russia connection. maria: yeah. we have a timeline of you, and you acted as a government informant from 2008-2013, but then you were invited to a seminar by stefan halper in 2016, the same individual who ran into other people in the trump campaign and invited you and others to conferences. what do you think happened? you know, i just, it was like any other moment where you re in a foreign policy setting you re with scholars, we re having normal conversations. maria: was this conversations you had with informants that you think were not given to the fisa court? what are we going to learn tomorrow in the i.g. report? i think we ll learn part of the story tomorrow. what i ve learned from some of the leakers and one of the papers of record, a top reporter there said that, you know, there s a lot of exculpatory information which is remaining classified, and there s been internal battles. so we ll have to see how that all plays out
was exerting on them, then he would have been very clear about that. because he s not, it gives them the space, the oxygen they feel like they really need to make the argument that, in fact, he was just having a polite conversation, that he was bringing things up in a suggestive manner the way any president might do in that sort of a foreign policy setting. and also in terms of things he says, his state of mind, they will also make the point he was doing this, of course, because he saw this deep seeded genuine reasonable skepticism he had of ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption as we learned in that memo. there s another factor at play here of course when it comes to the president, and that is the president s influence over republicans. and you wrote in your latest piece for politico about how the president and his allies are really obsessed with potential republican defectors and what has been done with them, writing rarely does a republican become more wrathful than
the north korea delegation, which does not include the president, of course, but north korea delegation, because of a lottery drawing, will be sitting at the very front of this room. they will just be a few feet away from the president as he addresses again what he s calling the menace of north korea and ticking through all those global challenges here. that speech, the biggest one of his presidency in a foreign policy setting coming in about three hours time. jeff, that is some interesting color in terms of the optics of the room. we ll all be watching for that. thank you very much. meanwhile, republican senators are making one last push to appeal obamacare. what s in this new bill? and does it finally have the votes to pass? one of the bill s sponsors is here next. you can do endless onlineve research about the ct6. or you can come in and have it all for less than you might imagine. don t wait. our 2017 models will be moving fast.
more time in office. because we ve had enough government already. so savannah, i guess the key word is let s just run against washington. we ll probably start seeing tv shows run against each other if they re based in washington. watch out, we might be next. washington bad, everywhere else good. thanks. new tensions in the middle east as israel launches fresh air strikes on targets in gaza. plus, held at gunpoint by pirates on the hi seas. matt lauer joins us with his interview with veteran sea captain richard phillips. later, the good news, bad news on the jobs front today. employers are adding jobs but the top line unemployment number is stuck in neutral. first reaction from the white house with economic adviser christina romer joining us live. first, deliverables. that s our washington speak today. it s jargon for the concrete outcomes that might come out of a meeting or summit usually used in a foreign policy setting. this is the daily rundown only