If you're working on better conditions for prisoners, if you make that a popular issue and you invite mainstream media to weigh in on that subject, you're going to end up with a much more regressive public-policy environment than if you approach it in a quieter way. It's not because the public is stupid, it's just that people with only a cursory interest in something are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to it. That's impossible to explain in a cable-news media... it doesn't make sense.
WikiLeaks is a lot of things. This past year, WikiLeaks was a tool of Russian intelligence and the Russian government and their interference operation against the American presidential election to benefit Donald Trump.
Flint and its lead contaminated water are now the focus of sustained national attention including political attention.
There is also evidence that the people close - that people close to the [Donald] Trump campaign had advanced notice of WikiLeaks actions and may have had direct contact with WikiLeaks itself while they were releasing those documents from the Democratic Party, from the [Hillary] Clinton campaign.
I realized I was gay when I was a teenager and I couldn't imagine what it meant to be a gay adult. I just did the next thing that seemed right, and that led me from activism to media to the kind of media I'm in now. But I like where I've ended up.
I never thought when I was a kid that I would become an adult. I never thought of myself as having any sort of distant horizon. I have sort of leapt without a master plan.
My idea of what was going on in politics was driven by activism. I came out when I was 17, and right away I started working in the AIDS activist movement. For me, politics was about getting drugs approved and getting prisoners access to the same kind of drugs that you could get on the outside. It was about getting needle exchanges approved. That was politics. These were policy problems that were killing people, and we were trying to get them changed.
October 7th [2016], indeed, WikiLeaks released its whole new dump. A whole new bunch of e-mails and documents, this time from [Hillary] Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, e-mails that U.S. intelligence say were hacked by Russia. Apparently, again, they were waiting for the best possible timing on the release.
What was particularly impressive by the [Donald] Trump campaign at the time is how they were so organized around the WikiLeaks stuff.
There had been a proposed plank for the platform that said the Republican Party believed the United States should support Ukraine in any way that we could up to and including providing them weapons, so they could fight off Russian incursions into Ukraine.That was the proposed plank in the Republican Party platform. The [Donald] Trump folks didn`t care about anything else.
Russia and [Vladimir] Putin`s antipathy toward Hillary Clinton from her time as secretary of state, Russia`s antipathy and loathing and fear of the U.S. State Department in general, those two - those things that we know about Russia they put a worrying cast over how successfully the new administration here has hollowed out and emptied out the U.S. State Department in just the few weeks since then been in charge.
Part of what the [British] dossier says is this, quote, "The operation", meaning the effort to influence our election, "that has been conducted with the full knowledge and support of [Donald] Trump and senior members of his campaign team. In return, in return, the Trump team has agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue."
It makes sense in that environment that you would hold on in the U.S. government to the people who know their way around this particular block.
We do have evidence the [Donald] Trump campaign was working to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue.
After [Dan Fried] was initially hired into the Foreign Service in 1977, five subsequent presidents of both parties thought it would be a good idea to keep him on. That his deep understanding, his knowledge of all the players and so many of the secrets it would make him an indispensable asset, particularly when it comes to dealing with Russia.
The [Donald] Trump administration got rid of the number one and number two most senior people ahead of [Dan fried] in the foreign service, so that did make him the most senior person still standing - but now he`s out, too.
This [British] dossier is still considered to be mostly uncorroborated but it`s overall allegation is that the Trump folks knew, the [Donald] Trump folks knew about the Russian campaign to interfere in our election, they supported it, they cooperated with it, and in exchange, they made promises to the Russians.
The [Donald] Trump folks chose not to keep [Dan Fried] on. He was actually - I said he was actually the third-most senior diplomat in the foreign service.
After [Donald] Trump and his campaign manager both initially denied having anything to do with the platform change, a Trump campaign official now admits that the campaign pushed to soften the Russian language in the platform. It says it was done specifically at Trump`s request.
[Dan Fried] served under President [Barack] Obama and under President George W. Bush before that and under President [Bill] Clinton before that and under President George H.W. Bush before that and under [Ronald] Reagan before that and under [Jim] Carter before that. He has been there a long time.
A Russian citizen who worked for the [Donald] Trump campaign manager in Ukraine, worked for Paul Manafort when Manafort was working in Ukraine, that Russian citizen visited the United States around the time of the Republican convention.
When Vladimir Putin runs up against American power and American criticism and American leadership that reminds him of what Russia isn`t, when he runs up against people who he worries are funding his dissidents or supporting protests against him, when he runs up against criticism of the way he runs his own country, what he`s running up against is the State Department.
Silencing the U.S. State Department, putting a friend of Vladimir Putin`s in charge at the U.S. State Department, who stands by quietly while the State Department gets hollowed out, gets gutted, that`s a dream for the Russian government, right? That`s a dream for Putin.
When you think about me talking to Rick Santorum or Pat Buchanan or one of these old guys, part of what makes that a joyful experience for me is that in my head I'm thinking, He has to talk to me. Like, poor Pat Buchanan, all the things you've done and you end up having to talk to me.
It is hard to stay patient about policy matters where everybody agrees about what needs to be done and then it just doesn't happen, like reforming the immigration system and getting rid of family immigration jails and closing Guantanamo and criminal-justice reform. All these issues, there is basically consensus. There's no rational objections whatsoever, but it can't happen because of other stupid steps we have to take in politics.
