Transcripts For MSNBCW The Last Word With Lawrence ODonnell

Candidate may have had a loan for 60 million from a Russian Oligarch, as an economy guy, that sends up red flags. If you dont focus your entire career on the economy, i suppose that sends up a lot of red flags as well. It just seems weird. Yeah. Well, its also strange that its undisclosed this far into this investigation, and this far into all the public scrutiny that manafort has had. One of the interesting things in this reporting from Richard Engel tonight is not just the size of the financial relationship between this putinlinked oligarch and Paul Manafort, its that the manafort spokesman withdraw part of his statement to nbc news after he had initially given a statement saying manafort had never been indebted to his clients and wasnt at the time of the president ial campaign. Rescinding the statement after initially giving it to nbc is yet another red flag. Its very, very good shoeleather reporting from richard. Incredible. Indebtedness to a foreign adversary while running a president ial campaign to the tune of millions of dollars. Lets just let that sink in. Exactly. Rachel, have a great weekend. You too. The president is tweeting tonight about obamacare and the iran nuclear agreement, two deals that he appears to hate the most. But the biggest problem with them, according to reports, is that they were both done by president barack obama. President trump announced today he would no longer certify the landmark iran nuclear deal. Iran is not living up to the spirit of the deal. He put the ball in congress court. Our congress is highly unlikely to be able to resolve this issue. The president has kind of rolled the grenade in the room, had it go off, without having a strategy as to where were going. You saw what we did yesterday with respect to health care. There is no affirmative reason for pulling back these subsidies for the Insurance Companies other than to wreck it. I think it does come down to empathy. Health care, iran, puerto rico. There are peoples lives at stake. I met with the president of the Virgin Islands. Youre the president of the u. S. Virgin islands. I didnt have a schedule. But if i did have a schedule, i would say we are substantially ahead of schedule. Well, the people who understand these things did have a schedule. Repeal and replace by march, tax reform by august. Infrastructure by christmas. Strike one, two, three. Well, guess what. Were saying Merry Christmas again. A lot has happened on this friday, the 13th. But the two big policy announcements from the Trump White House in the last 24 hours on health care and the iran deal appear to have something in common. Here is the New York Times in june on what guides Donald Trumps decision making. Quote, whether out of personal animus, political calculation, philosophical disagreement or conviction that the last president damaged the country, mr. Trump made it clear, if it has mr. Obamas name on it he would just as soon erase it from the National Hard drive. Today the president attempted to unravel two president obama signature initiatives. Ending key obamacare subsidies to help lower the cost of premiums for lowincome of americans, and, as we reported last night and this afternoon. Decertifying the iran nuclear deal, putting the responsibility of the deal on congress. In his speech this afternoon the president claimed the deal was just a shortterm delay in irans quest for Nuclear Weapons. Despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency confirms that iran is honoring its nuclear commitments. Trump claimed iran is violating the spirit of the agreement. While the United States adheres to our commitment under the deal, the Iranian Regime continues to fuel conflict, terror and turmoil throughout the middle east and beyond. Importantly, iran is not living up to the spirit of the deal. France, germany and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement criticizing the president s remarks. Russia called it, quote, troubling, but israel praised President Trumps words as courageous. We should note, despite the president s rhetoric, the deal is not dead yet. It falls to congress now to decide whether to attach new conditions to the agreement or to reimpose sanctions and end the deal. Here is President Trump after his announcement this afternoon. Were going to see what happens. Were going to see what they come back with. They may come back with something thats very satisfactory to me, and if they dont within a very short period of time, ill terminate the deal. Now, the punting of this football to congress was reportedly a compromise between the president and Senior Administration officials. The Washington Post reported this week that President Trump was, quote, incensed by arguments from his secretary of state and secretary of defense that the agreement, while flawed, offered benefits. He didnt want to certify to congress that iran was complying with the deal, even though the evidence is that iran is complying with the deal. Quote, he threw a fit, said one person familiar with the meeting. He was furious, really furious. Its clear he felt jammed. So White House National security adviser h. R. Mcmaster and other officials came up with this to, as the post put it, accommodate trumps loathing of the iran deal without actually killing it outright. So inasmuch as there is a trump doctrine, some of it is reportedly accommodating the president s loathing. Joining us now, steve clemons, editor at large at the atlantic, and msnbc contributor and ilan goldenberg, senior fellow and director of the middle east Security Program at the center for new american security. Gentlemen, good to see you. Steve, i talked to you shortly after the iran deal. I was in tehran while it was being negotiated, and no one in tehran, america or anywhere else where the deal was being talked about was under any impression that iran was suddenly going to become a friend of the west, a friend of america, was going to get out of the business it was in in yemen or with hezbollah or with assad. So the concept, the idea, that iran is violating the spirit of the deal is uninformed, at best. Thats absolutely right. I mean, this arrangement between the United States and russia, china, europe, germany, with iran, was based on high levels of mistrust. This was not a warm and fuzzy relationship. This was not a naive arrangement. This was something that was based on mistrust and with deep, deep verification. In fact, the head of the iaea said there is no nation in the world that has deeper and more profound verifications standards in place than we have now with iran. It was under those conditions that this was done. I think many of us who have been watching this come apart. I learned today from ben rhodes and Wendy Sherman and others who did a call that the Obama Administration had evidence that iran was just too months away from having enough fissile material for a warhead and actually crossing that line. So this was an imminent issue where there was a vector that we either get a deal or you were faced with a possibility of some form of potential kinetic military action by the United States and perhaps israel and iran. Those were the stakes in place, and donald trump acts as if he is completely unaware of these issues. Thats where we are today. Ilan, i remember the deal not being particularly popular amongst americans. It wasnt a particularly popular deal. People in america dont trust iran. And probably the only other the only competitive arena of mistrust is in iran because the people in iran dont trust america. There are hardliners in iran who have been waiting for this moment to say, this is our opportunity to walk away from this deal. What is the danger, what is the danger that this tough talk about the iran deal actually results in some parties walking away from it and the deal collapsing . The good news is that in the short term that doesnt look like that will actually happen. The bad news is i think we have actually got the worst of all worlds. We basically have the president generate an artificial crisis because he doesnt want to sign a document that acknowledges something barack obama did was half good and working, so instead we create the crisis. Shake the confidence of european partners, and then punt it to congress in a confused mess that isnt actually that intimidating or effective. You end up with the worst of all worlds. The iranians are probably saying we dont trust this guy and this could be the end of the nuclear agreement. On the other hand, for all this bluster, this is it, its not actually very intimidating. And then you add to the fact that you have others, russians, chinese looking at this probably scratching their heads and the israelis and saudis even the the israelis came out publicly saying they supported it probably underwhelmed overall. The president doesnt need congress to do any of what he actually laid out today. He could do all of this himself if he wanted to by laying out red lines. Instead he punts it to congress because he cant make a decision himself. Steve, if you were worried about the fact that you are working late on friday night, youre not alone, other than ilan and i. The president is working tonight. He has tweeted just a while ago. Many people talking with much agreement on my iran speech today. Participants in the deal are making lots of money on trade with iran. The president is right on that part. In fact, the only reason it seems that iran came to the table finally, after two years of negotiation and agreed to the deal, was that its economy was collapsing. The United States had imposed restrictions on trade, on the transfer of money absolutely. On the use of credit cards. The iranian economy was collapsing, the rugs they used to sell. This was an industrialized country. They are into the Global Economy again. We have brought the entire world together. The entire world together to close off iran, to create what were called then crippling sanctions and we worked together with the chinese and the russians, the indians, brazilians, the europeans. And we created conditions that basically changed irans calculus about what it was willing to do. And that is part of this arrangement, when were talking about the nuclear side, i agree with everything ilan just said, but another part of this was that iran was going to forestall the various pathways it might have to a nuclear capacity, nuclear bomb, they never basically said they were trying to build a Nuclear Weapon but they closed those down. In return for economic activity, for the removal of sanctions, for the normalization of economic relationships. And so i got to tell you, that the iranians privately have been saying already that the United States has already technically violated their part of the deal. When donald trump was in hamburg at the g20 meeting and actively lobbying against other National Leaders from investing in iran. Thats what theyre in it for. Yep. And we have been violating that part of that. Well see where this goes. Thank you both for joining me tonight. Joining us now. John mclaughlin, former acting director of the cia and an msnbc National Security analyst. John, thank you for joining me. I want to play you something that leon panetta said to mtp daily today about how in doing this donald trump rolled a grenade into the room. The president has kind of rolled the grenade in the room, had it go off, without having a strategy as to where were going. The reality is that we now have a decertification of this agreement, and that theyre not in compliance when they are in fact in compliance. Were out there alone without our allies. We have broken our word. And the bottom line here is that were throwing this whole mess to congress, which doesnt have a very good record of trying to deal with anything, much less the situation in iran. Its going to create a tremendous amount of confusion in a world thats already very dangerous. John, i mean, to just put a finer point on that. Congress cant get the easy things done. I am not sure they could successfully name a post office these days. And we have a situation where the president and the administration are coming out and saying our allies are actually supportive of the president on this, which is absolutely not true, particularly the allies involved in this deal. And then we have the abrogation of a deal where the verifying entity, the International Atomic Energy Agency, continues to verify that iran is doing the right thing, and we are still decertifying. Its fraught with problems. Absolutely. The International Atomic Energy Agency has certified compliance with the deal on eight separate occasions since it was inaugurated. Leon panetta has this exactly right. In fact, i would go maybe a step further and say i think this is one of the most damaging decisions that donald trump has made since becoming president , because of the scope and the breadth of the impact that it will have, separating us from allies, strengthening hardliners in iran, pushing our allies closer into positions with russia and china. At the same time, also creating conditions that will make it much more difficult, should we go into negotiations with north korea, to bring them along with any credibility on anything we agree on. So, across the board and you know, i think a thought i had tonight is i suspect most of his close advisers, secretary of defense, so forth. H. R. Mcmaster, i suspect they generally see it about the same way yep. That i just described. Yep. So what we saw from donald trump today is the best they can manage with him. And i am i wouldnt take a back seat to anyone when it comes to certain and suspicion about iran. Absolutely. I have held that throughout my career. But no reason to, as leon said, throw a grenade into a room over one part of this arrangement with them thats generally working and its the most important part of the arrangement, the nuclear arrangement. Right. Thats what the two years of negotiations were designed to do. One of the things that the Washington Post is talking about is that bob corker, senator bob corker, is saying that donald trump is publicly castigating publicly castrating rex tillerson. As corker sees it, the biggest problem is that trump is neutering his own chief diplomat, secretary of state rex tillerson, and thereby inviting binary situations in which the United States will have to choose between war and a north korea or iran capable of threatening the United States with Nuclear Weapons. Corker says you cannot publicly castrate your own secretary of state of state without giving yourself that binary choice. This was work done by chief diplomats around the world. Sergey lavrov. Zarif from iran. Secretary of state john kerry from the United States. Working really hard for two years. People who had different positions on all sorts of things. And now we have a secretary of state who really cant pull up to the table and speak with the authority of the american government. I think thats right. And one of the tragedies of what we see going on now is that diplomacy generally, as one of the tools in the Foreign Policy toolkit, has been dramatically weakened. Not only by the things that you mentioned but by the in a way, the decimation of the state department which, during my career, i always regarded as one of the jewels and the crown of american security. And weve heard that from secretary mattis as well. Plus, on the diplomatic front, you know, what we see happening here in this speech today is america first, colliding with the necessity in the world today of coalition with allies and cooperation with allies to get important things done. So weve damaged our credibility here with people that we need to accomplish great things in the world. Because its very hard for the United States to just muscle through on its own these days in a complex world. This agreement was one in which, as your previous guest pointed out, we had managed to bring the world together on one of the most controversial problems of our age. This is probably, i would say, the most important step that we have been able to take in years in limiting the most dangerous weapons we have in the world. It was there were a lot of people at the time who didnt think it was a great deal. They thought it was the deal that we could achieve. John, thanks very much for joining us, former acting director of the cia. The president made another move to dismantle obamacare today. Some of the people it could hurt voted for donald trump. Reporting about what Donald Trumps Campaign Chairman owed russian interests during the campaign. 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