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Hates. none of these, though, are new tricks of mr. trump's trade. but today, there was a new attempted d eed diversion and aw novel way of attacking his highly credentialed critics, all former officials in law enforcement, national security, or the intelligence community. now he wants to punish them for speaking out by stripping them of their security clearances. it began with republican senator rand paul lobbying the president to do it of former cia director john brennan, who has become a vocal critic of the president. so rand paul may have started the idea, but by the time today's white hou...

Vladimir putin. and we still don't know exactly what they discussed behind closed doors. in fact, the u.s. government will probably never know, at least from our side, because it's doubtful that trump even remembers everything that occurred or that he would give a full and accurate readout to his own officials. in fact, probably the best way for the u.s. government to find out what happened is to intercept communications among russian officials talking about this meeting. >> well, there would actually be a danger if the president went on the record publicly saying what was discussed and then i...

You are not going to talk about any of your activities. so, it is not at all a natural or easy thing to do, and you get a lot of criticism for it, as well. it would be really easy for a guy like jim clapper, who i hold in the highest regard, to basically say look, i'm going to have a nice quiet retirement after, what is it, 60 years of service? the guy's been around forever, being a patriot. maybe write a book. a lot of people write a book to include past presidents, to include the current president, and just sort of relax and take it easy in retirement as opposed to opening himself up to this...

So, general clapper, you actually learned about this, i understand, in real-time, while you were watching the white house briefing today, about them trying to take away a security clearance from you. i'm wondering what went through your mind when you heard that and now that you've had some time to digest that, where are you at with all this? >> well, yeah, that's how i learned about it, just like everybody else. i had no prior official notification that my clearance was under consideration for revocation. so it was quite amazing. i didn't know what to make of it at first and was a bit speechle...

This meeting. >> well, there would actually be a danger if the president went on the record publicly saying what was discussed and then it turned out that isn't what was discussed or it was opposite or different than what was actually discussed and it turned out the russians have a recording, say, of actually what was discussed. >> absolutely. i mean, you worry about the president being compromised by russia, something that jim clapper and john brennan and other intelligence officials suspect actually happened. well, the reality is that if it's happened in the past, it's probably getting worse...