I feel like ive been gone for a year. You have. I never take that long. Hi, heilemann. How are you doing . How is it going . Really . You want to start this way . Start 2017 like this . Be nice. Its on. With us on set, managing editor of bloomberg politics, John Heilemann and msnbc political analyst and professor at the university of Michigan School of public policy, former democratic congressman, harold ford jr. And in washington, columnist and associate editor for the Washington PostDavid Ignatius joins us. Harold ford, youre a football guy. Tonight, alabama and clemson. What do you think . You got to knock the champ out. Alabama are the champs and you got to see roll tide. I think they are going to win tonight. The offense of clemson is sophisticated and everybody thought washington was but Deshawn Watson is good. Any nfl games you saw this weekend that you were i watched the giants last night. And beckham couldnt come up with the catches when eli was throwing to him. You have to give credit to aaron rodgers. He was the hottest guy at the end of the season. Packers are on a roll. Somebody showed yesterday the winner of the giants packers, whenever they have played in the playoffs, wins the super bowl. I didnt know there were playoffs yesterday. I havent been following the nfl closely. Great. Lets get to the news now. Hold on. I want to talk about the Golden Globes. That is the news . That is not the news. The game that happened yesterday. That and the Golden Globes. The crown won and la la land also won. Into the oscars as a heavy favorite. Its overrated and its more of a movie designed to make hollywood love itself. I heard that. It is very much a movie about creators and, you know but its very good. Look at us. Look at us. Arent we wonderful . We tried something new. We brought back the musical. Its about people who make musicals. Very good. Its a muvensical inside a musi . Like singin in the rain . Yeah, how i feel about that. Never met a metta i didnt like. The office of the director of National Intelligence findings on russias involvement in the u. S. Election. On friday, the dni released a declassified summary of a more detailed report that went to president obama and president elect trump. The report makes the assessment that russian president Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the president ial election. It says that russias goals were to undermine public faith in the u. S. Democratic process, quote, denigrate secretary Hillary Clinton by harming her electability and potential presidency and stating, quote, we further assess putin and the russian government had a clear preference for president elect trump. It said with high confidence, russias military intelligence units, the gru, used websites to release u. S. Victim data obtained in Cyber Operations and exclusives to Media Outlets and high confidence that rusch intelligence relayed stolen information from the dnc and senior democratic officials to wikileaks. The report goes on. Russia collected on some affiliated targets but did not conduct a comparable disclosure campaign. Still the department of Homeland Security finds that russian actors were not involved in vote tallying. They will use to influence future efforts in the United States and u. S. Allies abroad. Still, many analysts are questioning the report for potentially being long on conclusions, but short on facts. The New York Times max fisher writes that this dni report is so odd, i worry it will end up undermining facts that are already established by opencourse methods. Dan dressler at the Fletcher School of law and diplomacy quoted this weekend, quote, i think it requires the reader to trust the intelligence agencies and we are now in a low trust society. Which is why we have you here, David Ignatius, because if this low trust society we find ourselves in and people dont trust golden globe balloteers they trust you. You get the conclusions and, wham, they hit you. I was surprised through the weekend, unfortunately, it is reacttions were limited to 140 character tweets. From a lot of experts who seemed less than impressed by the facts that were contained within this report. Jeffrey goldberg said i wish there had been more facts. You saw what dan dressler and max fisher said. It was just odd and there seemed to be a lot of padding in there, including throwing in things about Russian Television shows for russian audience people and spoken in russian and somehow influencing our election. Give us your take of the report. What was missing and what we still need to dig into . Joe, i was one of the people friday night when i read the report who was surprised. The allegations are very strong. They are the ones that mika read at the outset in introducing this segment. But as i looked in the report, i thought the evidence was thin. You put out a query to me and a couple of of others saying what do you think . And i responded friday night. Just that. That the evidence in this unclassified version is not sufficient to back up the claims that were made. So that tells me that its likely that in the classified version, which we have not seen, there is significantly more evidence and that raises really interesting question for congress. This week, democratic and republican members of congress will be briefed on the full unclassified report. And they are going to have some really tough decisions of what to make of that, how to respond. Ill look to john mccain and Lindsey Graham and democrats like adam schiff. One final point. Its possible that in this unclassified version, there are issues that, one, enforcement. Fbi, our whole rule of law structure, are going to want to look at. There is an allegation of significant activity by russia. Did any of that activity violate u. S. Law . So those are the two things im looking for first. Or actually sway the election in some way. Well, noe i think we will never know that fully and to know what changed somebodys opinion. The lead line in terms of support that putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at the election, that the goals were to undermine public faith in the u. S. Democratic process and to denigrate Hillary Clinton. How . How, and how did they do that . Here is another interesting thing again, david, looking at the experts and their view of it this weekend. I believe it was max fisher. I may be confusing him with somebody else. But somebody this weekend said it is obvious that from all of this that the russians didnt even think donald trump was going to win the election but they were more interested in denigrating Hillary Clinton and actually trying to make her election look illegitimate like she claimed putins election was illegitimate in 2011. I think you hit on something important. Surely in the kremlin in mid october, you thought your efforts to to under mine the election by Hillary Clinton she would be upset and angry. I think from the russian standpoint, the idea that anything you could do to weaken this likely Hillary Clinton would have been attractive to putin, given what we know, what this report says. He had a grudge. He looked at her as his enemy. In his mind, she shot first and went after him first in 2011 and 2012. I think that is right. They were expecting probably in mid october that trump would lose and she would win. Just one more question before we move on. Im sorry, mika. Its going to be about the Golden Globes. It wont be about the Golden Globes or the crown. You have to see that. Im not going to secondguess the intelligence agencies. Too much of that, obviously, going around right now. But if they knew their declassified report was going to be so thin that it actually undermine their classified information, undermine their standing with the public, wouldnt it have been better for them just not to release a report . Its hard to secondguess that. I think they probably felt friday that there would be leaks and want ayacht as possible, an account of what they could declassify and legally tell people. I think the real test comes in the days ahead. What will congress do . This is an enormous responsibility for them. This is ans of a serious attack on the United States and Political Institutions. How are they going to respond . What i mentioned, is there any Law Enforcement legal issue that has to be followed up to maintain our rule of law, our structure . I think those are the questions we should in the back of our minds. Hopefully, we will know more about what wasnt told to us on friday. John i think Matt Iglesias tweeted after the report came out, one thing is for sure, im paraphrasing, but comey did more damage to Hillary Clinton than putin. David just said its hard to know what the ultimate impact. In an election where youre talking about in michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania, the margin was less than 1 . Right. A lot of things happened. A lot of things. From 45 days to the end of the first debate. Which one of those things was decisive . Its not one thing, a variety of things. Its clear that, to your point, there are three things that russia could get out of this. A threefer. The notion of the undermining Hillary Clinton if she wins and the notion of undermining american democracy in general. Right. On the longest shot, i think probably from anybodys reasonable point of view is if you win a Lottery Ticket and get donald trump elected. If you get one of those three things done the campaign is successful. As it turns out, all three of those things turned on to happen. The perfect causation will never be proven but all three of the things that russia wanted end up happening as a result and not necessarily as a direct result of this one thing but that is a Successful Campaign by any standard. If you want to get into putins head you can draw a Straight Line from Hillary Clinton in 2011 undermining his election and then him, obviously, doing this, harold, going, okay, you want to undermine my credibility . Now im going to try to undermine yours. I think he probably did using in systemic way to undermine confidence in our system. I think the thing that is confusing us is you touched on it, one is you have democrats saying this is the reason that Hillary Clinton lost and john touched on that. Im not necessarily convinced of that. But what i am convinced of and where i would differ a little bit and i think where youre going, you can correct me if im wrong, this is a problem. Blp t whether the declassified briefing gets into the details or not its interesting to see davids point how Congress Reacts to this. I think its broadly accepted that putin had a i think its a huge problem. I think the political classes are so intoxicated with did this help trump win or not help him win . Not really the point but his motive was to influence, to johns point, undermine confidence in the system, to hurt her if she was elected, to hurt her credibility and standing. And that has to be addressed by us as a nation. What im trying to figure out is whether the headlines got ahead of the story. Right. Whether the conclusions of the agencies are actually supported by the facts and the issues. Now, regardless, this is extraordinarily dangerous to american democracy. This is an enemy trying to influence by going in and hacking the dnc. That is a problem. All im saying is i saw the big headlines on friday. Right. But then i started hearing from people that i respect, my go to people who know this better than anybody else, saying wait a second, we are not so sure the facts in this declassified report actually match up to the headlines. That is the inquiry here and that is what we all should do. We should be asking these questions without drawing any conclusions that would be less damming. Its not like we are Shawn Hannity tweeting god bless russia or whatever he tweeted yesterday. Get ready. Lets get the facts straight. When secretary clinton during the beginning of this investigation on her email server that a mistake was made on her part and she made an effort to try to do something she shouldnt have done, it hurt her throughout this campaign. One of the things president elect trump should be very careful of, its clear that the russians dont have our best interests at heart and he needs to say that forthrightly and consistently and then move on. He needs to say that every day. Right. I will tell you a disconnect because they are not saying certain things that help with credibility. Here is what he did say. I think one of the reasons why we didnt have this conversation over the weekend is because of his tweets. He stepped on the story. Ed some things he should have never said. They were grossly inappropriate. He puts words into the mouth of spy agencies that they didnt say about no outcome of the election. And i think that i think that basically stepped on this story. I agree. When a story is thin, let it be thin. Shortly after he was briefed by intelligence officials on friday, president elect donald trump released a statement on the russian hacking report saying he had a constructive meeting and conversation and that he has tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation. Thats great. Stop right there hold on a good tweet. Go golfing. Right there. Great job. Stop. No more, right . Right, john . There is always more. Im going to argue, oh, my god, take the other side of this. On the reports findings he said while russia, china and other countries outside groups and people are consistently trying to breakthrough the cyberinfrastructure of our governmental institutions and businesses and organizations, including the Democratic National committee there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the collection including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with Voting Machines. There were attempts to hack the Democratic National committee. But the rnc had strong hacking defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful. Trump said he would appoint a team to give him a plan to counterhacking within the first 90 days. What is wrong with that . Later on, friday night, he tweeted gross negligence by the Democratic National committee allowed hacking take place. The republican National Committee had strong defense. On saturday morning, he wrote intelligence started very strongly. Here is the one. Even what he said the night before. The dncp it was true. They left the barn door open. But at the same time, he should have just been quiet. Put out that statement. I love the intelligence agency. I have respect. Boom. Go shoot a 76. Exactly. Go golfing. But this is what is troubling and i have a theory and my theory is that donald trump has no minders on saturday morning. Now stop because no, im serious. Because i find that some of the most outrageous things that happen, happen on saturday morning with these tweets. Really . Youre saying a hole in our cyberdefenses . I think saturday morning im afraid reince and jared are going to have to figure out how to keep him occupied saturday mornings. How do we cover the saturday morning shift, guys . We have a problem. The tweets are, you know, come on now. Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results. Voting machines not touched. Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended dnc is so big that their totally embarrassed. We are going one tweet at a time. Oh, my not get overwhelmed. David, what trump says there true or false about the conclusions there was no tampering . And no smiling. No effect. The report is much more cautious about effects. We should make that clear. What is fascinating about those tweets is the way in which trump just keeps coming back to chew on the bone. Its as if he feels that there is something here that is denigrating his win and undermining his standing. As you said if he had left it alone at the outset it would have sat there responsible and should i dare say president ial . The coming back part that is of concern. Thats important because this process isnt going to stop today. It goes forward now. Congress reviews this. Congress probably will have its own investigation. There may be other investigations. President elect trump, soon to be president trump, has to think how do i deal with this on an ongoing bases . You said in the past he can really wreck his early months with a collision. Right. If he maintains this very defensive tone as if this is an attack on me and my victory. If the tables were turned and the attack was on Hillary Clintons victory, what would Hillary Clinton be saying . She would say i won. Im setting up my cabinet. I won. People were trying to undermine her win. I got to say every time he goes he and talks about this stuff, it just draws people back to the fact that he lost the popular vote. He just needs to move forward. He is president of the United States. The other thing he needs to do is stop saying things that arent true. Right. That is the part where i might agree with you. To davids point, yeah, he comes back to it like a dog with a bone but the thing that troubles me and everybody should be concerned intelligence stated there was no evidence that hacking affected the election results. That is not true. Just false. David why does he need to that is the thing