When Vladimir Putin runs up against American power and American criticism and American leadership that reminds him of what Russia isn`t, when he runs up against people who he worries are funding his dissidents or supporting protests against him, when he runs up against criticism of the way he runs his own country, what he`s running up against is the State Department.

Donald Trump removed all doubt. He is running for president as a fascist demagogue.

Six months after 9/11, Jean-Marie Le Pen was almost elected president of France. There were a number of leaders and a number of parties running in the French national elections that year in the spring of 2002. But it ended up being not just a shock across France, and not just a shock across Europe. But it ended up being almost a worldwide shock when in the spring of 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen came in second in those national elections. That put him in a two-man runoff for the presidency of France, spring of 2002.

News about the Russia connections to the [Donald Trump] administration and what we are continuing to learn about those connections. What`s getting to be, I think, particularly unsettling is that simultaneously we are right now what`s going on, I think, is that we are number one nailing down more direct connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government at the time the Russian government was influencing our election.

The Sarah Palin choice both its timing and the fact that it was her, it was really an audacious strategic move by the McCain campaign to try to change the trajectory of the 2008 presidential race and the initial launch was very successful. She didn`t withstand the scrutiny very well though and the close questioning.

The single best thing about honesty is that it requires no follow-up.

Russia and [Vladimir] Putin`s antipathy toward Hillary Clinton from her time as secretary of state, Russia`s antipathy and loathing and fear of the U.S. State Department in general, those two - those things that we know about Russia they put a worrying cast over how successfully the new administration here has hollowed out and emptied out the U.S. State Department in just the few weeks since then been in charge.