for a discussion on the trump administration, the 2016 election, and russia. he's joined by reporters from the "new york times" and npr. live at 9:00 p.m. eastern, c-span's landmark cases series continues with the 199 case of brandenburg v ohio. -- 1969 case. . ♪ from the national press club in washington, d.c., this is the call be report, with marvin call l

. hello, and welcome to the national press club and another edition of the kalb report. i'm marvin kalb. our discussion is the troubled state of the u.s./russian else relationing. ever since donald trump arrived on the national and global scene a few short years ago his feelings regarding vladimir putin of russia fascinated and on occasion frightened people everywhere. was it really a bromance as it was put early on? or did putin have something on trump? why did putin really intervene in the 2016 presidential elections? >> was trump pathetically naive about putin and his sharp elbowed policies?

what was going on? in the absence of clear answers the two nation's relation versus soured very badly. there has been talk of a new cold war. the awesome might of the russian and american military machines have been an almost daily display in the middle east. just the other day in syria. and also in the baltic region. so, again, i ask, what is going on? so i have assembled a panel of four very well informed people to help us come up with an answer. i'm going to give them the better part of an hour to do so. to my right, only a geographic designation, i quickly add. john allen, a refired four-star marine general, now president of the brookings institution. his long career spans war and diplomacy. efforts commander of nato's 150,000 troops in the afghanistan war from 2011 to 2013. and he served as a special presidential envoy to the middle east in the fight against isis.

to my left, also geography, leon aaron, who was director of russian studies at the american enterprise institute. born in moscow, he came to the u.s. in 1978, earned his ph.d. at columbia university, and has become one of washington's top specialists on russian affairs. to my immediate right, mary louise kelly, who is co-host of all things considered, npr's award-winning news magazine. she was npr's national security correspondent, once worked for cnn, and the bcc, and she's just back from moscow, where she reported on putin's recent flirtation with the idea of a presidential election. and to my immediate left, party baker, who is the chief white house correspondent for the "new york times" covering president trump.

he also covered three other presidents, obama, bush, and clinton. he was also the moscow bureau chief for the "washington post," and he worked at the post for some 20 years. so dear panelists, tell us what is going on. are we really in the depths of a new cold war? or can something happen yet that could turn it around and open the way toward a more civil conversation? i'd like to start with john allen. >> marvin, thank you very much for the opportunity to join you this evening and this wonderful panel. it's great to be with so many members of the fourth of state, the media. i being a marine for so many years i never thought i would find myself in the position where i was thanking the immediate why for your service. well done to you, keeping up the pressure. look, we all hope that in some form or another we can find common purpose. with any potential adversary of

the united states. i think by almost animer we find now that we and russia are particular leaders in particular are in a moment of crisis, a moments of confrontation. we ought to look for ways that we can have a conversation that finds common purpose, potential common interests but that's going to be very difficult to find these days. >> but you do accept the idea of being in a new cold war? >> i'm not sure i would put that term to it. but i would say the level of confrontation that we have with the russians today is exceptional in the period in the aftermath of the cold war. now whether they want that or not remains to be determined. but we are certainly headed towards a level of confrontation that has the potential for even a military confrontation as we jaw saw just two nights ago. >> mary louise, your take. >> sergey lavrov was asked the same question, he said relations

have never been worse. >> never. >> never been worse. and he explicitly included the cold war. i guess i don't find the cold war frame that useful in the sense that the cold war referred to such a by father world. we are in such a different place w dueling super powers, with extension idea logical clash. that's not where we are. and i suppose also if you think about the end goal -- i was in the room recently where john mclaughlin the former acting member of the cia was asked this, he said the cold war ended, the soviet union went away. russia is not going to go away. it's not going to disappear. so where does this en? so u.s./russia relations clearly you could argue whether they are better or worse than they were on the cusp of the cuban missile

crisis. they are bad but new cold war? i'm not sure. >> peter baker, your view. >> i agree with mary louise. i think we use the cold war phrase in the media too loosely, but mainly to emphasize the idea that we are back in an adversarial posture that we hoped to get away from in 1991. for 15 years we were away for it. under clinton and yeltsinin, we had disputes, but for the most part we believed we were partners. after 9/11, i was in moscow at that time, vladimir putin reached out, accepted there was a convergence of interests. >> uh-huh. >> i would say since 2003 or so with the iraq war with putin's increasing consolidation of power, we have headed different directions. i don't know that's the fault of any individual actor but we are

definitely on opposite sides at this point of a struggle. putin is not a communist, capital c. he is however, hoping to make russia great again, to prove that russia is a major actor on the stage. if that means putting ukraine in its place, if that means propping up bashar al assad he is willing to do that. >> leon, cold war? and what can be done to turn it around? >> well, i mean, this -- this situation reminds me of that old soviet joke where, you know, who is the soviet pessimist? the soviet pessimist is somebody who says things will get worse and who is the soviet optimist, he is the one who says things are so bad they cannot possibly get worse. i think we have reached this point of soviet optimism. the problem is to me maybe

because i look at it always from the russian side. >> yes. >> is that sometime probably around 2012 going to his third presidency putin had -- putin made the choice, probably the most consequential choice of his political career. and that is he shifted the basis of the legitimacy of his regime or his own popularity -- which is the same, the only thing that goes for this regime is his personal popularity. he began to shift it from what had cemented it before, which is a very substantial economic growth and growth of incomes to what i call patriotic mobilization, some of my russian colleagues call it militarized patriotism. he is looking at a very bleak economic situation without -- unless he untakes the reforms. everybody tells him that. i cannot undertake structural reforms, he cannot stop

corruption. he cannot stop this nationwide racketeering by bureaucracy without endangering his regime. so therefore he shifted the basis of his regime's legitimacy and his popularity from the wealth manager to the defender of the country, the restorer of the glory of the soviet union because putin -- putin is a soviet patriot. you are absolutely right, far more than he's a russian patriot. >> so what does it mean in terms of the relationship with the u.s.? what is his end game? what does he want out of the relationship with the u.s.? >> this is -- i think this is the -- i don't want to use the term tragedy, but this is a very bad situation because is he long as putin depends on confrontation with the united states -- and you were at the election. his speech on march 1st, his state of russia address -- >> right. >> -- in my mind was the most

militaristic, the most chauvinistic speech by any russian leader since stalin, you have to go to 1949, 1950. so long as he bases his popularity disturbs it's there, it's genuine -- on being the defender of the country, the advantage wisher of the hated west, i think it's very difficult for us to do anything about it. >> mary louise where would you put us at this point, at a stage where the idea of improvement in the relationship is so far removed that we have to deal with this negativity all the time. or is there a way that you can imagine this relationship still turning around and moving in a positive direction? >> that's such a good question. i was struck by something i read this morning. might have been in the times. probably your piece, peter. i can't remember. allowmy to quote it here.

[ laughter ] -- allow me to quote it here. it was angela accident, now a professor at georgetown, was a long-time intelligence officer here in the u.s. was this your story? >> no. >> okay. >> should have been. >> she was quoted as talking about u.s./russia relations and saying one of the challenges is the u.s. has three different russia policies. there is president trump's policy, vision of russia, vision of where he would like this relationship to go. there's his administration's russia policy which sometimes differs quite sharply with president trump's own expressed stated views. and then there is where congress has weighed in with sanctions and where lawmakers appear to be on all of this. and those three do not operate in tandem which perhaps is a strategic plus, if you are operating on the premise that keeping putin off his guard is a good way to go. i mean, clearly, there is room

for improvement. clearly, there are areas for improvement and cooperation. but you know, i -- as i was getting dressed this morning, getting ready for this panel, i was thinking it's kind of a shame this wasn't last week because the focus will be so on syria. it will be weird talking about a panel exclusively about russia. and then just in the last 24 hours or so we have seen the u.s. accusing, well, international inspectors, but with the u.s. not flagging us, steering us away from reports that russia perhaps went and meddled with the chemical site that international inspectors are trying get to in douma and syria. there are reports out in the uk accusing russia of massive cyber intrusions. that's all coming out today. you have -- it's not entirely clear, speaking of different u.s. policies, whether the u.s. is about to impose more sanctions on russia in response

to douma. it depends on if you are listening to nikki hayley or to the white house. it can't go anywhere from up, to cite your russia optimist view. >> from your perspective, john allen, as you are looking at this problem now, what is the greatest strategic challenge to the united states at this point? >> well, there are several, marvin. i think one of the things that the russians have done quite well is to create a relatively modern capability of conducting operations, coherent military operations in all of the six doe mains. so on the ground, on the sea, under the sea, in the air, in the cyber domain, and ultimately in space. they are actually quite sophisticated in that regard. they have also mastered the capability of conducting operations in what we call the gray zone, which are operations that can accomplish their objectives, but are not so

provocative, any one of them, that it breaks the threshold potentially for a nato react or a u.n. reaction. they have mastered that. from my perspective, the great strategic confrontation that we have with the russians is that they have meddled in the internal affairs of the united states and our electoral process to the direct detriment of our democratic institutions in the united states. it's difficult to defend against that. but in the end, the 2016 election that's characterized by a level of interference, a strategic influence operation far beyond simple cyber operations -- strategy influence operations that had i think dramatic potential impact on that election. and it continues to this day. so what's happened is not only do we -- i think the intelligence community knows

pretty well, not only do we not know the full extent of intrusion of the russian sidebarer and influence operations, what's happened is it has caused i think a very important outcome for vladimir putin, which is it has caused a crisis of confidence in democratic societies in their electoral processes and their systems of truth. it has really compromised pooems people's ability to trust their doft, trust truth, and to trust their electoral processes. that is a strategic outcome where he didn't have to fire a shot to accomplish that. >> peter, do you think that was his end game? do you think that's what he started having in his mind when he launched this project? >> i think the available evidence suggests that he started with the idea of disruption. morphed a little bit to the idea of revenge at hillary clinton, who he did not like and whom he blamed for fomenting street revolts when he came back to the presidency. and then once they recognized

that there was possibly an opportunity, morphed again into support in an overt way for another candidate, for donald trump. did they think they were actually going to elect trump? probably not. they read the same polls we did. they saw that little dial thing on the "new york times" website that we all saw. but they did sort of move from a generalized let's mess thing up and make them all doubt their own system to hey let's throw our side toward one candidate. and that's without debate, really. we see this in an e-mail that was sent to donald trump jr. we would like you to meet with this woman for the purpose of receiving incriminating information about hillary clinton as part of the russian government's support of mr. trump. there is no question about that. and i think that they did not understand what would happen once they did that. and i don't think they have gotten what they wanted out of it, necessarily. except for the disruption part.

>> now, that was called collusion. that word was used rather widespread. leon, i have heard you talk very eloquently against the idea that there was collusion in 2016 between the trump campaign and the russian government. please explain that. >> well, they may very well have been one. we should check and we should wait for the reports. again, i have zero knowledge of this administration. actually it's the first administration that kind of did not really need my expertise. republican or democratic. but from the russian side, i do know a few thing. and the first thing i would say is that no responsible russian intelligence officer would expose a truly valuable asset by connecting -- remember, you know, until october, it was

not -- it was out of the realm of possibility that trump would win. you were right. and besides, this was a campaign that was so disorderly and chaotic that you truly would have thought twice or three times before you get involved. now, speaking of people they met, i think anybody who has been to moscow -- you for example i was a lowly foreign policy adviser to governor romney when he ran, and even i got phone calls like this. you know what, let's meet and we will, you know, you will get the ear of the -- of sergey lavrov or all the way to the president. these are from what i've seen, the names so far are bottom crawling third rate hustlers. and so far, i have not seen anything better than that.

now, what happened is that this immense pressure to please the czar however you want, however you can do it, who knows? you know, maybe somebody -- maybe you could come up with something because they all knew that it was anti-hillary. you are absolutely right. i have a wonderful poster here to show later. but, you know, once i got those calls, you know, you don't even send your researchers. you send an unpaid intern to meet with them. who usually comes back and he says it's a waste of time. so what you had is this immense pressure by these third rate bottom crawling hustlers and absolutely bad judgment, total lack of professionalism on behalf of the trump campaign. >> and russians are perfectly capable of being that foolish and going with third rate people and screwing it all up. they are perfectly capable of doing that. so it is possible that you can

have collusion and lousy ineffective -- it is possible. >> absolutely. no. it is possible. >> i mean the soviet system was almost based on that principle. >> it is possible. yes, it is absolutely possible. it's just -- i think it's easy to have a collusion with people who know what they are doing than thor way around. >> fair enough. mary louise you were recently in moscow and covering the election of putin to another term. i remember many years ago most of the time the russian people were very friendly toward americans. even the russian government would say nice things about the united states every now and then. what is it like there today? i hear that it's kind of harsh and tough. what was your experience? >> we didn't have a lot of love and welcoming open arms from the russian government. i'll say that. but in terms of people talking

to you, it's a surprise to me every time i go. because you think, you know, i show up with my microphone and my interpreter and my producer. what does anybody have to gain from speaking to me? and that's the case here. but at least here they know what npr is, hopefully there is some trust that we are going to be objective and not mangle their quotes. what does a russian have to gain by speaking to me? and i -- just to take election day it self, i'll take two moments that book ended it. woke up. polls open at 8:00 a.m. it's a sunday. i knew it was going to be a long, long, long, long, long day. so i had summoned the willpower to get up early and go to my hotel gym and work out. and the newscast calls as i'm on the treadmill, which is always the way. can you just file quickly. polls have opened. i thought let me just -- i want to put eyeballs on that directly before i tell you that. i know they are supposed to open. i just want to see it.

there was a poll on the same block as our hotel in central moscow. so i exit the treadmill. i'm sweaty. i'm disgusting. i haven't had my coffee. i think i brushed my teeth, but borderline there. run -- i just want to see the doors are open and there are people going into polls. and i don't have my interpreter with me. i don't speak russian. i don't have -- they are crazy for passes, press passes, all the bureaucracy you have to have multiple documents before you go out to report. i have got nothing other than my room key. i show up. i'll just trying to lurk around and see that people are coming and going from the follow and these two big security guys with their guns and their uniform and their helmets and they have got full body armor on come chasing and yelling at me in russian. i thought oh, no i probably cross adeline, literally a line that only russians are allowed to go youn. they are immediately going to arrest me and i can't speak

russian, i don't have my phone. eventually with a lot of sign language and a pigeon russian and a kind russian who stepped in and transmitted they can tell i'm worried, a clueless russian journalist and i can't find my way to the poll and they escort me and show me how the ballot box works and how their ids are checked. they have got coffee set out. they are trying to make it a fair, carnival atmosphere. this is a fun thing to do, come vote. but putin wants turnout, wants everyone to voechltd they are selling coffee and smoked fish. i go whack and report all of this on the npr newscast. but i thought, you know, it is -- as a western journalist, you have access, and people are leaving the polls. and to a fault, almost everybody who i stopped and stuck a microphone in my face once i got

my producer and interpreter there would stop and tell me who they voted for, and why, and what their background was. you can move rn a. you never quite know to what extent you are being monitored as a journalist. >> but it is true that in the last 15, 20 years there has been an opening. russians are more willing to deal with foreigners now than ever have been before. and you were there at a time when putin was trying to make a point. >> he was trying to make a point. and he wanted westerners. i will say one other point, which is when i was there last cher with protests and we were watching security guards club protesters and drag them off into vans in front of us. i stood there witnessing it and reporting live for npr. looking around there were no russian journalists there. they are banned from covering that on state tv. so if you were a russian and didn't follow english language

media, you would never have known about this protest happening right there and how it was playing out. >> i want to take a moment now to identify ourselves for the many national and global website that are carrying this edition of the kalb report. marvin kalb here at the national press club. and i'm discussing the fraught nature of u.s./russian relations with john allen, mary louise kelly, peter baker, and leon aaron. my next question is for the two panelists who are not journalists. and that's john allen and leon aaron. what stories in your mind -- i mean you keep reading about this subject. what stories in your mind are really important about the nature of the relationship that are not being reported either prol or adequa-- properly or ad at all.

i'll start with john. >> i think that while you see it touched on in some of the stories, i think the inherent vulnerability of the western democracies to digital intrusion and massive influence operations deserve as lot more coverage. we have seen the outcome of the migration out of the middle east which has in many respects created a moment of polarization in the politics of europe which i believe in many respects were accelerated and enabled by this influence campaign which appealed through the internet and through digital media in ways we have never seen before. what we are looking at at brookings now is the traditional concept of sovereignty.

the west failian concept of sovereignty which is a line which encloses terrain, and people, and resources. ultimately, to have a self-identity, which is completely turned on its head today. the capacity of the russians or the chinese or -- pick an opponent -- to completely neutralize the traditional concepts of sovereignty at a digital level and come straight into the consciousness of the individual citizens regardless of what the central government would want to have happen or not have happen, this has really turned west failian consents of sovereignty on its head. we really need to understand that. because if this is warfare of the future, or influence of the future, how does the traditional concept of the nation state defend itself in this environment. >> thank you john. >> i think we need more coverage

on that. >> thank you jen. leon, your sense, the story that is not covered adequately. >> again, as the general said, it's being touched upon all the time but maybe not all the dots are connected. and that's a very peculiar itch in a of the putin regime. custom is why it's not a cold war. but i'm not sure it's -- i think it's even less predictable than the cold war. and the reason for that is because he based his legitimacy as i said on his foreign policy, confrontation with the west. and once you settle that tiger it's very difficult to get off, and the tiger requires more and more meat. you know, it's not a new problem. i think somewhere towards the end of henry the fourth,

shakespeare's henry the fourth tells the future henry the fifth be it that thy rule occupy giddy mind with foreign quarrels. this is something that putin is doing. i have a poster which you have seen but i would like to show it is a classic 1949 soviet cold war poster. a russian soldier lecturing uncle sam, berating. the soldier is very handsome. he's confident, on his very broad chest is the golden star of the soviet ruin, the highest award. in his hand, easy to read, is the history of world war ii. the implication being, the enemy is different, but the outcome is

going to be the same. uncal sam, of course, holds the nuclear bomb, and the torch to set the world on fire if the russian soldier allows him. and his ugly face contorted by impotent hatred. and the caption could be loosely translated as, don't you fool around. this is a sensibility that putin instilled in russia quite successfully. the loathing, the fear, but also the pride. and this is a very dangerous road to take. >> thank you very much, leon. my next question to the two journalists on the panel. i have been told by many of your colleagues how difficult it is to cover president trump. that he simply dominates everything in the environment. and therefore you get caught up on any given day covering the story that he sort of presents to you.

so, what is the story that you would really like to cover but you don't have the time to do that right now? i'll start with peter. >> i'm so exhausted getting through the day that i -- it's hard to imagine. you are right. he is a remarkable force of nature when it comes to news generation. in a way i've never seen. this is my fourth president. i have never seen anything like it. in other president sees you would wake up in the morning and have some sense of what the day was going to bring. you knew what the storyline could be. i wake up now and i have no clue what i am going to be writing about by the end of the day. it may be something i never would have imagined would be the subject of a story. in that environment, as you say, to kind of escape that vortex and focus on something of our own, you know, ambition is a challenge. and we have -- at the times we have met that challenge i hope by increasing our staff. we now have six people cover the

white house full time. when i started 22 years ago it was two people. we now have 107 people in our washington bureau. s that up from 70 before trump took office. we have a full-time team that does nothing but cover, you know, investigate the russia stuff and now the cohen stuff in new york. and we try to peel off people so they can get outside of that vortex for a while to do bigger stories. if you asked me what story i would like to do, i would like to understand better the nsc process, i would like to understand the national security team, especially reconstituted under john bolton, new national security visor. mike pompeo there as secretary of state. i would like to understand better who is running things. we saw nikki hayley say yesterday we are going to put new sanctions on russia on monday. today we said no we are not. i would like to understand that dynamic better. >> mary louise? >> nikki hayley, we are slapping

new sanctions, and trump and the white house saying no we are not. it used to be if you got a whiff of a story and started reporting it out and you got to the point where you were covering the national security beat and ready to take to it the cia for comment. they often wouldn't confirm it on the record but you would get some kind of steer, and that meant something. and now, who do you go to and ge -- get a steer and it means this story is true and it nails it. you could get the president's national security adviser, you could get the president yourself confirming your story and six hours later have the rug pulled out from under you. >> in other words, the idea of the old two sources before you go with a story -- forget that, right? >> forget that. and to peter's point about the craziness of the news cycle, you know, we at npr used to scale

down our staffing on the weekend. we had -- we were fully staffed but there is less news on the weekend. that's now changed when the president gets up and tweets before his golf game and changes the world's agenda for the day on a saturday morning. we, all things considered, we are a two hour show but it's staggered so you get the latest news on the east coast and on the west coast. i used to go home at 6:30 or 7:00, you could kind of found, the east coast was shutting down. unless there is a huge california moving you could update one or two things from home and it was great. as of last week our new schedule is staffed fully until 10:00. i was there until 10 friday night. of course that doesn't account it. we were launching strikes on syria. i was there until mid nights doing updates for the west coast. our national correspondent who was in the studio with me a

picture of all the mikes lit up and it was 10:37 p.m. and the caption was typical friday night in the trump era. we are all in the studio, we don't know what is happening but here we are doing a live broadcast about it. >> peter n this era of fake news or alternative facts, that concept that president trump has introduced to washington, two questions, really. one, when you look at the four presidents you have covered, is trump the leakiest? [ laughter ] >> that's a great question. and it's funny to say yes because i just spent all day today tearing my hair out because i can't get anybody the talk to me. it's an odd dynamic where we know more in some ways about what happens inside this white house than we did other white houses. they do not have the discipline of a bush white house, this was

pretty disciplined. and they don't have the discipline of an obama white house, which was fairly disciplined. the clinton white house had no discipline. they don't even have that. having said that they are not particularly responsive when i'm trying get them on the phone. they have some reporters they deal with more frequently than others. the problem is as you finally make a source or make a relationship with somebody that you might begin to trust on that steer, they are out and you have to start all over again. >> yes. >> in some ways yes the leakiest white house but also to me the least responsive that i have dealt with. >> john allen, this world of the fake news, alternative fact, how does that affect the ability of a four-star marine general to do his work? are you isolated from that world? or are you affected by that world? if so, how?

>> me as a general or me as the president of bookings? >> either one you like. >> from -- >> i added the line being a general. >> no less a person as the white house person, sarah once said that we are not in the business of questioning four-star generals. i take that to the bank. [ laughter ] no, i -- this is an extraordinary challenge for organize stations like aei and brookings right now. because he had you find yourself in an environment where there are alternative facts, and people point to alternative facts as the genuine basis for opinions -- you know, we used to say you can have your own opinions but you can have your own facts. we have the fake news. we have alternative facts. and what this has done is it's been really a challenge for think tanks. and from my perspective, as we do business at brookings and my guess would be that arthur

brooks feels the same way at aei. our obligation -- first of all, our role has never been more important to the american public in producing quality research that is as accurate as we can possibly make it at any given moment that we can give the american people for a basis -- a place to go and a basis to find the closest thing to truth that is available. truth will be revised as more facts become available, et cetera, but we have that obligation to the people of the united states. very importantly, we have that obligation to the administration. one of the mottos i've brought the brookings is that we will help the president to govern and help the congress to ledge ls laid. that means an unrelenting commitment to quality and unrelenting commitment to truth as much as we possibly can. and provide that to the policy makers but also provide that to the american people. but in an environment where even

in the white house there is an unrelending stream of falsehoods that are coming out, it's very difficult to compete against that. so the challenge for think tanks at this point in the 21st century is to be that basis for unqualified truth upon custom the american people can judge their own positions but also policy makers and regulators, et cetera, can then base quality policy development. >> thank you john. merry louise, the president, as you know, has referred to the american press as the enemies of the american people. and i'm wondering, in your judgment, do you think he is serious about that? or is it just for show? >> i have no idea. if you figure it out, let me know. >> thank you for your service, by the way. once again. [ laughter ] >> i mean, without stretching this parallel too far, i will say the last couple of times i have reported from russia i was

struck thinking if you look at washington, you look at moscow both are places where the leaders is attacking the press, attacking and targeting the press. both are places where the president either jails his political enemies or threatens to. both are places where the legislative branch either can't or won't exert money of a check on executive power. that said, i was in moscow when jim comey did his big headline testimony last june i guess it was, right after he had been fired and the first time he spoke publicly after that. and it was surreal to sit in moscow watching the just-fired fbi director kprit size the sitting american president and think -- criticize the sitting american president and think, that wouldn't happen in russia. he would have been hauled off to jail.

and there are still real and important and deep structural differences. >> peter, when -- you are there every day at the white house. and that line is thrown at you. >> uh-huh. >> what was in his mind? was he serious about that? was it a joke? >> well, as somebody from the failing "new york times," i can tell you that he likes -- let me say by the way, "new york times" doing great. i hope we keep failing the way we're failing. the readership is way up. thank you very much, appreciate that. >> won a couple of pull it issers today. >> including on our russia coverage along with our friends and competitors at the "washington post." stock price is up. you know, we are failing upwards, you know, like classic washington phenomenon. >> give me your sense of trump's -- >> people ask us a lot. there is a lots of bark.

so far, there hasn't been a lot of bite. now the bark is not insignificant. it's meaningful. it cuts away at our credibility, which is the intent, it's to treat us as another pril actor who shouldn't be believed. >> what aim is solved in doing that? >> tois credit what we report. >> why? >> because then he can tell his supporters it's not true what they are saying and you can believe me. he has successfully bypassed the media with a twitter account that every president before him would have loved to have been able to do. he's the first one to have the capacity and the willingness and the ferocity to genuinely bypass the media. on a day in day out basis it sounds like more bark than bichlt he talks about going after nbc's license. he talks about throwing us out of the west wing. he hasn't done that.

after the first few months where there was this tension with sean spicer, will the cameras be on or not, schwarzenegger has calmed things down and we have more or less regular briefings and we have more or less adversarial but polite back and forths. so my daily life is not changed in a significant way. where i worry and where i say we journalists ought to say something is when that translates into trangible impact on our ability to do our job. tangible impact on our access or tangible impact as retaliation against organizations that dare to write things that he doesn't like. that's where i think we should worry. i don't worry about the name calling. he will be at a rally and gin people up, media, fake media, and people in the rally will turn around and shout at us and scream at us. that's not pleasant, but it is what it is. then he gets on the plane comes to the back and says hey guys how is it going, everybody

having good time. like a hotelier asking if the guests are having a good time. sir, you kind of gave it to us. he has deep grievances about the media, i don't think that's fake. at the same time i think also a good show. i don't think it's either/or. i think it's both. >> leon, when you think about putin for a second and measure him up against peter the great, nicholas the first, stalin, is he in the long term tradition of russian historical leaders, nationalist leaded or does he represent something new that we have to be super concerned about? >> i think he represents a significant deviation from that line. >> he does? >> yes. >> in what way? >> well, if you remember, max labor's three categories of legitimacy, it's either traditional or it's legal, which is democratic, or it's harris

mattic. i think -- charismatic. i think putin wants to be a charismatic leader. the russian sovereigns that you mentioned. they dabbled. catherine the great grabbed half of poland and crimea from the turks. yes, yes, we panned, that's fine. but they had inherent legitimacy. they had legitimacy by virtue of being czars or emperors. putin, did not have that legitimacy. he gained it because in the first eight years of his rule, plus he used the soviet capacities still unused, oil doubled in price every couple of years. our common friend, unfortunately, was murdered outside moscow, the real opposition leader putin was really afraid of.

i was once on a panel with him and he asked the audience how long do you think putin would have lasted if the oil price during his rule was the same as under yeltsinin, which was $18 a barrel? then he answered his own question. and he said on the third day he would be carried out of the kremlin on pitch forks. so when you -- when the economy is down and the oil is not likely to go much higher than it is today, probably lower, you base your mentlegitimacy on confrontation with the west. the czars didn't have to do it. >> no, in fact, the czars got on with the u.s. pretty well. let me ask this question of all of you. and it sort of flows out of what leon was now talking about. if i were to ask you to please consider the state of u.s./russian relations five or ten years into the future, will

we be dealing essentially with the same strategic problems, the same challenges? or is it going to be something quite different and we are going to have to figure out how to deal with a new russia rather than a russia that's just a little older? john, why don't you start. >> i think it follows what i said a few minutes ago. i think we are going to have to deal with a russia that will have mastered the capacity and the context of influence operations to have interfered in the internal affairs of many of the countries in europe and elsewhere. i spent a lot of time in central europe and in the balkans. and seeing them under direct assault by the various mechanisms of influence that russia can bring to bear, i really worry about the state of democracy in europe five to ten years from now. >> let me interrupt you and ask specifically the middle east.

will it still be that same big power confrontation, the competition for influence, one side up, the other side up? will it be the same? >> well, the middle east completely apart from the fact that the russians are deeply involved in there seems to be a strategic standoff between the united states and russia. the middle east has multiple massive structural flaws that are manifesting themselves now that are being frankly exacerbated by now the presence of strategic competitors in the region. so i don't think that the middle east frankly is going to be dramaticallically different five years from now. we will still probably be fighting in syria five years from now. the question then becomes will the united states, under president trump, have reasserted american presence? which frankly most of our arab ally thirst for. they are wanting american

presence in the aftermath of the obama administration, largely a policy of departure. but structural flaws that first manifested themselves in the so-called arab spring have swept across the region in ways that will take years to recover that will take years to recover from. i think in five or ten years the middle east will not be dramatically different? it may have been changed in some respects by great power competition, but i think the structural flaws and the failings in the middle east will still continue. >> peter, do you think in the next five years to ten that there could be a war between the two? >> i worry more about a cyber kind of confrontation than a physical, you know, old-fashioned military confrontation, although as you say with syria you could have easily have seen it escalate by accident into something. we saw recently the dhs put out a report saying that russian hackers, state actors had tried to penetrate the power grid and have shown basically they could do it.

i think they were trying to test them and i think they were trying to send us a message. i think that's the battleground of the future i would worry most about. >> leon? >> well, look, putin is there forever. he is a war-time president, that's how he positioned himself inside the country. >> no one is there forever. >> yeah. he is a healthy 66-year old. he swims for two hours before work while his ministers are sitting around the pool waiting for him to come out. he also plays hockey and, believe it or not, scores most of the goals for his team. >> no, i believe that. >> do you? >> his team will also usually wins. so he's very healthy and occasional, you know, botox in the face. so he's stepped on that escalator muammar gadhafi, saddam husain. he's not stepping off.

that tiger that he settled requires a lot of meat, and my greatest concern is his poking on the eastern flank of nato. >> let me switch slightly here, mary louise, and ask you -- not so much looking into the future, but right now, if you had an opportunity, if you had the power -- excuse me. if you had the power to take one step that would improve the relationship between the two countries, what would that one step be? i know it is a challenge, but -- >> that is a challenging question for a non-policymaker. change the heads of state of each country, can we do that? >> go ahead. >> i mean you speak to the point that i was going to make, which is the big question everybody in russia was talking about, to sharpen your question. it is not where we'll be in five or ten years, it is where will we be in six.

it is 2024. putin has not shown a taste for wanting to share power or step aside, so what happens in six years when he's constitutionally prohibited from standing again? does he groom a successor now? does he change the constitution? does he create some kind of new supreme leader role? while these two personalities are leading these two countries, it is both utterly unpredictable and completely predictable at once. >> i'm going to ask you because our time is running short, leon, one step, what would you recommend now? >> i'm at a loss. essentially, again, it is up to the russian people to decide the fate of u.s./russian relations. >> no, but that means there's nothing we can do? >> there is nothing we can do substantially. we should go back to george cannon and try to contain this

russia as much as we can without coming to blows. >> peter, what do you think? any step -- i'm trying to search for a positive end to this problem. are we -- are we really at a point -- we don't have a bunch of time, so i'm just kidding. what do you think? >> leon talked about what soviet optimist was like. i remember gregori was asked once at a forum, you know, is democracy dead in russia? i think we could pose the question, is the future of russian/american relations ted. he said, look, it is like an old russian anecdote. the man is in an ambulance. they're heading down the highway. the man in the back hears the driver say, i'm heading to the morgue and the guy in the back, heads up, i'm not dead yet. he said, we're not there yet.

>> john, one step, briefly? >> i have difficulty finding one, frankly. >> okay. i want to throw in my one step, because i've been going in and out of this country now for -- since the mid 1950s. i remember even in the worst times of the cold war there was an active cultural and student exchange program, and time and time again first-rate american artists would be performing in the soviet union and the russian people loved it. >> van clyburn. >> absolutely. van clyburn being a very good example. so my one step right now would be in the midst of all of this negativity, if we could somehow persuade president trump to launch a new cultural and student exchange program, have people going back and forth. i think that would really be a

wonderful step toward proving to the russians -- proving to the russians that the americans don't have horns and that the russians are not really bears, but at this point the turning of the clock says to me i have to begin to wrap up. i want first to thank the many news outlets and websites for carrying the report. i want to thank our wonderful audience here at the national press club. but most important, i want to thank our four panelists, john allen, mary louise kelly, peter baker and leon aaron, for taking the time to be with us and for sharing your insights on a question of really supreme importance right now to this country and to the rest of the world. and that is it. as ed murrow used to say many, many years ago, good night and good luck. [ applause ]

>> i have asked all of my questions now. i've asked as many as i can, and we have now microphones -- where are they? right here and there. so if you would like to ask a question, come up to the microphone. give us your name, your association with some organization or another, and ask a question. and i ask that -- because if you make a speech i will probably cut you off, so ask your question, please. go ahead. >> mark, the camera is rolling still? >> i'm sorry? >> are we still on the air? we are still on the air, okay. >> ann wyckel, a member of the press club. >> ann, please, ask. >> my question is in your introduction you talked about

the other half. we have been talking about what russia should do and we do as a nation, about the connection between trump and putin -- >> we're going to leave this program, the last couple of minutes of it to bring you a live landmark cases in just two minutes from now. ♪ c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up tuesday morning, california democratic congressman john garamendi will join us to talk about increased tensions with russia. glen thompson will talk about the farm bill and proposed changes to the snap program. also chris edwards of the cato institute will discuss tax policy. be sure to watch c-span's "washington journal" live tuesday. join the discussion. we'll be live next here on c-span3 with our "landmark

cases" series continuing with the 1969 brandenburg v ohio case. after that we will hear from senator bernie sanders at the j street national conference on u.s./israel relations.

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