This was one of the most surreal days I have ever seen in American politics.
Donald Trump meeting in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin the President of Russia,
just days after indictments were announced against Russian hackers operating under the
orders of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.
The defendants worked for two units
of the main intelligence directorate of the Russian General Staff,
known as the GRU.
And so how did Donald Trump play it?
At this moment of intense national concern and anger.
What did he say to Vladimir Putin?
“I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful
in his denial today."
It isn't just that Donald Trump's critics were angry.
Perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president.
But if you look at Donald Trump's supporters, they were angry too.
This was the time and the place for the president to look Putin squarely in the eye
and say "You will be punished for what you did in 2016 and don't ever think about doing that again."
"But he didn't."
"He didn't, and that's what made it disgusting. That's what made his performance disgusting."
"He basically said he didn't buy what his own intelligence community was telling him."
"This was clearly not his best performance."
We are in an odd place as a country.
We are seeing something happen slowly, unfold slowly,
be revealed slowly, and none of us know
the full story.
People keep waiting for the magic piece of information.
And in fact I think that the constant obsessive focus on what we don't know –
"Nobody knows what was said privately between them."
"You gotta wonder, is he hoping that Putin is going to help him out again, as he did in 2016?"
has done too much to distract from how much at this point we really do know.
The connections between the Trump Organization and Donald Trump himself and Russia and Vladimir Putin,
they go back and they go forwards.
Donald Trump Jr. said said, "Russians make up a pretty
disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
And then in 2014 Eric Trump added,
"We don't rely on American banks.
We have all the funding we need out of Russia."
We know there are huge numbers of all-cash purchases for Trump properties.
More than $100,000,000 worth. Again, all cash
from Russians between 2003 and 2017.
So there were deep financial ties between the Trump Organization and Russia even before
Donald Trump ran for president but then Donald Trump ran for president.
I am officially running for President of the United States
and we are going to make our country great again.
We know that Donald Trump repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin throughout the election.
Putin said some very good things about me
People say, "Oh, Trump is going to be weak with Putin" because he said some nice things about me. Okay.
I think when he calls me brilliant, I'll take the compliment, okay?
We know that during all this Donald Trump got up on a stage and asked for Russia's help
getting Hillary Clinton's deleted e-mails
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
And we know from Bob Mueller's investigation that the very same day Donald Trump did that,
Russia actually did try to hack into Hillary Clinton's e-mails.
Units engaged in active cyber-operations
to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
We know the Russians directly reached out to Trump's inner circle saying hey we've got
dirt on Hillary Clinton,
do you want it?
And the inner circle said yes.
We know a lot.
And we know it didn't end when Donald Trump became president,
because he said it, that he fired James Comey
the head of the FBI, to stop his investigation into Russia.
"When I decided to just do it," I said to myself
I said, "You know, this Russia thing with Trump
and Russia is a made up story, it's an excuse."
We know that he has again and again and again said that he wishes he'd never made Jeff
Sessions Attorney General
"Well, Sessions should have never recused himself.
And if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would pick somebody else."
Here's a crazy thing about all this. As much
wrongdoing as has clearly been committed,
it isn't clear anything illegal has been done,
by Trump himself anyway, obviously people around Trump have already gone to jail.
What we're doing now is we're sitting amidst all of this knowledge
about whether or not our elections
are actually secure, about whether our president is acting in our best interests or his own.
Despite all this coming out, who is going to act and what are they going to do?
"How many times have I stood up here and told you what I think about Vladimir Putin?
Vladimir Putin does not share our interests, Vladimir Putin does not share our values."
Republicans in Congress, their entire political future depends on Donald Trump's strength.
We know that Russia and the Trump campaign, whether publicly or privately
explicitly or implicitly, coordinated together.
We keep pretending here that the problem is that we don't have enough information.
We have plenty of information.
The problems that we don't know what to do with it.
"Thank you very much."