On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump's lead counsel Rudy Giuliani went on "Fox & Friends" and unleashed a bizarre, angry tirade against former special counsel Robert Mueller, who is currently testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, claiming that "he showed up once" and "kinda made an idiot out of himself. Didn't know stuff" while conducting the Russiainvestigation:
Giuliani then proceeded to do a bizarre, unflattering impression of Mueller, saying "obstruction of justice, obstruction of justice" in a deep, lisping voice.
Viral photo app FaceApp has taken the world by storm. Launched in 2017, the app has recently enjoyed mass popularity due largely to Hollywood celebrities posting their humorous edited pictures online.
FaceApp uses “neural network” artificial intelligence technology to alter people’s faces with various filters. Users simply take or upload a photo from their phone and the app’s algorithms do the rest. You can make yourself look younger or older, swap your gender, or transform your expression.
The ageing filter is easily the most popular, with Drake, Hilary Duff, Gordon Ramsay, and LeBron James among the celebrities who showcased their future faces on social media.
Last week, the app was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, with keen-eyed observers pointing out that the app’s terms of use give its Russian parent company, Wireless Lab, a very broad, global and lifelong licence to use the images.
In short, once you sign up and use the app, the company can do pretty much whatever it likes with your photos. It could plaster a wrinkled version of your face across a billboard, website or the side of a skyscraper, and you would have no legal recourse.
Of course, as experts have correctly pointed out, this is extremely unlikely to happen. Russia’s only interest in your photo data would be for facial recognition software development. Wireless Lab has also publicly stated that most photos are deleted within 48 hours of upload and no information is sent to Russia, but rather is stored temporarily on the company’s American servers.
Other hidden dangers in the fine print
More concerning, however, is the range of other disturbing conditions users unwittingly sign up to with FaceApp. The terms of use comprise a legally binding contract, yet research tells us that virtually no one ever reads the fine print.
This is worrying, given that section 15 of FaceApp’s terms all but bans you from taking legal action against the company. You are only permitted to lodge small claims (up to certain limits) or seek specific court orders. You are otherwise required to resolve all legal disputes through confidential arbitration held in California.
Thankfully, you can opt out of this provision – but you only have 30 days from registration to do so, meaning most of the app’s 100 million existing users are already too late.
For those who have recently bought into the hype, the clock is ticking. You can opt out by sending written notification to:
Wireless Lab OOO
16 Avtovskaya 401
Saint-Petersburg, 198096, Russia
You must include your full name and indicate your clear intent to opt out of binding arbitration. If you do this, standard Californian law applies and you retain your legal right to sue if you want.
If you downloaded FaceApp within the past week and you’re based in Australia, you’ll want to act quickly, given that letters take up to 14 business days to reach Russia via international post.
Section 17 of the terms is also concerning. This clause gives Wireless Lab the right to change the terms at any time, and that the company “may” attempt to notify users but will otherwise simply post the updated terms online.
In theory, there would be nothing to stop the company suddenly imposing a usage charge, and the only way to find out would be to continuously check the terms of use for updates, or your App Store-linked bank account for withdrawals.
You might be giving away more than your face.
Shutterstock.com
Section 10 also deserves a mention. It states that you will “indemnify, defend, and hold harmless” FaceApp and its “officers, directors, agents, partners and employees” from “any loss, liability, claim, demand, damages, expenses or costs” relating to your use of the app.
Basically, you cannot sue them for any loss or injury you suffer through the app (such as damaged reputation or embarrassment caused by Wireless Lab using your photos). It also means you agree to cover all legal fees for third-party claims against FaceApp arising from your use of the app, yet you surrender all control over the legal action.
In stark terms, this means you effectively can’t sue FaceApp, and if anyone else tries, you’re picking up the bill.
Any playful app that spreads joy can be a good thing. It is crucial, however, that users know what they are signing up for, otherwise many of their legal rights will vanish and their legal exposure will be extraordinary.
As if wrinkled skin and grey hair weren’t bad enough.
A new report reveals that Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor currently working as President Donald Trump's lawyer, has established a backchannel with the Ukrainian government in order to dig up dirt on potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, a pair of political operatives who have helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Republican candidates, are instrumental players in Giuliani's scheme, according to a new report by BuzzFeed News. They have repeatedly met with top political officials in Ukraine and then set up meetings with Giuliani so that the information they obtained could be potentially utilized against Democratic presidential contenders.
BuzzFeed News cited two examples:
The two men urged prosecutors to investigate allegations against Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden. And they pushed for a probe into accusations that Ukrainian officials plotted to rig the 2016 election in Hillary Clinton’s favor by leaking evidence against Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chair, in what became a cornerstone of the special counsel’s inquiry.
BuzzFeed News also cited at least one occasion when their work yielded tangible dividends.
"Prosecutors in Kiev announced in March they would investigate the officials accused of trying to steer the election in Clinton’s favor — a month after meeting with Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani — and Trump applauded the plan in an interview with Fox News, calling the allegations 'big' and 'incredible,'" BuzzFeed News reported. "The next month, Attorney General William Barr announced he had appointed a federal prosecutor to lead a probe into the origins of the Mueller investigation."
Parnas defended himself to BuzzFeed News by saying that "all we were doing was passing along information. Information was coming to us — either I bury it or I pass it on. I felt it was my duty to pass it on." He also claimed that "we’re American citizens, we love our country, we love our president."
Giuliani has made no secret about working with Ukrainian politicians in order to achieve Trump's political goals. In May he announced that he was meeting with the newly elected president, Volodymr Zelensky, to find ways of discrediting the Mueller investigation into Trump.
"We're not meddling in an election — we're meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do," Giuliani told The New York Times. "There's nothing illegal about it."
"Somebody could say it's improper. And this isn't foreign policy — I'm asking them to do an investigation that they're doing already and that other people are telling them to stop," he added. "And I'm going to give them reasons why they shouldn't stop it, because that information will be very, very helpful to my client and may turn out to be helpful to my government." He had previously circulated a debunked conspiracy theory about Joe Biden and Ukraine, tweeting that "Biden conflicts are too apparent to be ignored and should be investigated quickly and expeditiously. But the more important question is how deep and how high did the alleged Ukraine conspiracy go?" The true story was that former Vice President Joe Biden had exerted pressure on Ukraine to relieve the country's chief prosecutor because he had failed to do his job investigating corruption, but right-wing propaganda sites tried to spin it as an attempt to protect his son from potential legal trouble.
Jeffrey Epstein was photographed nearly a decade ago, just after his release from jail, partying with two future Trump cabinet secretaries and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The well-connected financier attended a 2010 dinner party hosted by David and Julia Koch after a screening of "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" that was attended by Giuliani, Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, among others, reported The Daily Mail.
Epstein had been released two months earlier from jail in Florida after pleading guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and felony solicitation of prostitution.
That non-prosecution agreement, which was widely criticized at the time as too lenient, was reached with future Trump labor secretary Alex Acosta.
Epstein, now 66, was arrested earlier this month on sex trafficking charges after the Miami Herald published a series of investigative reports about the plea agreement, which also led to Acosta's resignation.
The Wall Street Journal published an article about the dinner party a few days later and noted that Giuliani and Epstein had walked out of the theater around the same time, and quoted one observer noting the "beautifully done meeting of the prosecutor and the felon."
Designers Tory Burch and Tamara Mellon, billionaires Henry Kravis and Steve Schwarzman and publicist Peggy Siegal also attended the event.
Epstein's friendship with President Donald Trump, as well as former president Bill Clinton, has also come under renewed scrutiny following his recent arrest.
Republicans have been talking Omar's comments after 9/11 out of context as a way of scaring Americans of a Muslim Congresswomen. Fact-checkers have searched high and low trying to find any reference to 9-11 involving Omar. What was discovered was the video interview of Omar when she was 20 years old in the wake of the Twin Tower attacks.
"Those [9/11] are horrific attacks. There's no question about it, that's not a debatable thing. Innocent Americans lost their lives that day; we all mourn their deaths ... And I think it's quite disgusting that people even question that and want to debate that," she told Al Jazeera in an interview.
Omar explained that she hated the idea of using the terrorists' own words of describing themselves. Referring to them as "Al Queda" was like a war, but only on their terms. She brought up a professor who would tense up in class when he said the name "Al Queda," which she felt gave the group more power than they should ever have.
Conservatives have twisted that into her professor excitedly raising his shoulders when talking about Al Queda. They've accused her of downplaying 9-11, when the reality is that she was echoing George W. Bush's efforts to ensure not all Muslims were blamed for 9-11.
"The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam," said President Bush one week after the September 11 attacks. "That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war. When we think of Islam, we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that's made brothers and sisters out of every race—out of every race."
Omar agreed.
"What is important is the larger point that I was speaking to," Omar clarified, "which is about making sure that blame isn't placed on a whole faith, that we as Muslims are not collectively blamed for the actions of terrorists."
"I do not blame every single white person when we have a white man who massacres children at a school, or moviegoers in a movie theatre," she went on. "And I think this really horrendous narrative that says, as a Muslim, I'm supposed to explain, apologize, for the actions of someone who's also terrorizing me, is absurd."
So, the internet did what it does best, it went on the attack. You can see the tweets below:
Rudy Giuliani has disappointed and infuriated his former colleagues in the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan.
Giuliani served five years in that role, overseeing federal prosecution in Manhattan, and then famously moved on to serve two terms as New York City's mayor, but these days he's confounding his former colleagues with his wild TV appearances defending President Donald Trump from various investigations, reported The Daily Beast.
“I have heard not one person defend him,” said Mary Shannon Little, a former assistant U.S. Attorney who worked with Giuliani on high-profile corruption cases. “Rudy’s behavior has sparked a particular kind of outrage. He might as well be Roy Cohn.”
Cohn was Trump's attorney and mentor, and the two perfected the future president's legal strategy of denying any allegations and filing aggressive countersuits -- and Giuliani's former colleagues are disappointed to see their old boss tarnish his reputation in service of an apparent lawbreaker.
“Rudy would have been the first to go after a guy like Michael Cohen and use a search warrant to do that,” said Elliott Jacobson, who served in the Justice Department for three decades after he was hired by Giuliani. “The Rudy I knew was a fearless corruption prosecutor. I don’t think he would’ve had any question in going after this guy. He is in my view a different person.”
At least 30 lawyers who once worked for Giuliani were among the more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors who signed a statement declaring that special counsel Robert Mueller's report would result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice against Trump -- if Justice Department guidelines did not prohibit indicting a sitting president.
“I think we’re all floored by Rudy,” said Peter Sobol, who signed the statement.
Retired federal Judge John S. Martin, Jr., who preceded Giuliani as U.S. Attorney, said his strategy of attacking Trump's investigators had been effective -- but "shameful" -- and he tried to imagine how he would have behaved in Mueller's role.
“Rudy would be out in front of the television cameras every day telling about the terrible crimes that were committed,” Martin said.
Giuliani responded to the criticism by his former colleagues by attacking their backgrounds and questioning their integrity.
“My former Assistants, except for a few, are quintessential Eastern elite and subscribe to that way of seeing politics,” Giuliani told The Daily Beast. “I am not surprised at their viewpoint, just disappointed as to why they want to insert themselves in a negative way regarding me. I have fond memories of them and don’t expect gratuitous and ill-informed second guessing from them.”
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski mocked President Donald Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for their reactions to the first Democratic presidential debate.
The president insisted he wouldn't watch Wednesday's debate, but later declared it "BORING!" and criticized MSNBC for a technical issue during the broadcast.
"As usual, the president could not help himself from watching," Brzezinski said. "This is like his 'Morning Joe' thing -- he can't help himself."
The "Morning Joe" co-hosts then turned their attention to Graham, who has turned from a strong Trump critic during the 2016 GOP primaries to joking about Trump serving an unconstitutional third term.
"Wow, that guy," Brzezinski said. "Lindsey, save yourself. Oh, my god."
The co-hosts agreed Graham was burning his reputation faster than former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
"A man who said that Donald Trump was unfit to be president of the United States and would destroy the Republican Party if they nominated him," Scarborough said, "they would deserve to be destroyed."
MSNBC's Donny Deutsch shredded Rudy Giuliani as a "pathetic" clown for continuing to trade out what was left of his reputation to serve President Donald Trump.
Giuliani dismissed special counsel Robert Mueller's upcoming congressional testimony, scheduled for July 17, as "totally useless," and "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough raked him over the coals.
"It's hard to believe this man ever ran a city like New York, let alone the fact that many people like myself consider him to be a very effect effective mayor," Scarborough said. "It's just a cynical, cynical, stupid thing for Rudy Giuliani to say."
"When Robert Mueller said at the top of the report, and the Justice Department guidelines made him say at the top of the report, that he couldn't -- he could not say that the president should be indicted," he added. "He could not draw that conclusion, and here you have the president's lawyers just being stupid, just lying. I'm sure there are a lot of stupid people that will pick that up and will tweet it, but it is totally separated from the fact, it doesn't change the facts at all, and again, just more embarrassment for Rudy Giuliani."
Deutsch was even more harsh in his assessment.
"I've lived through Rudy Giuliani as mayor, his very strong job at 9/11, and just watch him degenerate into this pathetic circus figure -- stupid, lying, grotesque in every way -- sold his soul just to be near the sun," Deutsch said.
Scarborough called out Giuliani for purposefully misrepresenting Mueller's findings, and his duties and limitations as special counsel, to protect Trump from consequences for his wrongdoing.
"He used to vouch for Robert Mueller, as did a lot of other people, but knew that he could not reach a conclusion," Scarborough said. "For him to then turn around and use the fact that he followed the law, followed the Constitution, to use that against him is grotesque."
Deutsch said Giuliani had squandered his reputation in the waning years of his public life.
"What people will do at a certain age to just be in the spotlight is sad," Deutsch said. "he's pathetic, he's taken on a pathetic tone."
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough spilled some gossip about President Donald Trump's personal attorney and his alleged alcohol abuse.
The "Morning Joe" host has long hinted about rumors of Rudy Giuliani drinking to excess, and MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle opened the topic by asking an Axios reporter about a trove of leaked transition documents showing the incoming administration's background checks of potential officials.
"What did it show up for Rudy Giuliani, who wanted to be secretary of state?" Barnicle asked.
"Okay, how much time do we have?" said Axios reporter Jonathan Swan.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski pointed out they had a three-hour show, and Swan agreed to share some details about the internal deliberations for Giuliani.
"They were so worried about Rudy Giuliani, who was in line for secretary of state, they created two separate dossiers for him," Swan said. "There was the normal vetting, and they also created a document titled, 'Rudy Giuliani, Business Ties Research Dossier,' which had copious accounting of his foreign entanglements. Associations with an Iranian group previously listed on the terrorist watch list, other ties to companies with links to Russia."
Scarborough asked if the documents showed any concerns about Giuliani's alcohol use.
"Let me ask you, Jonathan, any concerns as it pertains to Giuliani, about personal things like falling asleep at 6 o'clock at night?" Scarborough said. "Something that the Trump administration people close to Donald Trump told me about repeatedly. Concerns that he would go to Bedminster and be asleep by 6 o'clock with his chin on his chest."
"I'm not saying this to be tough," he added, "but I'm wondering whether they actually put that in the dossier because I heard about that a lot."
Swan had pointed out that Axios redacted details that were based on rumors or other spuriously sourced information, but he said claims about Giuliani's drinking were not in the dossier.
"That was not in the vetting dossier," he said.
"See, look at how tight-lipped he is," Scarborough said. "Steely gaze, I can't draw him out."
When Hope Hicks, a former aide who was exceptionally close to President Donald Trump, testified before the House Judiciary Committee, it was largely an exercise in obfuscation. Democrats capitulated to demands that she testify behind closed doors, and administration officials were present to stop her from answering a stunning number of questions about her time in the White House with an extremely flimsy claim of executive privilege.
But one section of the transcript, first flagged to me by Vox’s Andrew Prokop, jumped out as an especially damning exchange that strengthens the already powerful case that Trump is guilty of federal crimes.
It wasn’t about Trump’s obstruction of justice or the behavior discussed in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which has been the focus of the coverage of Hicks’s testimony. Instead, it concerned the other set of crimes in which the president has been implicated: the criminal hush money payments made to two women in the runup to the 2016 election, violating campaign finance laws.
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen has already pleaded guilty to facilitating these payments, which constituted campaign contributions that went unreported and were, in fact, illegally concealed. Cohen has already provided the House with evidence that Trump reimbursed him for the payments while in office. And, while pleading guilty to the charges, Cohen said he carried out the criminal payments at Trump’s direction — an indication that prosecutors in the Southern District of New York found this claim credible.
And when Hicks testified Wednesday to the Judiciary Committee, her testimony confirmed key facts that would be necessary to prove Trump committed a crime.
To see why, it’s important to realize why the payments were criminal. Campaign finance laws require candidates to report all expenditures on their campaigns. As SDNY alleged, and Cohen and the judge overseeing his case agreed, the payments to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels in the months and weeks before the election were intended to help the then-candidate’s chances of winning by keeping the women silent about the affairs they said they had with Trump. These contributions by Cohen himself (later reimbursed by Trump and reportedly disguised as a legal retainer) and by American Media, Inc., were never properly reported and, indeed, were intentionally concealed. This is part of the reason Cohen is in jail.
To deflect from these charges, Trump’s lawyers and defenders have contradicted Cohen. They don’t deny that the payments were made but that they were for a campaign purpose. Instead, they say they were made for a personal reason: to protect Trump’s marriage.
“I can produce an enormous number of witnesses that say the President was concerned about how it would affect his children, his marriage,” Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has said. (Unfortunately for Giuliani, he has also made comments that are inconsistent with this defense, but if Trump’s case ever made it to trial, one assumes his attorneys would stick to a script.)
They claimed that this was just the kind of thing Cohen did for Trump all the time and on his own, for the purpose of protecting Trump’s marriage. They’ve even suggested that Cohen made the payments without notifying Trump, though a recording has shown that to be false.
But Hicks’s testimony blows these excuses out of the water. One questioner pressed Hicks on an exchange she had with Cohen:
Q: It’s another text message exchange between yourself and Michael Cohen, November 5th, 2016. Do you recall what you were discussing in this exchange? Would it be helpful to read out loud into the record? I just was going to spare you, but —
HICKS No. No. That’s okay. Thank you. Yes, I remember. We were discussing the traction the Wall Street Journal story regarding Karen McDougal was getting.
Q: So when you say — I guess Cohen sent to you, “Keep praying!! It’s working!” When he says “it’s working,” do you recall what he meant by that?
HICKS: I guess that our prayers were being answered.
Q: When you made statements during the campaign that the President did not have any relationship with Stormy Daniels, did you have a basis for saying that? Did the President tell you that he did not have a relationship?
HICKS: Again, I was relaying information from the reporter to the different parties involved, primarily Michael and Mr. Trump, and that was the response that was dictated to me. I didn’t ask 268 about the nature of the relationships.
Now, the excuse that the hush money expenditure was merely a personal matter unrelated to the campaign is already highly dubious, given how close the payments were made to Election Day. And Cohen, of course, by pleading guilty, has admitted that the intention of the payments was to influence the campaign, though Trump’s defenders just say Cohen is a liar.
Meghan McCain ripped President Donald Trump for inviting foreign assistance in his 2020 re-election bid -- even as she accepted his misleading framing about the Mueller report.
"The View" co-host said anyone involved in a political campaign should know it's illegal to accept foreign aid, and she agreed with fellow Republican Lindsey Graham that the president shouldn't have signaled his willingness to accept that type of assistance.
"If someone from any country, Norway or whatever, came to me and said, hey Meghan, I have information on X opponent or X person, anyone, you should immediately go to the FBI," she said. "It's very basic crap here. By the way, I think that when you open up this Pandora's box in the way he has, it's a very, very dangerous precedent and it is illegal."
"I think he feels emboldened because the Mueller report came out and said 'no collusion,'" she added.
Special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish enough evidence to charge anyone from the Trump campaign as part of a conspiracy to rig the election, but explicitly explained that investigators did not evaluate whether there was collusion -- which McCain has repeatedly reminded her panelists isn't a federal crime.
"Here's the problem," said co-host Ana Navarro. "The Mueller report clearly says that Russia interfered in the election, Russia meddled and tried to give information through the Trump Tower meeting. At the same time Mueller did not charge Trump, they are interpreting this -- including people like Rudy Giuliani, who you'll remember just a week after the report came out said he was going to Ukraine to find negative intelligence on Joe Biden."
"They are interpreting this as a blank slate, clean bill, go do it, get out of jail card, there's no problem, you can do it," she added. "That's why I think there needs to be absolute clarification bipartisan. It shouldn't just be Democrats saying it's illegal. It should be Republicans."
McCain explained her apparent contradiction in viewing Trump's attempts at collusion.
"He's saying he would do it but it hasn't happened yet," she said. "Maybe that's the logic."
President Donald Trump's lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, compared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the infamous red-baiter Joe McCarthy after she said she wants Trump to go to prison.
"Pelosi wants to see @realDonaldTrump in prison. She doesn’t have a particular crime in mind just prison. If you can’t see she’s over the top, if not over the Hill, you are blinded by partisanship or hatred," Giuliani wrote a in tweet Sunday.
In a second tweet, he later added: "Pelosi said @realDonaldTrump should go to prison. But she said nothing about a trial or a jury or a presumption of innocence. Is this worse than Joe McCarthy? They are destroying any adherence to our constitution. And the Fake News failure to hold them accountable is corrupt."
The former New York City mayor was reacting to reports that Pelosi had said, "I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison."
There has been considerable controversy within the Democratic Party over Pelosi's reluctance to begin an impeachment inquiry. On the one hand, there is a political logic to her decision: While the Democrats control the House of Representatives, which alone can impeach the president, the Senate alone can convict the president — and to do that, two-thirds of the members have to vote in favor of conviction. Not only do Republicans control the Senate, but they have 53 seats to 47 for the Democrats, which includes independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who both caucus with the party. As a result, 20 Republican senators would have to break from the party and vote to convict Trump for him to be removed from office — an unlikely, though not impossible, prospect.
"Nancy Pelosi seems to think that some history would celebrate not Catherine the Great, but Catherine the Faint-hearted," American University political historian Allan Lichtman told Salon last month. "She is leading the Democrats down the primrose path of playing not to lose, of being timid, of being afraid, the path that has always caused the Democrats to lose. This is a truly turning-point historic moment in the history of the United States."
He added, "We now have a rogue president. Absolutely right about that, but we have a rogue president who cannot be checked by what Nancy Pelosi is proposing. The only way to check this president is to hold him accountable, to strike at his power and his brand, and that can only be done by beginning an impeachment investigation. The argument that the House should not impeach because the Senate might not convict is constitutionally unsound, politically unsound and morally bankrupt. It is not the responsibility of the House to look into a crystal ball and try to figure out what the Senate may or may not do."
There is also an irony in Giuliani comparing Pelosi to McCarthy when it is Trump who has been suspiciously obsequious toward Russian President Vladimir Putin in his rhetoric. McCarthy was a Wisconsin senator who dominated America's political stage from 1950 to 1954 by spuriously accusing Democrats and other perceived political opponents of being Communists or having Communist ties. While there were Soviet espionage rings in the United States at that time, the problem was nowhere near as rampant as McCarthy made it out to be, and he was eventually discredited.
As former Ambassador Michael McFaul (who represented President Barack Obama in Russia) told Salon earlier this year. After noting the "ironic twist" of Republicans traditionally accusing Democrats of being pro-Russia back in the days when that nation was Communist, he pointed out that both Trump and Putin are "kind of a self-styled conservative, self-styled nationalist, anti-multilateralist, kind of 'nation-state should come first.'"
He added, "I think that ideological affinity is also something that's radically new in the era that we live in, not unlike the intellectual affinities that you had from people on the left with communist organizations and communist countries during the Cold War."
