The FRONTLINE Interviews

Sebastian Gorka

Deputy Assistant to the President, 2017

Sebastian Gorka was a deputy adviser on national security issues to President Donald Trump until August 2017. Prior to joining the White House, Gorka worked as national security editor at Breitbart.

This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE's Jim Gilmore conducted on Sept. 5, 2017. It has been edited in parts for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

Putin’s Road to War

Trump’s Showdown

The Putin Files

TOP

Sebastian Gorka

Chapters

Text Interview:

Highlight text to share it

Intervention in the U.S. Election

Let’s start out with summer of 2016. The campaigns are in full bore.The intelligence agencies are saying they have evidence of hacking by the Russians of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] and then eventually [Hillary Clinton campaign chair John] Podesta.Eventually they're released on WikiLeaks.The president, then candidate Trump, denies or tends to disbelieve the intelligence services and what they're saying at that point. Why?What is the perspective of Donald Trump on what news is coming out from the intelligence services?

At that time, he’s only a candidate, so he doesn’t have access to any kind of intelligence briefing.The fact is, he’s just working on the information anybody else has.But at the end of the day, it’s not something that would be developed into the narrative of election collusion.It’s the release of factual data from inside the DNC that tells you more about who the rival candidate is than anything else.

But there seems to be a distrust of the intelligence services, of the CIA, of the NSA.What's the background of that?

If you look at what we now know, and back then could have hypothesized, there is a potential weaponizing of the Intelligence Community.If you look at what we now know about unmasking, if you look at the fact that eight days before the transmission of control from the last administration to the new one, the Obama administration completely downgraded the capacity of the release of intelligence across the U.S. government, which would lead to potential leaks that we have suffered from as an administration after Jan. 20, so a skepticism after the last eight years is highly warranted.¹

So there's some attitude, basically, that the intelligence folks are in the pocket of the Obama administration?

No, not intelligence folks.People need to understand there are intelligence professionals, but who do they answer to? Political appointees.[CIA Director] John Brennan is not an intelligence professional the second he becomes a politically appointed head of an intelligence service or agency.We’re talking about politically appointed individuals using intelligence potentially as a weapon against people who they politically disagree with.

… That famous statement where he [candidate Trump] stated to the Russian hackers basically to bring it on—“There's 30,000 emails that Hillary Clinton tried to get rid of. We’d like to see them.”He got a lot of heat from that.Why would he do that? Was it insensitivity, or was it a joke?What was it?

I think you’d probably have to ask him.But the statement was to the Russian hackers or anyone else that has them.It shouldn’t be constantly perverted into a narrative that is just about attacking the president.This is “You should know as much as possible about a candidate who is distorting the political process, and within her own party. Look at what they did to Bernie Sanders. Look at everything else that happened with regard to the leak of questions to the candidate from a TV personality.”So this is, “Would you not want to have more information about somebody as opposed to less, when you're trying to decide who should be the president?”I would say more information.

His opponents, and certainly the Hillary people, and certainly Obama people, were basically saying: “But you’ve got to understand, this is the Russians. They are an adversary. They are trying to manipulate us, taking information.”

That’s not news.The idea that Russians trying to manipulate political processes in America or anywhere else—the idea that this is news?The news is that President Obama knew it and did nothing about it for months. That’s the real news.

Putin and Trump

Which we’re going to talk about in a second, but before we do that, let’s talk a little bit about Trump’s—President Trump’s, then candidate Trump’s attitude toward the Russians.A lot is said about the fact that he’s very supportive. He’s said very nice things about Putin.What is behind it?What is the hope for coming in and [for] the relations that he wants to have with Russia?Why is he making statements the way he makes, that grates on the Democrats’ ears, that grates on the Obama administration’s ears, about the very supportive things he says about Russia and Putin?

Isn't it such a great irony that after decades of the Democrat[ic] Party being the most pro-Russian political bloc in America, suddenly it grates with the Democrats when somebody says, “I’d like to work potentially with the Russians”?It’s such an irony how that went 180 degrees in a matter of a few days.The president is a pragmatist.I always go to the statement he made, I think, in his last press conference in Trump Tower, when somebody shouted to him from the Q&A session: “So what about Putin? What about relations with Russia?”The president’s answer then is exactly what the president believes today.He said—I'm paraphrasing: “In theory, I would like to have good or better relations with Moscow. Right now it doesn’t seem very likely. If that is the case, so be it.”

Now, why does he say that?Because Russia is a powerful geostrategic nation.It has nuclear weapons and is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.Anybody who says it is in America’s interest to not have better relations with Russia doesn’t know what they're talking about when it comes to geopolitics.But he’s a pragmatist, and he looks at the relations with Russia, and he says, “Well, right now, it doesn’t look very likely.” And he says, “OK, so be it.”So there's no hidden agenda.There's a pragmatic approach to a nation that has geostrategic import.

Is there an affinity between the two men, an understanding that both understand that strength is an important aspect of leadership?What do you see [in terms of] the way the two men view each other?

Well, I can't talk for how the two men view each other.You’d have to ask them separately each how they view the other.But there is definitely a similarity in one perspective, and one perspective alone.They're both very dominant characters.As such, they may have some kind of simpatico.But that’s it.One of them is a former KGB colonel—let’s get that straight—the other one is a billionaire real estate magnate from New York, so they don’t come from the same backgrounds.

The U.S. Response to Russian Measures

Let’s talk about Obama for a second.Trump has recently ridiculed the way that Obama dealt with the issue, of how he didn’t really make an effective response early on to what the intelligence folks were talking about and what the Russians were doing.Define that attitude, the attitude about what Obama did and how he did not achieve the things that people are now complaining about.

Well, it’s very obvious.I mean, we inherited a world of fire, and the Obama administration’s attitude to Russia was part of that.It wasn’t just ISIS or China or Iran and the Iran deal.It was the supine attitude the Obama administration had to Russia, from the laughable reset button to the idea that we just wagged our finger at them when they invaded another country and kept the territory of that country, breaking a 70- year taboo in international relations.²

This isn't a matter of opinion; this is the facts of the case after the last eight years.

So what was the attitude of the way the Trump administration should come in the front doors of the White House and how they would deal with Russia that would differ with the way that the Obama folks did?

Well, I think if you look at the last eight months, it’s a very different attitude [toward] power [and] politics, that diplomacy for the sake of diplomacy is nothing.It’s a piece of paper. It’s just words.Whether you're dealing with your allies in Europe or you're dealing with a resurgent Russia, whether you're dealing with Iran or North Korea, you have to use the whole panoply of national tools of power to deal with the challenges the world faces.Just to wag your finger at somebody who’s doing outrageously illegal things really doesn’t cut it in the 21st century.

Putin and Trump

The DNI [Director of National Intelligence report], by October, came out Oct. 6—or when it was; I'm not sure exactly—came out with the DNI statement, which was pretty specific about tying the Russian government to the hacking and the release of documents and such, specifically that they were trying to influence the election.But on the campaign trail, Donald Trump was still using the emails, for instance, for fodder in trying to bring up points about Clinton.Some people will say that it was incorrect for Trump to sort of go about it in the way he did, the fact he was saying, “I love WikiLeaks,” and other aspects of using material, seeing where the material was coming from.The response to that is?

The response remains the response it is today, that the idea that there are Russian people behind this is the determination.Whether or not that can be driven straight back to the Kremlin is not a question that has been adequately answered, not to my liking at least.The fact that you have more information which isn't something that has been leaked by national security sources in America, but is a hack of a DNC internal email, again, let’s not conflate issues.There are national security leaks which this administration has suffered from intensely, sevenfold more than the Obama administration.Then there are those things that are allowing the American voter to know more about the choices they are making.These two things should not be conflated.

But using the information from the Russians, [are] there difficulties in that step? [Aren't] there dangers involved?

But let’s be clear here.The president was not involved in any illegal activity.You're not going to put the WikiLeaks emails back in the bottle. They're out there.Should he have said, “Oh, please, American voter, don’t look at the Internet,” it would be asinine.The information is out there, so do you use it to provide yourself a broader picture of the candidates in front of you, or do you try to put the genie back in the bottle?It’s impossible.

By Dec. 29, Obama finally puts out his sanctions on the Russian government for the election hacking.

Look, I have to push back. It’s not election hacking.There is no evidence at all that a voting booth was hacked or one person’s vote in America was taken from Trump candidate to Clinton candidate.³

You have to get the terminology correct, because you are perpetrating fake news by saying election hacking.There is no evidence of election hacking.There's information that was released on the DNC internally.There's 35,000 missing emails from Hillary.None of this adds to state-on-state election hacking.Terminology matters, especially intelligence. …

What was the reaction of the Oval Office to the fact that Congress laid the law down as far as sanctions, and basically made it impossible for them to be adjusted?

Well, I mean, look, the president believes in separation of power and checks and balances.Look, why did he say with regard to Obamacare, “OK, I came in on a platform to fix Obamacare, but I'm going to allow my colleagues on the Hill to deal with that, because they’ve been talking about fixing it for seven years”?This is how D.C. works.Gridlock was actually designed by the Founding Fathers.It’s not a pejorative phrase; it’s a foundational aspect of our nation, so there was no consternation that the Hill saw things differently.

… Put into perspective the [Michael] Flynn story and what we should understand about it.Was this a case just of somebody new to that role blowing it?Was it the press blowing it out of proportion?How does the White House view the Flynn story?

Exactly as it’s been presented.The fact is, this is an individual who was responsible for the transition of the national security establishment from the Obama administration to the new administration.As such, he reached out.I worked with him. He had multiple phone calls, maybe 20 to 30 a day.Through a lapse of judgment, through maybe simply forgetting, he put the vice president into a very difficult position and honorably resigned.⁴

There's no deeper story to my knowledge there.It was the right decision to make by a man who had made a mistake.

How big a loss was it to the administration in losing Flynn?

You don’t want to have a turnover at the highest level early on in an administration, although many administrations in the first nine months, there's a lot of churn.I think for the president it was a blow, because they had a very good chemistry.People talk about expertise; people talk about experience, surviving in the swamp.But what people underestimate, I think, is the need for personal chemistry inside the White House, and Gen. Flynn and the president had personal chemistry.

Talk a little bit more about when you all came into the White House, what were the hopes for dealing with Russia?What was the approach that you guys were going to deal differently in a way, and be more successful, than the Obama administration? …

One of the most prescient observations about President Trump was made by Monica Crowley [political commentator and foreign policy adviser] the weekend after the election.I heard her give a speech in Florida.She said most of the people misunderstand the president, misunderstood him because they thought that this was an ideological candidate.He’s not an ideological candidate. He does not fit into any neat box of political theory.He’s not an ideological candidate; he’s an attitudinal one.That’s what shaped our attitude to Russia and to all the maelstrom of problems we’d inherited.

We didn’t come into office with an ideological filter.We weren’t there to say: “Look, America is the problem. We’re going to have an apology tour. Multilateralism and globalism is much better than anything else.”No, we came in to deal with the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be.And why is that? Because who was this man? Donald Trump was the rank outsider.This is what the establishment, even the GOP establishment doesn’t understand.He may have formally been the GOP candidate, but he had nothing to do with the GOP.It wasn’t the GOP’s victory on November the 8th; it was a victory for a real estate mogul from New York.Let’s just get our heads around that for a second.This is a man who’s never served as a general officer or an admiral and never held public office.That is the first time in U.S. history since 1776 that somebody without senior military service or prior political service has become the most powerful man in the world.⁵

So what's happening there?What happened is that a man who lived in the world of practicalities—you cannot be a billionaire real estate mogul in New York without being a pragmatist.That is the harshest market in the world.So when we came in, whether we were looking at ISIS, whether we looked at a resurgent China, whether we’re looking at Iran and the Iran deal, or whether we look at Putin, a former KGB colonel, we said: “OK, what's the reality here? Can we impose our desires upon this?No, we’re not going to. We’re going to look at the state of affairs.Is Russia important? Yes, it is.Are relations bad? Yes, they are.Would we like to improve them? On paper, in theory, yes.But we’re not going to allow U.S. national interests to be held hostage to some kind of utopian vision of resets or mended relations.”

So the hope was, we would like to be able to collaborate on key issues, like counterterrorism, like the 400,000 people killed in Syria, to work on issues of common interest, but not at detriment to the U.S. national interest.How has the Russian story been viewed from the White House?How has it caused problems in putting forward the agenda?How frustrating was it to be in the White House? How frustrating to the president?Look, it doesn’t derail us, or it doesn’t distract us from the work that we have to do.If you look at the record of what the president achieved, it’s a massive record by comparison to the first eight, nine months of other administrations.But it is very, very frustrating.I have spoken one on one with the president in the Oval Office on this Russia issue, and he is frustrated. Why? Because there's nothing there.There's absolutely nothing there. There's nothing he hides.There's nothing to be found about him and Russia—and as you’d be frustrated if, for eight months, nine months, somebody was banging on about an issue that you have zero culpability and is not connected to you.So it is frustrating, and understandably so.

But at the end of the day, look.Look at the reaction now, after storm Harvey, nobody is talking about Russia.People have recognized, the general public have said: “So why is this issue—why is there no smoking gun? Why is it suddenly that nobody is talking about it, but we want to talk about Melania’s shoes?”Because it was a political cudgel and nothing else.

You talk about a story that you were in the Oval Office with the president, and he sat down, and he said to you that—Yeah, just tell that story.

I went into the president on another issue.It was probably a recent media appearance or something to do with the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action].I think it was around the time that Jared [Kushner] gave his very brief press address outside the West Wing.⁶

So he asked me what did I think about how Jared had done, and I told him masterful.Then he just started riffing on the question of the whole Russia issue.He just clearly demonstrated that it's frustrating personally, because there's no “there” there, and we’d like to get on to talk about real issues, as opposed to fake, manufactured, fake news.There was a level of frustration, but not something that would derail the president from his agenda, because it’s too important.

The firing of Comey: What was the cause?How did the frustrations about the story not going away, the investigations lead to it?Tell me the view of why we ended up with Comey getting fired.

Oh, I think it’s very clear.I mean, this is—this is a man who, through his actions, had clearly made himself unfit for office as the head of one of the most important and prestigious institutions in the United States government.If you ignore just the flip-flops that he evidenced with his multiple press conferences, doing 180 turns, or doing 13 minutes of a slam-dunk case on why Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted, and then in the last minute saying, “I find no intent,” well, intent is irrelevant when it comes to national security information.⁷

It’s one of the few aspects of American law where, if you mishandle, even without intent, you are guilty of a felony.The flip-flops were key.

On top of that, just the inordinate grandstanding.The director of the FBI shouldn’t think that he’s some kind of actor in Shakespeare and grandstand in front of the media every few days.So you add his policy flip-flops on matters of key legal evidentiary investigation, and then just his love of grandstanding in the media, not fit to serve as a senior leader in the U.S. government.

But the president voiced himself that the major reason for it was his reaction to how he was handling the Russian investigations.He was not happy about the fact that Comey would not go public with the fact that there was no investigation of the president himself.I guess he was not very happy that he wouldn’t state his loyalty to the president.How much of that played into why he ended up losing his job?

I wasn’t in the room when there was any discussions of loyalty, so I can't comment on that.With regard to not being part of the investigation, I'm sure that factored into it as well.When somebody is told three times, “We are not investigating you,” but he’s not prepared to make that publicly known, when he’s making all kinds of other things publicly known about Hillary Clinton, the dissonance in his behavior is yet one more piece of evidence that they're not fit to serve.

The fact that the White House immediately said the reason that he was fired was because of the way he handled the Clinton investigation, but soon after that, the president talked about the connection to the Russian investigation, that didn’t go off very well in the press, and people jumped on it.Was there a mistake made in the way it was defined on why he lost his job?

No, I don’t think at all.I think that the trouble is that the press is always looking for the univalent answer.I mean, they take massive huge issues, whether it’s the future of Afghanistan, North Korea, the Hillary Clinton investigation, and when something big occurs, they want one answer.Well, the world doesn’t operate like that.We can give you an answer, but it’s much larger in general.But when you have 180 seconds—I mean, think about most media clips. It’s 180 seconds.You don’t have the capacity to give the whole panoply of reasons why somebody had to be fired.So no, it’s just a function of the way the media digests information.

Was there blowback, though, to the firing of Comey, to the extent that now, all of a sudden, everybody was talking about obstruction of justice, of the fact that Mueller was then brought to bear on the issue?I mean, was there blowback on that decision?

No, not at all, because the charge of obstruction of justice is absurd.⁸

I mean, this is a counterintelligence investigation; it’s not a criminal one.The president—I mean, Bill Clinton fired his FBI director almost as soon as he got into office.There's no obstruction of justice accusations then, so why would there be now?So internally, no. No blowback.

Let’s talk about the collusion question.There's been these claims of collusion that these [are] haunting the White House.It was on the front pages constantly there for several months.What is the view of these claims?[What is] the attitude of the president toward these allegations of collusion?

Laughable.As Kellyanne [Conway] has said, it’s the collusion delusion. It’s the Russian concussion.It’s just another example of how transparently political the mainstream media has become.There is no evidence. There will be no evidence.I tell you now, there will be no evidence with regard to the president when it comes to any collusion or anything else to do with Russia, when it came to the election campaign.We just found it laughable. We had to deal with it because the media was obsessed, but we found it laughable.

The June 9 meeting that has become so famous, where Don [Trump] Jr. and [Paul] Manafort and Kushner were in this meeting with a couple of Russian individuals: The critics will say that it shows a willingness to collude, a willingness to work with the Russians who were saying that they had damaging material against Hillary Clinton.What's your take on that meeting?Why has it gotten so much focus, and [what is] the point of view of the president on that?

Why has it got so much focus? Because the media is obsessed.I mean, “working with the Russians”—a woman who was not an official representative of the Russian government requests a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. on false pretenses.⁹

To say that campaigns should be somehow sanctioned for collecting oppo research on the other campaign, or that maybe the DNC shouldn’t have sent one of their employees to the territory of a foreign government, namely the Ukrainian Embassy, not just to collect damaging information potentially on our campaign, but to coordinate the hit job against us in the media, the idea—I'm shocked there's gambling going on in this casino.Political campaigns don’t collect opposition research.The important point here is, as soon as it became clear that this woman had requested that meeting under false pretenses to talk about another issue related to adoption legislation, Don Jr. canceled the meeting.No further connection was ever made between that woman and the campaign. That’s all you need to know.

But was there a mistake made in the fact that, when an email comes that says that the Russian government is interested in helping the campaign, and they have detrimental information about the opponent, Hillary Clinton, was that a mistake to set up a meeting?

Was it a mistake for the Clinton campaign and the DNC to do likewise with actual government officials of another nation?Look, he did a favor to a friend.Let’s get the facts out.A music promoter, who was a friend of the family, made an offer. As a favor, he said, “OK, send her in.” That’s not a mistake; that’s being nice to a friend.

But you listen to the response of the Republicans on Capitol Hill afterward, and they said, “Oh, I would never do that.”

Yeah, right.

There's a difference between looking for opposition info during a campaign and inviting into the Trump Tower representatives that are supposedly at least being sold as people working for the Russian government.

So representatives of the mainstream GOP establishment, whose candidates, all 16 of them, were blown out of the water, are giving us advice on how to run a campaign? That's highly ironic, don’t you think?

One of the other things of the meetings that comes up a lot is the Dec. 1, 2016, meeting with Kushner and Flynn, where they meet [Ambassador Sergey] Kislyak at Trump Tower, and the whole talk of back channel, to talk about foreign affairs, important issues like Syria.But the idea is, Kushner wants to set up a back channel through Russian means so that U.S. intelligence won't be eavesdropping.What was the idea behind that? Was that a mistake?It certainly put a lot of people off, because it seemed that the Russians could manipulate the candidate because of that.

I wasn’t involved in that discussion, but let’s put a bit of historic perspective on it.The whole concept of formalized back channels began in 1962, [in] the Cuban missile crisis.The president, John F. Kennedy, created a back channel to the Kremlin to make sure we didn’t go to nuclear war.¹⁰

… The fact is, back channels are a standard way of operating when you need to deal with sensitive issues with individuals who may be targeted for various reasons.It’s part and parcel of politics, of governanceand of campaigning.There's nothing unusual to back channels.

But in this case, it was a back channel to prevent the U.S. intelligence agencies from understanding what the campaign was doing, or the transition was doing at that point.

I would return to the behavior in the last eight months of individuals like [former CIA Directors] John Brennan [and] Gen. [Michael] Hayden, and the other general, [Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper.These individuals have betrayed, to the world, their political viewpoints.When you know that there are individuals at the highest levels of the Intelligence Community who don’t look at their function as primarily the national interest, but to realize a political agenda, it is wise to be skeptical.Already, there have been 12 instances in the mainstream media where it has been said, in the mainstream media, New York Post and New York Times included, which have stated that Trump campaign was being surveiled by U.S. intelligence.¹¹

So who should be skeptical?Should it be the people who are criticizing the Trump campaign, or should it be the people who are potentially being targeted for political reasons—look at unmasking, by the Intelligence Community?

But some of those individuals, they sell themselves as independents, as——professionals that are not taking a stand one way or the other.Some of them are Republicans.There seems to be almost a paranoia among the Trump folks, the Trump administration, about what the Intelligence Community was up to when it came to the Trump campaign and then transition.

Is it paranoia when the U.N. ambassador is unmasking U.S. individuals in secret intelligence transcripts?On what basis does the U.N. ambassador need to know the identity of U.S. individuals being intercepted by signals intelligence of the United States?¹²

Why would Susan Rice triple, quadruple the number of unmasking of U.S. individuals?It signals intelligence intercepts.It’s not paranoia. I mean, as they say, being paranoid isn't a problem if they're really out to get you.The Obama administration has already betrayed the reality that they saw intelligence as a weapon, not just against our adversaries, but against their political adversaries.

One last thing on the collusion question.The recent stories about Felix Sater’s working the deal on Trump Tower in Russia, and the fact that during the election there was a letter of intent signed by the candidate Trump for doing a deal in Russia, that’s been painted as a problem, because there's a connection; there's a business connection going on at the same time that he’s candidate running for the presidency.¹³

Define the position from the White House point of view about that issue.

Isn't it funny that one potential deal is seen as a smoking gun, when the fact that Hillary Clinton approved the sale of 20 percent of America’s uranium to a Russian company that was giving her husband very lucrative speaking deals at the same time [was not]?¹⁴

If there's any collusion, it’s with the last administration, not with the Trump campaign or the Trump administration.

But was this deal in motion, that was taking place at the same time as running for president, was there a problem in the fact that, at least in the way that people could perceive it, that it could cause problems between the fact of being a leader who is going to deal evenhandedly with these countries, and a businessman who has interests in sort of making sure a deal goes through?

I could take such a theory seriously if there had been Trump Towers and Trump Casinos everywhere from St. Petersburg to Nizhny Novgorod.There aren’t.This shows the level of desperation that the media has sunken to, that they clasp onto one possible deal in Russia by a private citizen who is a real estate developer, who just happens to be running for public office.I mean, how desperate is the media?

How do you think the Russians view all this?… What's your view toward what Putin got out of all this?

I think it’s clear that he’s very sad that Hillary Clinton didn’t win.If there was a corrupt candidate in U.S. presidential politics in the modern age, it’s Hillary Clinton, who was basically pay-for-play, if you look at the [Clinton] Foundation.But I think afterward, he’s happy at how the media has basically abetted and colluded with him, in spinning a DNC and Hillary Clinton-based excuse for her loss into something to beat the president over the head with for nine months, to no avail.I think they're satisfied, in terms of what they used to call dezinformatsiya, disinformation, [and] maskirovka, the masking of true intent.

Russia has always been involved in propaganda and disinformation.They ended up not getting the candidate they wanted, but I think they're happy as to how they’ve managed to play the media along.

Why do you think they did it?Why do you think Russia was involved in any of this?

Because they always are.That’s what Russia is. That’s what Russia is.It’s par for the course. This is what they have been doing since 1917.Anybody who’s shocked at Russia meddling in the process of a democratic election, in any country, has never opened a history book.That’s important. …

Has he [Putin] come out of this election a more powerful leader? …

I think domestically he probably looks to his own constituents, to the Russian people, as more powerful.But I think if you look at the reality on the ground, if you look at how the president [Trump] has revitalized NATO, if you look at how we've actually created a cease-fire, if you look at how we have got Russia to help us and China in the Security Council to push back on North Korea, I think his [Putin’s] influence internationally has diminished, but he’s managed to play that to the opposite effect internally.¹⁵

And this view that Trump has weakened our hand, the United States' hand, in the fact that he’s detrimentally affected the relationships with our allies, post-World War II allies, that he’s weakened the idea of what NATO is, that Brexit, breaking up the EU, that these organizations that have been set up post-World War II, that have been so strong, that have been so favorable to the rise of the power of the United States, he’s been hacking at, and this is the reason why Putin was so interested in becoming aligned with him in some way.

Perhaps that’s the most drug-induced version of reality I've ever heard.This is a man who, in the space of less than half a year, through skillful, very adroit diplomatic messaging, has taken NATO from being a shell of itself, where people weren’t serious on spending on their own defense, to the point at which the secretary general stands in the White House and says: “Two percent of GDP is our contribution? Absolutely, Mr. President.”¹⁶

He has revitalized NATO simply through his Twitter feed—masterful, masterful.

What people don’t understand about the president is, there is a philosophy that underlies the whole “Make America Great Again” agenda.People miss it, because they look at the [Mexican border] wall; they look at immigration.There's something that philosophically underpins all of it, and it’s the concept of sovereignty.This president and the people who came on as part of his MAGA train believe that sovereign nations are prosperous nations.We believe in the founding principles of this nation.We believe if Belgium is sovereign, if Britain is more sovereign after Brexit, that’s good for the Brits as well for us.Whether it’s the wall, whether it’s ISIS, whether it’s the economy, whether it’s NAFTA, whether it’s the Paris Accords, we believe in sovereign nation-states together.That’s the real guiding principle, not some kind of miasma of conspiracy theories about deconstructing the Bretton Woods system.

Should Putin have paid a bigger price for what they did in 2016, 2015?

Personally, absolutely.I'm a child of people who escaped communism. My father was imprisoned in a communist prison in Hungary, so there's no love lost between me and the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation or Moscow.When you break a taboo that has been carved in stone since 1945 that says, “Force will not be used to aggrandize the size of my nation; I will not invade and then take territory to myself,” and you do it, that is bad for everybody.That’s bad for people living in Asia; that’s bad for people living on the continent in Africa.It sets a precedent that might is right. We do not believe in might is right.We believe in eternal principles that are objectively true, as found in our founding.But to say might is right, that’s the precedent that Russia set.The Obama administration should have been much tougher.

What do you think Putin’s view of Donald Trump is?

I think he is very, very envious of Donald Trump.I think he is desperate for recognition from Donald Trump.I think he’s a big fan.

Because?

Because he sees somebody who has an instinctual understanding of the world and is able to leverage that instinct and undermine those people who don’t believe in the principles that he believes in, incredibly effectively, through social media, through public speaking.He sees him as a potential rebuilder and reuniter of America.And I don’t think Vladimir Putin is fond of that concept. …

What did we miss?Other points that you think are important to talk about when it comes to this administration and the Russian story, or views on Russia?

It’s not the administration. It’s my opinion that is shared by key individuals in the building who are still inside.You have to put Russia into the right category of nation.Some people unfortunately on the right think that they're friends of ours.They're not. The Kremlin is not the friend of America.The idea that they're saviors to Western civilization is an absurd concept.But at the same time, they're not this massive behemoth.They're not some dragon of a threat to the United States.If you just look at them demographically, they're losing 600,000 people per year.More people die, to the tune of 600,000 people per year, in Russia than are born.This is a country that is resource-dependent.If the price of oil drops, that’s a massive problem for not just Putin, [but also] for the Russian people.

It’s not a threat to America writ large, as it was, but it must be understood as a spoiler.This is the most important way to understand Russia.Russia is an anti-status quo actor.It’s not interested in collaborating with us for the sake of collaboration.It will only collaborate if it sees it in its own benefit to do so.In the meantime, it will try to undermine us, because we believe things that are antithetical to what people like Vladimir Putin believe.So [in] this administration we have an amazing senior director in the NSC on Russia issues.She [Fiona Hill] also understands it’s not a threat to America as it was.But it is a disrupter; it is a spoiler; it is an anti-status quo actor.

Some people will argue the fact that they are a danger to us if they are able, using these hybrid tactics, to manipulate our elections.

Again, the Russian government and Russian nonstate actors, there is no evidence that they hacked the election.¹⁷

Can we just be really clear on this?They hacked private servers.They hacked political party emails, John Podesta’s emails.So let’s just get the terminology correct.There is a danger. They have perfected information operations and information warfare. This goes without any question.In the last 10 years, if you look at the preparatory measures they deployed in Ukraine five to 10 years before they invaded, they were using very sophisticated information operations and subversive measures.That is a threat, not an existential one to America, but it is something that this administration was aware of and that Capitol Hill and others need to wake up to.Russia has always been involved in information operations and subversion, and now they’ve really fine-tuned it. …

And lastly, because you talked about it a couple times, there is a news story that is out there that the elections were hacked; that not the totals, not the tallying of the votes, but that within multiple states, in 21 states has talked about it at some points early on, that Russian hackers got into, and that manipulations were being done of information logs and in ways of attempting to prevent people from even voting, not to vote in the wrong direction.But then there's a story in The Washington Post and New York Times a couple days ago, where North Carolina and such places, hundreds and hundreds of people were either unable to vote or gave up on voting, because it got very complicated when they found that there was a problem with the election on election night.What's your take on that, and whether that story is going to ever have legs?

Look, it’s early days.If it proves to be true that someone—nonstate actor or state actor could actually mess with the tallies or individual Americans’ capacity to access their right to vote, then that has to be investigated to the fullest extent of the law.The vice president is the chairman of the Commission on Voter Integrity.He will get to the bottom of it.And I trust A.G. [Jeff] Sessions will as well.If that actually happened, this administration will get to the bottom of it. …

And when the investigations come out and are completed, whenever they are, what do you think the results will be then?

I don’t have a crystal ball.If individuals in their private life, in their prior campaign work on the periphery of the campaign did things that were untoward, then that will be revealed.But when it comes to the president and his own personal activity, as far as I can see, absolutely nothing there.

Great. Thank you very much.

Latest Interviews

Get our Newsletter

Stay Connected

Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation

Koo and Patricia Yuen

Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.