Page 1422 - Leverage News Today

Moral standing in the world and the way this is going to be looked at and the presidents, i think, again, disingenuous if not dishonest, false choice here. if we condemn mbs, if we sanction saudi, somehow theyre going to turn against us. theyre not going to do that. we have far more leverage over them than they do us, and theyre going to continue to be an opponent of iran in any event just because theyre kind of -- the sunni lead and the iranians are the shia lead so thats going to go on regardl...

World war 2 it has been the u.s.s job to modulate by using basically the threat of military action and financial leverage and all of the leverages of power to moderate behavior. the u.s. has various rings of allies like the uk and the western allies and israel to some extent. the audis are an important partner in the region on some things like intelligence sharing. part of the reason why the u.s. staked out positions and tries to weigh these things from china to middle eastern powers. its becaus...

>> we will see how democrats choose to handle this and senate republicans, absent corker and jeff flake decide to deal with this. >> and thats the real question. >> the president doesnt do a shining city on a hill, and everything has to do with dollars and cents. and because of our position in the middle east, and our decision to box in iran, and tamp that down, thats a case the president can make. our alliance with saudi arabia has been a key part of the diplomat diplomatic part of the world, a...

Anything about whitaker because, you know, hes one of his iowa ans. >> marcy wheeler and jed shugarman, thank you both. senator jeff merkley of oregon, should the senate be doing something about this situation in the lame duck session? >> well, they absolutely should. i mean, listen, this is an individual who is being investigated, his company -- his former company is being investigated for a predatory scam on which he was the enforcer. weve heard how he abused his office in iowa. weve now hea...

Confirmation process to avoid the appointment of cronies of unfit character. and yet thats what we have now right now, unfit character. >> is there any forcing mechanism, any leverage that democrats and minority wield in this senate between now and the new congress? >> well, if we have partisanship, and then were -- its going to be difficult. but if we have bipartisanship on this issue then leverage can be exerted. otherwise its an issue for the courts to take up and say is this a violation of t...

>> i can imagine that vladimir putin was looking at the fsb as being a very important institution that he understood because he was from that world. >> putin soon had the fsb utilize some old kgb tricks, obtaining compromising material called kompromat, on a targeted individual to gain leverage. >> when he became director of the fsb, the prosecutor general of moscow, a man named skaratov, was starting to prosecute a number of the crimes around the yeltsin family, and mr. putin at the time helped...

Scrutinized and now the democrats have the power and the leverage to be able to do it. >> so bakari, lets look at sort of the top -- not the top ten, but the greatest hits of democratic targets here. youve got nancy pelosi, talking about going after the presidents tax returns. long been an issue here. you have congressman adam schiff talking about looking in the money laundering, particularly if russians were laundering through the trump organization. and then elijah cummings talking about whats...

Palestinians and the israelis or managing the terrorist situation in yemen, those are things that they need the saudi governments support on. and the crown prince has been the chief architect of the yemen campaign. >> lets not forget the big picture here. there is also a war going on in yemen that saudi arabia is involved in. general marx, to you on that, the u.s. potentially had an opportunity, there were parts of the trump administration that were using the khashoggi killing as leverage to get...

The democrat from ohio who is believed to be mounting a challenge to nancy pelosi for the speaker seat in a surprise move endorses nancy pelosi. what does this mean for pelosis bid for speaker of the house? is she basically over the finish line or is are there still problems for her? >> i think she is probably over the finish line. there is a large number of democrats who ran for congress in republican leaning seats who pledged to vote against nancy pelosi but i think tengetiond they will find t...

Regime authority, regime policy and regime culture particularly as pertains to business. that makes the regime very culpable and they should be condemned for that action. i do believe there is a path forward. we can certainly -- im not suggesting, a lot of other measures, walk away from the arms deal but we need to change the nature of the relationship going forward and i think we can wind up with a stronger relationship of the saudis are willing to move toward a more value path. >> you think th...