Where’d you even hear that?” well, it’s possible that that person might be innocent,
[6:56] but if you say, “Did you murder that dead person?” and the person says, “Why? What do you know? What evidence do you have?”—that person’s almost always lying and almost certainly guilty in that example. Now, if you saw the Chris Wallace interview with Putin, let me summarize some of Putin’s answers to the question about the troll farms. I think this actually was an answer he gave during the press conference. When asked about the troll farms, what did Putin say? He did not say, “No, I had nothing to do with any of that.” He said, “Well, there are companies that operate on their own and do things on their own.” That is an obvious tell for a lie, because when people don’t do something, they say, “I didn’t do that.” But, “I can
[7:58] explain why it probably happened.” So on the question of whether Putin was aware of the troll farms, it looks like he was. Now, none of this is a hundred percent confirmed, but if you were to look at the pattern of what honest people say versus the pattern of what people who are trying to deceive you say, it’s pretty clear that Putin was not giving a clean denial. Now take the question that Chris Wallace asked about the murders by poison on UK soil. What was Putin’s response to, “Are you murdering dissidents in the UK?” Did Putin say, “No, we do not do that”? Nope, he didn’t say that. He said, “We
[8:58] have not been shown any document that would show us evidence that would suggest that we have done that.” That’s what you say when you’re guilty. That’s exactly what you say when you’re guilty. So I would say that Putin has essentially confessed to the poisonings. And there was a question of interference in the election and the 13 or so Russians who were indicted. Now, if Russia did not attempt to interfere with the election, when asked, they would say, “We don’t interfere with elections. We did not do that. These allegations are completely false.” Now, that doesn’t mean you’re not lying, but an honest person talks that way. A dishonest person says, “I’ll make you a deal: Mueller’s team can come over to Russia and they can talk to our people.” And what would that interview look like?
[9:58] Hey Boris, imagine Mueller’s team over there interviewing some of these suspects. “Hey Boris, did you do these things we accuse you of doing?” and Boris says, “Nope.” And then the Mueller team says, “I remind you that you’re under oath,” and then the Russian says, “No, I’m not. I’m in Russia. I’m not under any oath.” That’s the end of the interview, isn’t it? If you’re not under oath, does it make any difference if you talk to them? Because all they have to do is say, “No, I didn’t do that.” And then you show them a document and say, “Here’s a photograph of you actually pushing the button to do this hack on the DNC. Here it is, it’s a video, we’ve got a secret video showing you do it. What do you say to that?” “That’s not me in that video. Nope, not me.” So what Putin has offered—“You can come to Russia
[11:01] and talk to our people”—it means absolutely nothing. So that also suggests that he’s lying. Now, given that Putin has clearly lied on at least three topics—in my opinion, this is my judgment—only a liar talks in this pattern. So it seems he’s admitted the UK poisoning, which, by the way, I don’t think Putin wants the world to not think he does, because it’s a good way to squash dissent. How would you like to be a dissenter against Putin right now when you know he could just poison you wherever you are, whatever country? It’s kind of good for Putin to keep that fear out there. The troll farm part was obviously deception, and the thing about Mueller was just a diversion. So I would say that
[12:03] at this point, Putin has essentially confessed publicly in the way that people try to hide their true guilt. He’s talked in the way that makes it look completely guilty. Now, nothing’s 100%. I’m just saying that the way he talked is exactly how a liar talks. Exactly how. Now let’s talk about the President. The President has said a few things that got people chattering today and yesterday. He said, when asked about the Intel—the US Intel agencies—and I’m gonna paraphrase a little bit: “What about them? They say Russia definitely did it.” And what did Trump say? He said, “Well, Putin says he didn’t do it. He was very strong on that.” How did the media report that? And I
[13:05] think the President also said some things about the lack of credibility for the Intel agencies. If he didn’t say it yesterday, he’s said it before, so that’s the context. So the news reports that as the President believes Putin over his own Intel. That didn’t happen. That didn’t happen. So the biggest story of the day is something that you can see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears never happened. Not once did the President say, “Well, I’m comparing these two things and this one I believe more than that.” No words like that came out of his mouth. What he did say is that Putin claims he didn’t do it and he was very strong on that. Those two things are factually true. I’m not saying that what Putin claims is true is true; I’m saying that the
[14:05] observation that Putin said it didn’t happen is true. That’s an observation. It’s also true that our Intel agencies don’t have great credibility. Now, he also mentioned that the server was somehow missing and that degrades the credibility of our own position. That’s just true. Would anybody argue that the fact that the server was not looked at by our own Intel agencies is problematic? Now, that doesn’t mean it’s the whole story, but somebody says I’m twisting his words like Charlottesville. No, you can check his words. You can see that I’m giving it to you straight. So how do you reconcile that? On one hand, doesn’t it seem to
[15:06] you—let me test your beliefs on this—doesn’t it seem to you—and I’m gonna explain all this in a minute—doesn’t it seem to you that the President couldn’t possibly believe Putin? Now, he may have some questions about his own Intel agencies; that seems clear, especially past performance. But how do you explain that the President seems in public to act like he is believing Putin? Why do you think he’d do that? Do you think it’s because he does? Do you think the President does believe him? You have to see this along with his tweet. The President tweeted that we have to forget the past, we have to move past the past, we have to break out of—I’m paraphrasing—we have to break out of our mental prison of the past. Does that sound familiar? What’s the
[16:10] worst way to break away from your prison of the past? Blaming somebody for something they did in the past. That’s the worst way. What’s the best way to break free of your prison of the past? Well, you saw it. You saw the President go on television in front of the world and not throw Putin under the bus, even though it should be really obvious to everyone that there were good reasons to throw Putin under the bus. Now, most of his critics—the President’s critics—are saying, “My God, you have to be tough with Putin! You can’t believe him, because he lied to all of our other presidents before him, before Trump.” And
[17:10] he just says whatever he says, and everybody thinks they’re looking into his soul, and then you trust him, and then it’s a big mistake. Well, how much luck have we had pressuring Russia? So the way that all of President Trump’s critics want him to act—how productive would that be? If President Trump, let’s say, had gone in front of the public and said, “I believe our Intel people. I think Putin’s lying. I think he lied during the meeting. I think he’s lied every time he talked about this, and he’s standing next to me right now and he’s lying to you right now.” That’s what his critics asked him to do, right? Or they actually asked him not to go to the meeting in the first place, which I think would be the worst solution: to not have a dialogue with somebody who is an adversary with nuclear weapons when we have lots of common interests in fighting terrorism and stuff. So imagine if President Trump
[18:12] had done what his critics wanted him to do. Can you even imagine any scenario where we would come out ahead? I don’t think you can. I can’t think of any scenario where you could possibly come out ahead by pressuring Russia the way his critics want to. Remember, I told you that what President Trump likes to do is enter any situation and then “shake the box.” And I tell you that he’s the best box shaker because he has one quality—President Trump has a quality that you can’t find in—if you searched a million people, it would be hard to find this quality in a person. He can do things and take the heat like nobody you’ve ever seen before. You can’t shake the box unless you’re willing to put up with whatever happens, and that means just insane levels of criticism. Does President Trump
[19:13] seem to be able to put up with insane levels of criticism? Yeah, clearly. He’s actually said he loves the heat, and it seems to be true. He seems to like the attention. So he shakes the box and gives us a situation we’ve never been in before. Have we ever been in a situation where we’re doubting our own Intel agencies, where we’re treating Putin as if he told the truth, while not a single person anywhere on the planet believes he’s telling the truth about everything? Let me say, if there’s one thing I can promise you—I would take a bullet on this bet. I would say, put a gun to my head and I’ll make a bet, and if I’m wrong, the bullet shoots and blows my brains out. Here’s the bet: President Trump doesn’t believe what Putin’s saying in public. There’s not even any chance he believes
[20:14] that. There’s not the slightest, slightest chance that he believes what Putin is saying. Now, not believing what Putin is saying—what are your two choices? You call him out as a liar and then you go back to the past, before the box was shaken, to the path that absolutely wasn’t working. That was your only choice. Nobody has suggested another alternative. There was one choice: go to the path we know doesn’t work because we’ve been trying it, or you shake the hell out of this box and you say, “The past? I’m actually going to kind of ignore that.” If you looked at Chris Wallace’s interview, there were a few things that I thought were insanely important that probably won’t get any play today. One of them was that Putin said that when he talked to Trump about North Korea—wait for this part—
[21:14] that Putin said he understood that for a full denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Russia would have to be part of security guarantees for North Korea. How important is that? If you don’t have Russia, China, and the US and South Korea signing up for security guarantees, there isn’t the slightest chance that North Korea is going to get rid of their nukes. There’s a big question about whether they really care or not, but without that, there is no chance. Putin just signed up and announced it on TV. And why wouldn’t he? It seems it’s in his best interest to give the United States what it needs more than anything in the world, which is help with North Korea. Compared to Russia as a risk,
[22:17] North Korea, compared to Russia as a risk, Russia is under control. They have zero interest in nuking the United States. But we don’t know about North Korea; we don’t know who they might sell stuff to. That’s a bigger problem. And we may have gotten closer to a solution because Putin on that question is willing to be on our team. What was the other thing Putin said to Chris Wallace? He said that they also talked about Iran, and Putin said he hoped that he could be productive on that. Those are our two biggest issues—and also the entire Syria situation, if you consider that part of the Iran question. So these are our biggest international issues, and Putin seems to be stepping up on them. What did we give up? What did the
[23:18] President trade away? Here’s what the President traded away: he put Putin on the international stage, which is something he can take away. And if I’ve taught you nothing: you haven’t given anything away if you have the right to take it back in a moment. All the President has to do is take it back. He can push him back off the stage in ten minutes. So Putin is only on the international stage—wait for it—with President Trump’s permission. If President Trump withdraws his permission, if you will, and pushes Putin back into the shadows, who is going to disagree with that among our allies and around the world? Nobody. Nobody. Putin is back to something that
[24:22] looks like a big-time player on the same stage with Trump only because Trump is allowing it. Who has the leverage? It looks like Trump, because he created, as he always does, an asset that didn’t exist before. It’s the same thing he did with Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-un has something—a little bit of credibility with the world, etc.—that he did not have before. President Trump created that credibility out of nothing except persuasion. He just did the same thing in front of you for Putin. He created a version of Putin and a brand that allows Putin to stand on the stage next to the President of the United States. Is that a permanent thing? It is not. It is with permission. What would happen if Putin says, “I’m not going to meet with you, Mr. President”? Would that diminish the United States? It would not. What happens if President Trump says
[25:24] “I’m not going to meet with you anymore because you didn’t do your part of the agreement”? Would that diminish Russia and Putin? Yes, it would. Putin has something to lose, at least in terms of that status thing. Trump really doesn’t. So he’s created an asset out of nothing using persuasion alone. You have to look at Trump’s two statements together to understand that. One of his statements was: “With Russia, we have to let go of the past.” This is important, because if you don’t keep that “let go of the past” thing, the next thing he says will be confusing to you. So Trump stands in front of the world and says, “Your Intel agency says X, but Putin says very strongly Y.” He did not pick a winner.
[26:27] Now, there’s something else you should have heard in that, and it sounds like this: imagine you’re hearing President Trump say that President Putin says they didn’t do it and he was very strong about that. Now listen carefully: wink wink wink wink wink. Do you hear it now? Wink wink. How about now? Wink wink. Could he wink any harder? Is it even possible to wink harder than he was winking? Did he even sound a little bit like he believed it? He did not. Just listen to his body language. It’s like, “Yeah, Putin said very strongly they didn’t do it.” Do you really think he believes that? No. President Trump is describing to us a
[27:30] path to get from the crappy place we were—terrible relations with a country that we need to solve some other problems—to get to a better place that’s just better for the United States. And here’s how you do it. Hey, my guy standing next to me that I need for a bunch of things—here’s how you don’t do it: “President Putin, you are big liar. We cannot trust anything you say.” Why am I saying that in a Russian accent? Let me say it in an American accent: “President Putin, you’re a big old liar. Everything you say is a lie. We’re going to crush you.” Would that be good? That wouldn’t work. How about this: “President Putin denies the allegations,” wink wink wink wink wink. Now, the problem, of course, is that the American public is not so good at hearing and seeing the wink. You have to
[28:34] see the wink, or none of this makes sense. Now, I see a lot of folks talking about the President letting his ego get in the way because he wants the public know that he had a clean win over Clinton, and he doesn’t want to cloud it up with the Russians ruining the election. True. I’m sure that his ego would feel better if history recorded he had a clean win. And as far as I know, there’s no direct evidence that Russia actually successfully changed any votes. But the story is out there, right? And the odds that Russia tried to interfere with our election are probably 100 percent. Odds that we’ve tried to interfere with their politics in the past? 100 percent. So we’re not really arguing whether anybody tried to interfere with anybody else; 100 percent, of course we did. Rand Paul just
[29:36] noted in that video that I was showing you—a part you didn’t see—but he said there was some study where there were 81 instances of countries interfering with other countries’ elections. Apparently, it’s the most common thing in the world. So let me ask you this: which would be better for the United States? President Trump saying, “I think my election was not legitimate”? That’s choice one. Or what he did say: “This Russian interfering stuff is baloney; I won fair and square.” Which one is better for the country? There’s no competition. There are only two choices: he either says, “I wasn’t elected legitimately because Russia helped”—that would be terrible for the country. Terrible for
[30:36] him as well—that’s a factor—but it would be terrible for the country. What would be better for the country: to deny the impact of Russia no matter what they did or did not do? The smart, correct political thing to do is, even if you had secret information that some votes were changed, you should lie, lie, lie. Why? Because it’s good for me, it’s good for you, it’s good for the integrity of the country. There are situations where lying is absolutely the moral and correct thing to do. Here’s another example: there’s a terrorist that says, “I’m gonna kill somebody unless you do X,” but you can lie. Let’s say you lie and say, “Yeah, we did X,” and let the—not a terrorist, let’s say a kidnapper—let the victim go. Well, in that case, you’re lying to somebody bad and
[31:37] you’ve got a better result. Now I know what you’re gonna say. It goes like this: “Adams, are you saying that the ends justify the means?” Yes. Yes, I am. The ends do justify the means whenever you’ve done a cost-benefit analysis. When should you do cost-benefit analysis? Every time you make a decision. A hundred percent of the time, you should weigh all of the costs against all of the benefits, and then you should pick—and I know this is tricky—you should pick the one that’s bigger. If the costs are higher than the benefits, you don’t do it. If the benefits are really big but the costs are small, then you do it. Here’s what you don’t do: go get yourself a bumper sticker and put it on your Prius and say,
[32:38] “But the ends don’t justify the means!” If the extent of your analysis is a bumper sticker, that really doesn’t even mean anything, because the costs and the benefits are always compared in all decisions, all the time. It’s sort of like being against air. “I am against air. I like breathing, but I don’t like air. I don’t like oxygen.” It doesn’t make any sense to rail against the ends justifying the means when every decision is that—you’re always comparing the costs and the benefits. So should a president lie to the public about how credible the system is if he, let’s say, sincerely believes that’s what’s best for the country, best for everything? Absolutely. Absolutely, he should lie about that. I would be very disappointed if the President came out and said anything like this: “I’m not so
[33:39] sure I was legitimately elected.” Oh my God, the biggest mistake any politician could ever make. Yes. So, before my critics pile in and say some version of, “Scott, you are ignoring the ethical and moral dimension again! You are a bad person who ignores the ethical and moral tensions!”—no, I’m explicitly saying those are part of the costs and/or benefits. They’re not the only ones. Sometimes avoiding nuclear holocaust is also in the equation, in which case telling a lie to avoid a nuclear holocaust—maybe that’s a case where the ends justify the means. Deal. There’s something I
[34:41] call the IBM effect happening with the pundits who are watching this situation with Putin, etc. And the IBM effect goes like this: back when I was working in the corporate world—this is a million years ago—if you had a choice of getting an IBM system or computer versus some other vendor, the common saying at the time was “Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM.” Because IBM service was so good that if something went wrong, IBM would just fix it. I remember the first time I did a deal with IBM. I was in charge of negotiating contracts for that section of the bank, and I said, “Now let’s negotiate your contract,” after we had decided to pick them. And the IBM rep said, “Oh, we don’t do that.” And I said, “Come on, everybody negotiates contracts. That’s
[35:44] how the world works. You don’t just give me a contract.” And IBM said, “Yeah, we do.” And I would look at the contract and I’d say, “There are all these things we would worry about that are not mentioned. What happens if you put in a system and it doesn’t work? What happens if we need some kind of an adjustment? What happens if we chose wrong and we need an upgrade? There’s nothing in your contract that would protect us in those cases.” And do you know what IBM says? They say, “We’re IBM. If something’s wrong, we’ll fix it. Period. That’s our business model. If something’s wrong, we will stay up all night, we’ll pay money, we’ll do whatever it takes. That’s on us.” And so I ended up signing a non-contract, if you will, with IBM that didn’t really say much except we’re gonna buy your stuff. And when trouble happened—because it always does, right? Nothing goes smoothly—what did IBM do? They fixed it. Was it in
[36:44] the contract? Nope. Did they argue about it? Nope. Because that was their business model: “We’ll fix it. Period.” Now here’s my point: that was the reason that people would say nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM. Because something always goes wrong after you choose the system. It’s like, “Oh, I wish I’d done this right, should have done this,” or it doesn’t work. But if you choose the other vendor, something goes wrong, and you might not be able to fix it so easily. So even if it was the right choice, you could still get fired for it if something goes wrong. You’re seeing the same thing here with the Russia situation. If you are a Russia pundit—let’s say you’re an American pundit talking about Russia, or you are a news person—what is the thing you can say about Putin and Russia that will never get you fired? And by that I mean you will never be wrong if you say this:
[37:47] What’s the one thing you can always say about Russia that will make you look like a legitimate pundit and observer, that will never be wrong? “You should be tough with Russia. You need to be tough.” That’s it, right? The IBM opinion on Russia is: “You have to be tough,” because whoever says that is never going to get fired. If it turned out that the answer was not being tough, and let’s say the President’s approach gets us to a good place—would that pundit get fired for saying we should have been tough with Russia? Not really, because that’s sort of the “picking IBM” choice. It’s such a bland, normal, routine thing to say: “We need to be tough with Russia.” You’re not going to get
[38:48] fired for that even if it turns out that the other plan worked better. So saying “You’ve got to be tough with Russia” is everybody keeping their job and saying the safe thing. Because it’s just so obvious what Trump is doing—it’s what he always does. He shook the box so freaking hard that—and this is the hilarious part—Trump has made his critics compare Putin to Brennan and Clapper and argue about which one is less reliable. Think about that. President Trump has caused the entire world to debate whether Putin, who has essentially just admitted to all manner of bad behavior, is more or less credible than Clapper and Brennan. And that’s a legitimate question that we’re actually talking about. We’re actually having that conversation. He did that. Now, that’s as hard as you can shake
[39:50] a box. They’re saying even Newt Gingrich is freaking out. Yeah, when you see somebody like Newt have such a strong statement—if you didn’t see it, Newt tweeted that—he wasn’t too specific, but whatever, I think you’re talking about the Intel versus Putin question. And if the President doesn’t clarify that, it’s the biggest mistake of his presidency. I agree with Newt that if the President didn’t clarify what he meant about our own Intel agencies versus Putin, it would be one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency. But then he clarified it. Wink wink. Here’s the clarification:
[40:51] I want to read the actual tweet, but I don’t want to make you wait. The clarification was: “We have to let go of the past.” That’s the clarification. Because when you see “we have to let go of the past” and you see it next to “Putin says he didn’t do this stuff,” now you can hear the wink. If you take away the first statement about ignoring the past to get to the next level, then you can’t hear the wink. All you hear is: “Wait a minute, did I just hear the President say our own Intel was no more reliable than this lying dictator guy? I’ve got a problem. What’s going on here?” So was Newt correct? Absolutely. What Trump said was so misconstrued because people didn’t quite get why he was going for that. Without a clarification, it would be a big mistake. And then the President did the best you
[41:54] can do in this situation. Because you can’t actually go in public and say, “Look, could you just go along with this? I’m just trying to play nice with this guy because we need him. Will you just let go? We all know that they interfered with the election, or at least they attempted to change the result.” You can’t say that, and you don’t want him to. The best he can do is give you enough clues so that you can hear the wink. And if you don’t hear the wink yet, you’re missing the show. Now, one of the most fun answers at the press conference was when they asked Putin if he cared who won the presidency, and he said, “Yeah, we preferred Trump.” First of all, I don’t know that that was true, right? Because we’re talking about two people who didn’t say anything true for 24
[42:55] hours. Between Putin and Trump, they’re both playing a diplomatic dance which, in this case, required no truth. It was a truth-free process by both players that actually is probably getting us to a productive place—or at least we hope that’s the plan. If we play well together and just sort of ignore the reality of what we’ve done to each other in the past, maybe we have a chance of moving on. So the fact that Putin said he preferred Trump, of course, just makes all the conspiracy theorists go nuts. But here’s an interesting question—let me… this is one of those questions that is too painful to think about, which is why I like to mention it. What if—now, this is something I’m not allowed to say, because the moment I say it, I’ll be called a traitor and treasonous, and I’ll be taken
[43:57] out of context. So let me preface it by saying: I really like the United States. I like it much more than I like Putin. Just so you know: the United States, excellent; Putin, just somebody we have to work with. So I’m not comparing them or anything like that. But what would happen, in theory, if Putin thought he knew what was good for the United States, and it happened to be good for Russia at the same time? Because those two things are connected, right? Yeah. If the United States and Russia are good with each other, then both of them prosper. And if we’re not good with each other, then we’re both in some trouble in big ways—North Korea, Iran, and Russia itself. So what if, hypothetically, Putin actually thought that President Trump was better
[44:59] for both Russia and the United States? What if he actually thought that was true? What if he honestly thought, “No, I’m not trying to destroy the United States. That’s crazy. How the hell am I going to destroy the United States? It would be destabilizing; it wouldn’t even be good for me. But one of these candidates might be good for Russia and good for the United States, and we both win.” So yeah—traitor! He jails and kills reporters! So my statement is: it’s entirely possible that Russia and the United States might have the same interests on some questions. And for those of you who see the world as black and white—either you’re a traitor or you’re a patriot—well, sometimes the world is less clean
[46:00] than that. Does anybody feel more comfortable with the presidency after listening to this Periscope? Because if you weren’t hearing the wink, it was pretty scary stuff. But if you do hear the wink, all he’s doing is the same play he did with North Korea. You could just say Russia is North Korea minus two months, right? So my prediction is this: there is no way to know if things will go well in the future or not, but Trump has shook the box and took the heat because the old way of thinking absolutely wasn’t going to work. And the new way of thinking might work or might not work, but it probably won’t be worse. So he shook the box. He got us a new
[47:01] situation. And what would happen—let me ask you—what would happen if whatever Putin and Trump came up with… what happens if we don’t see the results we wanted? Let’s say Putin once again interferes with the midterm elections. What would be the right response? Well, I think Trump would shake that box again. So if you’re thinking that the United States is locked into a plan that we will ride forever no matter whether it works or not, I think you’re looking at the wrong President. This President is willing to shake that box as many times as he needs to shake it and take the heat for shaking it. But you’ve got to hear the wink, or none of this works. Nobody believes Putin’s telling the truth. Nobody—not the President, not anybody—believes that Russia stays out of our business, nor does anybody believe we stay out of their business. But I do
[48:03] believe that the two leaders talked to each other. And this is the part—I wasn’t in the room, but I feel fairly convinced that this is likely to be the nature of their private conversation: “There’s nothing in this for either of us to be enemies. There’s just nothing to win. There’s no upside. But we are willing to work with you on these things that are important to all of us.” Yeah. And I would say Rand Paul has—I think Rand Paul is the only person in government, maybe the only citizen, who came out of this looking good, because he didn’t say a single thing that wasn’t either factual or based on good reason—reasonable, etc. I’m not sure I would necessarily back
[49:05] Rand Paul for president after Trump leaves. I’m not sure I agree with all of his policies, but you just saw some high-level behavior there. I don’t know that Rand Paul was always playing at this level. It feels like he took it up a level to a presidential level. I don’t think he was quite at a presidential level before, but it feels like he’s definitely started to check all the boxes. Any other questions? Well, I’m glad I made you feel better. I wanted to get to this early, see if it has any impact on the coverage today. But if you don’t understand that President Trump also does not believe Putin, then the entire story doesn’t make sense. And there’s not a single chance in
[50:06] the world that President Trump believes what Putin is saying. Not any chance in the world. So, feel comfortable with that, and I will talk to all of you later.