picture we'll go deeper investigate and debate all so you can get the big picture. a former cia operative launches a fund raising campaign aimed at getting donald trump kicked off twitter and she's here to talk about it that larry playing on this edition of. your come to politicking on larry king valerie plame wilson is a former cia operative whose covert status was blown when members of the george w. bush administration who were motivated by political retaliation against her husband leaked her classified identity to the press that was back in two thousand and three since then she will come

a bestselling author of several books including the memoir fair game my life as a spy my betrayal by the white house and spy novels blowback and burned she's also become an activist for a nuclear weapons free world her latest project is a crowdfunding campaign designed to buy a major stake in twitter and then using that position to pressure the company to kick president donald trump off the social media platform she says that mr trump has weaponized twitter she worries that his tweets could play a part in leading the world into a nuclear war let's talk to her about that valerie plame wilson joins me from santa fe new mexico tell me about this campaign and how did the idea come about. hi larry thank you for having me the idea came about when his tweets just became

increasingly reckless impulsive and of course from my previous life with the cia what i focused on was nuclear chemical or for ration so this is a passion of mine something i care about deeply and i'm working with global zero we set up this go fund me site the idea being to buy majority stake in twitter and have the twitter executives in force their own rules which explicitly prohibit hate speech or inciting violence and particularly with north korea i would say he's making a bad situation worse and that's what we're hoping to do and. we're already off to a great start how do people get involved hotel do people send you fun. they go to the go fund me site and it's the by twitter one and then they just walk through it i want to make absolutely clear to your viewers that i am not benefiting

financially at all from this if we do not reach our goal admittedly a billion dollars is very ambitious all that money will go to global zero which is leading the resistance against nuclear war and hopefully looming us toward a world without nuclear weapons. you say the term streets are dangerous dangerous hall. they make a bad situation that much worse as we know the leader of north korea kim jong un is . not stable and to have this escalating twitter war between president trump and the conjunction of north korea it i don't want to see a stumble into

a conflict that could go nuclear it would be truly catastrophic public opinion so a majority of americans are critical of trump's use of twitter tom says that his use of it is modern day presidential going right to the public what's wrong with that. woud agree with modern day i'm not sure it's presidential i find many of his tweets personally to be offensive. and he has managed to offend many in his own party women private individuals people with jewish backgrounds people of color but that's what not what we're focusing on we're focusing on the most dangerous of all of them to my mind which is existential which is potential nuclear catastrophe the thing is no matter what you care about whether you think every single confederate statue should remain in the public

square or you want obamacare care repealed and replaced whatever it is gun control doesn't matter if you don't get the nuclear question right none of the other ones matter. you're a veteran of the cia you know world people you know it's political figures and public figures what sane person would start a nuclear war. hopefully no one the the fact is we're no longer in a bipolar world we no longer have the soviet union on one side the united states on the other for many years for decades what kept nuclear war from happening was the mad doctrine mutually assured destruction you were to your point exactly they figured no one's going to be insane enough to start a nuclear war because we will be annihilated moments later but with the

politicization of new nuclear weapons and of course terrorists seeking nuclear capability all bets are off we have come close dozens of times in accidental nuclear incidents i think we've just gotten lucky thus far. the time has come where nuclear weapons are no longer keeping us safe that that old paradigm of mad no longer applies and that's what global zero i'm also on the board of the ploughshares fund that's what we're trying to do ratchet back. our nuclear arsenal across the board not unilaterally this is not something that's going to happen on tuesday but it can happen over time these weapons have to become absolutely taboo because of the destruction we are little human minds can't even begin to understand what they would do in an email

statement to the l.a. times white house press secretary several hundred to be sanders called your campaign and the temp to shut down the president's first amendment rights and an expression of hate and intolerance how you react. i respectfully disagree with this sarah huckabee sanders along with sarah other republican operatives like roger stone have said the same thing again this has nothing to do with the first amendment the first amendment protects people from their government and not all speech is protected when you are ratcheting up in an already very dicey incendiary potentially incendiary situation. i think twitter has an obligation to step in and say to president trump what you

need to be abide by the same rules as everybody else you know inciting violence and no hate speech. we do agree that ari that you're gambling. with a lot of the tory. is a long shot i would agree it's a long shot a billion dollars is a whole bunch of money i totally get that. the idea is to shine a spotlight on how dangerous donald trump's tweets are and it undermines our national security. thanks to people like you we've gotten a lot of attention and i do hope people are thinking. you know maybe it doesn't have to be like this i want people to fear or feel that they can actually do something they don't just have to sit by while we are moving ever closer toward a nuclear catastrophe what scares you more trouble on twitter. more trouble having

the new clue colds. i would say the latter and here's why the way this is a volved since the first time the first atomic bomb was exploded not too far from where i'm sitting in the new mexico desert. it is a volved to the point where we have given one individual and one individual alone. this awesome destructive power i think many americans believe that the supreme court has to weigh in or the secretary of defense or congress that is not the case at all it is one human being and i would add that if the president is warned that we are potentially under nuclear attack the president has between eight and ten minutes to decide how to respond we have all seen these so-called nuclear football the nuclear foot briefcase the person from one of the arms for

services following the president around at all times. just in such an emergency and it is time to rethink our policy on this we have many of our weapons on hair trigger alert we also have something called a first you know first use policy or was what we should move to meaning that we would not use nuclear weapons in the first instance we have now launch on warning which is a policy where we say if we believe that we're under attack that we will respond these are all policies that incredibly high in the tension and the potential for disaster in south come. how do you assess the current risk of nuclear conflict

is this the highest you've experienced or do you remember a period where was higher i think this is probably the highest since the cuban missile crisis which we now know from historians how very close we came to nuclear conflict with the soviet union. north korea is essentially a cult masquerading as a state their number one. their number one priority is regime survival and they believe that they can do that by threatening their nukes threatening the united states with their nuclear weapons i totally agree with my friend and hero former secretary of defense william perry who says look we cannot rely upon china to do all the heavy lifting on this sanctions alone are not going to do it no military option is

a good one. the only way ahead is serious direct talks including of course with south korea china and japan secretary perry was here last week he makes quite a case what do you make of that. is valueless what do you make of the term those yeah. making headlines again who. yes indeed a the m i six officer christopher steele. more more information comes out daily it's hard to absorb all of it and make sense of it what i would say is this as a former cia officer what i find really odd and very concerning is that in the period before donald trump was even a candidate much less elected there was an incredible amount of. cooperation conversations contacts with russian officials i find that really odd

you would think that a presidential candidate would be busy thinking about how what pre-sentencing needs to bring up to where any is to deploy his resources insead what we're seeing is really unusual contacts with various people that all seem to have associations to putin the latest was i believe some emails have surface to surface that. that someone was making a promise that if the trump tower got built in moscow. you know putin would help a left donald trump president whether that has any basis in reality or not it's just one in a really long line you look for patterns and the pattern is concerning and i just hope like most americans that robert mueller the special prosecutor is working

really hard with his crackerjack team and get to the bottom of this quickly more with valerie plame after the break. about your sudden passing i've only just learned you were yourself and taken your last wrong turn. your act caught up to you as we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry. so i write these last words in hopes to put to rights to these things that i never got a chance to. i remember when we first met my life turned on each parent. but then my feeling started to change you talked about more like it was a cage still some are fond of you those that didn't like to question or are. you secretly promised to never be like it's one does not leave the funeral in the same as one enters the mind gets consumed with this one to. speak to you just don't know whether to. think it means she media has not it's make.

all the feel we can be. here for the world experience. and you'll get it on the old rule. book according to just. look at the modern world come along for the ride. back with valerie plame wilson for covert status was rolled in my members of the bush administration she's off the books like fair game my life as a spy i my betrayal by the white house and spy novels rolled back and burned and

activists against nuclear weapons and she's joining us from santa fe new mexico well as john le carré the great spy novel was two was in the british m.i.a. said that putin was k.g.b. once a small i always a spy are you still. in your heart as. a i would say in my heart yeah i'm still incredibly curious about people and that is what makes this successful operations officer among other skills but you have to really care everyone has a story everyone you just have to ask what it is and that is the heart of human intelligence i was proud of my career i love that i serve my country i love that i focused on nuclear issues but it ended rather abruptly do you think

that. having the spy in and lead was involved in the election is still involved in the running of the government has something on trump this is your gut feeling do you think that. my gut feeling tells me there's something there there's just too much smoke for there not to be something there hooten you're right comes out of the k.g.b. you don't forget that you don't forget that training how to manipulate people what's your leverage and he's got that all going on inside of his head i can't imagine that i i don't know that putin thought for sure that trump would be elected but it's a classic what we would call influence operation why not you spread it out you put as many different contacts in toward your target in this case a potential president and see what you get and as it turns out

a lot of the people around trump are either not too smart inept or greedy and so those are all great characteristics to work with when you're trying to do something are you comfortable with the number of military people around the president. no and i come from a military family my father was an air force officer he served in world war two my brother was a marine who was wounded in vietnam so i grew up in the military but we have a longstanding tradition in this democracy that the military is subservient to civilian control and when i see so many stars and bars sitting around his other the situation table in the cabinet room it makes me a little nervous no but in this case it is your idea and add i was good. i just wanted to add that i don't mean in any way to take away from their service

to country it's just that this. this foundation that we have that we have civilian control over our democracy this is one of the bedrocks of this country valerie thanks so much stang's for your time today. thank you larry thank you for having me joining me now is bill breasts talk radio host and progressive commentator and an old friend he's host of the bill burns show on the young turks network he joins me from washington ok but what do you think of trump's use of twitter does this help his presidency or heard it. hi larry good to see you first of all same here no i think i think it hurts his presidency i think it's an embarrassment i also tell you as a journalist who follows the donald trump tweets because i have to i'm part of the white house press corps you know it's a pain in the us because. he tweets nonstop first thing i see on my phone when i

got up in the morning or tweets from donald trump you know i don't know whether ever sleeps but seriously i think there are i think there are problems for a couple reasons one i think there embarrassing to the american public too i really do think they demean the president the office of the presidency of the united states i mean you know he sounds like a. egotistical teenager right is just so happy to see his name out there that he keeps tweeting mostly about himself and thirdly you know he said he has said the tweets are official presidential statements which means that he sees his tweets as having at least having some power and i think people around the world see it god knows what north korea things when he attacks the leader of north korea or any other country or members a ray of the republican senate or says that there are no transgender americans should be allowed to serve in the in the military so i don't what valerie plame is trying to do and i'm all for how about. let's take the other side for

a minute how above here's a president directly communicating with people every day what's wrong with that. because he's telling lies for the most part. and again. i don't you know you i don't think you can trust anything that comes out of this white house from anybody certainly not from the president so he is spreading fake news his spreading false hoods around around the world and again i think we expect the president of the united states and larry i say this is republican or democrat right you know george bush had a certain i disagreed with him on his policy but he respected the office of the of the presidency he did he maintained a great respect and dignity in the office so did his father so did everybody else donald trump he treats it like a place that he's been treating a lot about hurricane harvey how do you assess his handling of this. you

know i think it's mixed frankly first of all i think the female has been on the job from the response that i've seen with the governor abbott with a female director bruce flock with. representing the president of course with the local mayors i think the agencies have been cooperating and doing as much as they can to help people down in that area trump's tweets i find it very strange first of all he's obviously fascinated by this hurricane and he if you read the tweets he brags about how big it is it's almost like he sees it as an accomplishment of the trump white house that we have the biggest storm ever to hit texas in the last twenty years it's like he bragged about the size of the inauguration instead of focusing on the poor people down there who need help and i mean there's something else he talks about the size the fact that this is a bigger storm than we've ever seen before never makes

a connection to climate change of course we're seeing bigger and worse storms largely a meteorologist all say this because of climate change as hurricane harvey bore down on texas friday he announces a ban on transgender people serving in the military he pardons sheriff arpaio and he tarred swayze was. what do you make of those three things on that friday night well you know what i for a long time has seen the friday night dump. larry i don't think we've ever seen so much dumped. and i don't think we've ever seen anybody use a national or natural disaster hurricane to get this bad news out there. that would reflect badly on him but i think all three of those moves well two of the three certainly are a disaster and by the way it was not an accident that he put those up at the time

he knew was going to pardon a pile we knew he was going to. follow through on the dreaded transgender thing we thought the gorkha was on thin ice and he just chose a time when he thought that rightly that the networks and cable news would not be paid and would not pay as much attention to it bill when did transgender in the military become a big problem. i don't remember it being a problem i think if you ask anybody and i have anybody in the military and i've talked to some generals about it too they don't see it as a problem i mean we're talking larry what may be point zero zero one percent right if that and these are men and women who are serving today in uniform proudly serving the united states of america we ought to be grateful to them rather than throwing them out of the military they're in iraq they're in afghanistan they're in game and they're across across the globe i'm sure some in south korea. and you know

i say the same thing about them is a the l.g.b. t. americans. are all l g b t americans with if they want to put on the uniform and volunteer to serve this country then god bless you and thank you for your service i think this this is this is nothing but pure discrimination i remember evolved to trump donald trump promise he was going to be the most gay friendly president ever and he voc a trump said she was going to hold her father to that promise both of them being made on that promise and the joe arpaio part. i got to tell you from all the outrages that that we've seen and heard from donald trump from accusing barack obama for wiretapping you know trump tower which he didn't firing james comey whatever you name it i think this pardon of joe arpaio is the worst. because the message it sends is you can defy the law you can defy

the constitution of the united states you can be an out right racist and that's ok as long as you're a friend of the president of the united states now you know clearly donald trump has the authority under the constitution to pardon anybody who wants which is something we maybe ought to revisit for any president but this is the first time a president has used his constitutional power to reward somebody for violating the constitution if that doesn't turn things upside down. or what does racial profiling discover we're totally over the i mean. i was just going to say remember what arpaio was was found guilty of that the judge said no what you're doing is deliberately racially profiling latino's and stopping people just because they have brown skin they've committed no crime and demanding to see their papers and arpaio

said i don't care what you say i'm going to continue to do it and donald trump is saying ok with me the other thing is larry i think and other people have made this point is i think what donald trump is saying he's this is a message to michael flynn and to paul maddow fort and to roger stone and to carter page and maybe to jared christian or don't worry about robert mueller if you get indicted pardieu. over the weekend said jerry state rex tillerson said the president speaks for himself when it comes to values what did you make of that. my question is so why is rex tillerson still on the job why doesn't he quit i thought it was stunning and and he said that on fox news sunday as we know to chris wallace . and what were tillerson in the context right chris wallace asked the secretary of state told us and whether people around the world might be concerned

for after what happened in charlottesville until august and said i don't think i'm paraphrasing but very close to this i don't think there's any doubt that people around the world know what america's values are and that all americans share those values and chris wallace follow up and said all americans even the president and for tillerson he could have said of course the president is right of course i said before the present and said he said now donald trump speaks for himself. but i don't remember ever seeing a cabinet member break with a president that way he'll always great talking to you hope to see in washington soon we'll see at the prom fave we just got started. i think you know the other day but all your press guy we thank him for joining us on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me at kings things and don't forget use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this

edition of politicking. about your sudden passing i've only just learned you worry yourself and taken your last turn. your out caught up to you as we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry but only i could so i write these last words in hopes to put to rest these things that i never got off my chest. i remember when we first met my life turned on each breath. but then my feelings started to change you talked about war like it was again still some are fond of you those that didn't like to question our ark and i secretly promised to never be like it said one does not leave a funeral the same as one enters in mind it's consumed with death this one different person i speak to as there are no other takers. to claim that means.