they are under sanctions because of their invasion of ukraine and seizure of crimea and they wanted to get those sanctions lifted, and they believed they'd have a much better chance of that happening if donald trump were president. number two, putin wants to fracture the west. he believed, i think, rightly, if donald trump were president, he would be a chaos candidate, and he would be no longer able to lead the western alliance in a coherent way around russia. therefore, they wanted to tilt the election his way. i would say that was a pretty good bet. when you think about it, anderson, to say one other thing, for less than the cost of a mig-29 fighter jet, look what putin bought. >> the president talking about sort of aligning with russia on some sort of cyber initiative and then now clearly back tracking from that because the reaction to it has been understandably people are saying it's ludicrous. does it surprise you that the president at this stage would