Of course I don't know what's going on in that meeting on in the mind of Donald Trump. But I do know one of the things President Barack Obama was struck by was how much time he spent on cyber-security as president. And one of the things he said was that, in the years ahead, the next president will be spending even more time. And cyber-security isn't a thing that goes away after this election. It's a constant flow.

Putin is someone who has been undermining the norms of what we consider the world order since he got into power and in increasing success.

I think the Republican budget priorities are messed up. I salute for the way they're attacking some of the entitlement programs, but they are taking huge cuts, by pretending they're just block-granting it to the states, out of Medicaid, from the least fortunate.

I came to the conclusion is that we have a very shallow view of human nature in the policy world. We're really good at talking about material things, really bad at talking about emotions, really good at stuff we can count, really bad at the deeper stuff that actually drives behavior.

I'm thankful that we live in a crassly commercial, polarized culture, so media jackals like me have a lot of work to do.

The ugliness can sometimes be super ugly, but also a warning sign of something down below.

It's rare in an administration for a secretary of state and a secretary of defense to get along really well.