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Transcript-
President Trump: This is gonna be great television, I will say that.
Ex-Obama & Biden Operative Jen Psaki: This is going to be great television. There it is. It’s all a show. Never mind all the people in Ukraine, never mind the Europeans. And maybe as some have speculated, that show was some kind of premeditated ambush, a setup cloaked as a pool spray, an excuse to abandon Ukraine. Or maybe that show was designed for Trump to seem rough and strong by screaming at Zelensky, even though real strength is, of course, not bullying and big footing. It’s standing up for what’s right. That’s actual strength. Or maybe that show was just a big old gift to his pal Vladimir Putin. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was all the above. But whatever the intention, it’s clearly part of an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to control the narrative, to avoid accountability, to only let the public see a sliver. And it’s all what they want them to see. I want you to keep that in mind when you listen to this exchange from Friday’s meeting.
Brian Glenn: Why don’t you wear a suit? Why don’t you wear a suit? You’re the highest level in this country’s office and you refuse to wear a suit. Just wanna see do you own a suit?
Ex-Obama & Biden Operative Jen Psaki: That was actually a thing that happened. That is footage from the press, from the event in the Oval Office on Friday. And that hard hitting question came from a host from the far right cable channel, Real America’s Voice. His name is Brian Glenn. And for what it’s worth, he also happens to be dating Republican Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who congratulated him for that question about the suit. Now by choosing to put that guy in that room and by allowing a Russian reporter to find his way in the room earlier, however that happened, that’s exactly the kind of question Trump wanted to hear. That’s exactly the show that Donald Trump wanted to put on. David Remnick is the editor and chief of The New Yorker and the former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post. Michael McFaul is the former US ambassador to Russia. And they both join me now. I can’t think of two better people to help us understand what just happened on Friday. Let me start with you, David. I mean, I wanna start by just getting your reaction to what you saw on Friday. You’ve covered how many meetings in the United States, in Moscow, and other places around the world. What were you thinking when you were watching that?
David Remnick, editor and chief of The New Yorker and the former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post: I’ve never seen anything like this. It, it’s it’s absolutely unprecedented. And carried out, if this goes in the direction it seems to be going, this meeting will be remembered as a moral and a strategic disaster initiated by the president of the United States and his vice president. And it had all the uplift and spectacle of a mugging. This was, this didn’t happen by accident.
Ex-Obama & Biden Operative Jen Psaki: Mm-hmm
David Remnick: Um, vice presidents and presidents don’t pull off something like this spontaneously. Uh, they waited to the last question. It was apropo of almost nothing.
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