a white blazer today and all of the commentators were talking about that never did that before every other time i think they said she had a black blazer so that s one change she s known as muti here in germany which is german for mommy in a way you ve written that now and she is grandma moved. so how close would you say we are then to the post miracle era. i think it started quite quickly after the election was won in september people started conjecturing about that all the way along doesn t mean that she s going to step out doesn t mean that she s not going to be there for a long time how long depends on the cohesion of the coalition but you can t get around that problem she says in effect in a situation where a second term president is although she s in her fourth term so she s a lame duck and i would i wouldn t use that expression of what i would say that she s in a position where she can avoid that question i mean she s also never said i said
chose not to take his criticism because supported the formation of a government within his mandates framework and he has told us what is necessary i believe that is also reflected in what we have worked out. at the top. one hundred seventy one days after the general election last september germany finally has a new government and. is once again back in charge. well i m joined now here at the big table by jack james he s the executive director of the american institute for contemporary german studies at johns hopkins university he knows the inside the outsides of german politics and u.s. politics it s good to have you back on the show you were at the swearing in today what was it like well i think it was less enthusiastic than dissipated i mean i think the vote was a foregone conclusion and i think what now is the question is how does she make this time different i mean they were all told that today weren t they you guys have
and mueller investigation, the reason that the security clearance issue is so important has nothing to do with the amateur hour aspect that it lends to this perception we have of the white house, people there unqualified to do their jobs. jared kushner wasn t involved in politics before the campaign and never been involved in government before he became the senior adviser to the president of the united states. but what mueller is going to be focussing in on are those conversations that jared kushner has had with foreign officials. and there s a question about whether or not he was forthcoming enough when he told congress that he did not discuss financing for his real estate endeavors with the russians. so, that seems to be a big open question here and something that could further on down the road potentially lead to conflict. so let me ask you this question. you ve been obviously on the trail of the mueller investigation, the headline and peter s story this morning is mueller is gain
conspiracy on the part of any senior transition or campaign officials including donald trump himself, but that doesn t mean you don t consider what could be asserted and what could be claimed. remember two of the major things that are still a mystery in this investigation are did anyone in the trump transition i m sorry, trump campaign team coordinate at all with wikileaks? that s a big open question. those e-mails from the dnc were hacked. some people say that was a crime. some people say the russian government did that and provided them to wikileaks and then wikileaks provided them to the benefit of the trump campaign. did anybody in the trump campaign coordinate or know about that or arrange that? that s a big unknown. the second big unknown is why did michael flynn lie to the fbi about his communications with a russian ambassador about sanctions? did the president know? did the president ask?
yes, but i think what we also still want to know is underlying all of this, what were the russians trying to do? and mueller may be getting closer to that through this investigation, which is if there was no collusion, if there was no conspiracy, what were the russians attempting to do by there with their contacts with people either in the transition and eventually in the administration. and that s been the thing about these documents, from papadopoulos to today s charging document, to learn exactly what they know about russia. and to think almost a year of the president being in office, this investigation is ongoing. it makes you wonder how much longer is it going to last. i mean i think we just seemly don t know the answer to that question, but of course we will continue to follow everything. thank you so much for joining us