congress testing new wonder and pushing. trump's twenty sixteen digital team and cambridge analysts say for help the russians figure out who to tell gates their fate he's campaign fund facebook. so what happens is the team works on the algorithms that route incivility and intolerance on twitter on assess the extent to which people engage with differing viewpoints while often petersen he claims however that the platform despite what i'd say is actually making a concerted effort to censor certain ideas and talking points we don't have free speech in the united states in order to be able to discuss the whether we have free speech so that we can discuss very controversial things i don't mind if the social media network has a bias i assume a bias but what i prefer is transparency about that bias twitter suppresses

conservative and libertarian voices from being able to get their message out because they have a bias and it's deeply disturbing at a threat to american democracy. right to developing story now turkey's foreign ministry has limbaugh said u.s. plans to sanction two turkish government ministers and has called on washington to reverse its decision the punitive measures came in response to that detention of an american pastor in turkey untrue brunson is accused of being a volved in the attempted coup there two years ago with more details from washington d.c. samir account. well washington sanctions target two turkish officials number one the justice minister of the honeyed goal and the interior minister silliman so lou the white house explained the decision saying that they did not find any evidence implicating pastor brunson calling him a victim treated unfairly by the turkish government but what do the sanctions

entail exactly well sarah huckabee sanders explains any property or interest in property of those ministers within u.s. jurisdiction is blocked and u.s. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them for some background on bronson he's an american pastor who was detained in twenty sixteen under suspicions of having links to the movement who orchestrated the coup against air to one he was held for twenty one months in prison until he was placed under house arrest amid u.s. pressure now the two sides didn't mince their words the u.s. threatened turkey with sanctions and turkey responded saying that they wouldn't bow down to any threats and the president i would want and the turkish government i have a message on behalf of the president of the united states of america release pastor andrew bronson now or be prepared to face the consequences we will move down to any threats it is unacceptable for the united states to use

a threatening language against using an ongoing case as a pretext u.s. turkish relations haven't been so strong lately over the syria conflict turkey's a weapons deals or missile defense deal with russia as well as iranian sanctions so we'll just have to see if turkey does indeed retaliate. if the increasingly volatile misfire in one deprive part of snooper hood is forcing a migrant support group to end its work their volunteers say the situation in la chapelle has become expose of they no longer feel safe over the past two years the group has distributed more than two hundred fifty thousand meals and supplies to needy people in the area short of dubin speed picks up the story. in paris is a gritty eighteenth hante small town hundreds of migrants clustered together on the streets they gather here as it's where food is distributed by

a local for them to quit but after twenty months solid data to me call wilson looks set to close its doors saying they just can't take it anymore that's nonsense it's become more tense we're serving around seven hundred breakfasts every day to migrants who live in terrible conditions they have nothing not even tents they sleep on the ground and sometimes woken up by the police in the morning they kick them and use tear gas to move the life so when they come to us they're stressed and nervous twice last week we had to stop serving food to let the tension calm down this is something new for us so yes we're stopping my quince have been expelled by police in this area many times philip tells me that despite this they come back and every time they do this situation becomes even more desperate because from the beginning our mission was to serve hot drinks and bread and we've done this for twenty months every day during the last month or so we started questioning our

mission as we day one i volunteered to be put in danger of. who is to blame for this situation for not giving enough help to the migrants on the streets is this the mayor of paris is this the government of france. is on for us is both the state is responsible for people on the streets for taking in migrants at the same time the authorities in paris are restricting access to water touching the soma is irresponsible they also have a responsibility towards the miners and their miners here who sleep on the street and in the comfort drug addicts me the state nor the parish administration is doing its job. with the authorities not providing enough support the volunteers giving just a stone's throw away from haiti is an area known locally as crack hill that's also made things worse for those working to help the migrants phillipe says that some of the drug addicts also coming for food handouts and causing problems. but you see

the drug addicts are evaluated recently but nothing was done to help them and they came back today now come from breakthroughs to it creates additional tension very aggressive including towards the volunteers so this is an explosive situation. while we were cooling the into the meat the distribution point to agitate each individual approach us all movies i saw lambo media which serves as the alley and i was here i was. so recently we played with some of the people of st mary and. bill me we're not filming that he says but they just come to play with the cameras i mean let's see this is the last exam i. think. more people are coming up nothing is being done about it and there are the drug addicts as you saw it's impossible to film people here it's becoming more difficult than before we think the situation is explosive

and it puts is in real danger. by shutting up shop so legality may call wilson know that they are cutting off a vital lifeline for phone working economists but as well as doing it out of concern for their fallen tears they hope to move to prompt the authorities to start ignoring the plight of my clients and force them to take action. ski r.t. paris. maria bettina made headlines last month after being arrested in the u.s. on charges of acting as a russian agent in addition to allegedly working on behalf of the kremlin to interfere in u.s. politics it's also being claimed she was trying to lure american money here to russia or to america spoken to lawyer about the case. well i think if you read the indictment in the case is alleged to be an agent over russia who failed to register with the attorney general and so essentially that

means is they haven't charged with espionage and if you read the allegations against or know the allegations or have anything spy like about it the sense of the government is conceding that even under their own theory it should fall the piece of paper with the attorney general's office at the beginning of a trip to america everything she did was legal and so my point is this is more of a registration type crime than a crime and yet the media and the government some extent are treating it like an espionage crime. well i mean i think that allegation was particularly damaging to maria because it makes it more like a spy novel and frankly easier for the public to digest and so editors and producers like those kind of allegations because it seems like this is more like the red sparrow is an allegation that was set forth in a proffer by the government meaning they did not produce evidence to back up that

allegation at the time we're still waiting to see that and we're not sure it exists or it exists in any meaningful form in the interim it's very hard to see your clock on dragged through the mud like this which is why i've been trying to push back on that. ok to a story we're closely following this week south africa's ruling african national congress committed on tuesday to amending the constitution to allow the state to seize without paying compensation currently over two decades on from the end of apartheid or racial segregation white farmers still own lion's share of the country's privately held the a.n.c. i've been buying up some of it for redistribution and whatever opinion among lawmakers i shifted on the majority not to support taking on without offering any compensation but for not the constitution to be changed that is the move president from oppose it now wants to push ahead with he stays the amendment will help drive economic growth. the a.n.c.

to. its position that a comprehensive land reform program that and they both access to lead and. economic growth. by bringing you more land in south africa to full use and may prove the productive participation of millions more south africans in the economy so not surprisingly the plan has been met with sharp criticism from white farmers who have called it simply catastrophic here some of the backlash there has been online and we are going to live happily ever after south africa doesn't have a land problem it has a political problem this is disgraceful what an appalling situation in south africa where are all those protesters d.t.s. and see explained to you that you won't be own in their land but to obey or antonym

from them and one day for free i got reaction earlier from the south african i go cultural union leader who among other top things told me about the change will steer off investors take a listen. so i do have the huge problem with poverty and unemployment and so as this is a pity that they make these choices because no one will invest in this economy and we need growth to actually address the realities of south africa so we have great concern about this approach we're already a lot of countries already contact us as an organization and say is that will be the case we are not willing doing this in your country anymore i can give you a lot of examples of people really stub investing in south africa and that's the starting point of economic growth until now it's a first and that they make this promises to the bubbly because they needed for the election i think the if he's busy challenging the much on the other try to save himself and that is what's going on now. staying in africa

investigation is underway into the deaths of three russian journalists in the central african republic on tuesday they were killed in an ambush by all my ten to five militia fighters near the town of subdued people in moscow how be paying tribute to the slain men laying flowers at a memorial and putting some of the story together first earlier ria financially speaking to charlie. rangel what more do we know at this point well definitely a tragic incident and certainly a great loss for all journalistic community first of all what we know so far officially is that they're dead bodies were discovered by u.n. peacekeeping person our some twenty five kilometers north of the central city of steamboat and was on the road an abandoned car was also discovered at the same with multiple gunshots yes it looks like the crew was attacked by a large group of gunmen we do not know right now who they were and we also know

that the driver of that car a local man according to some reports he was recommended to the team by u.n. office and central african republic. this incident we know that he's currently called and with investigators we also hear that the crew didn't have press accreditation. officially they did have the right to work in central african republic as a journalist and we also hear from the russian embassy that they were not notified about their arrival and we hear from the russian officials that their buddies expected to return to their homeland to russia this saturday has there been any indication as to why they were killed they don't discuss who is behind the killing of three russian journalists but more interested in what their assignment on the ground was shortly after the news about the death we started receiving unconfirmed

reports were heard that from journalists friends and colleagues that they were filming a documentary about mercenaries in central african republic possibly with links to russia some would go further calling a group name known as wagner although these were all unconfirmed reports some media . news personalities. started using this information as if it was the matter of fact and it created kind of like hysteria but not about the killing the terrible incident that happened in central african republic but about the russia's involvement in the conflict there and send an illegal person out there and russia's foreign minister is a reaction to these claims i read in here all of this nonsense about an investigation into russian mercenaries in the central african republic there is nothing sensational about the presence of russia's military instructors in the country no one covers this based on the location of the bodies the russian

journalists were not heading to an area where the instructors work this march russia officially to send five military and one hundred seventy civilian instructors to central african republic apart from being one of. the poorest countries on earth definitely on the african continent is where an unstable place is divided between different groups so it's like a very dangerous place and this was the reason behind the invitation of russian experts to the republic and i think this is what russian ministry is trying to say that this is not the news that's quite fair because the news is the killing of the three russian journalists and we we have to wait and see what the investigation finds out. the state capitol of texas may have to rethink its name a report by the equity office in austin suggests taking a closer look because the city's named after

a supporter of slavery now it has long been a sensitive issue in a city that's considered to be among the most liberal in the united states. so austin's equity office refute all public property to see whether it has any ties to the confederacy's most controversial period they came up with

a list of street names and monuments that should perhaps be changed to removed although renaming the city is not likely to happen anytime soon the issue's been assigned medium priority well the controversy lies with the city's namesake steven austin the father of texas with secretary of state all of the new republican in one thousand century but he was a prominent slavery advocate and even infamously said that a month's a paid slaves would turn into a menace he had slaves as domestic servants as well. today though naming the city after the state funder is common sense media relations consultant and austin resident john griffin. we've got this push in texas to try to you know be careful not to withstand anybody else but texas is offensive because liberty's offensive but the fact that texas is named that its capital city is named for the person that started the colony in texas that became the state that's common sense

the city council here in austin has made a few a few very bad decisions like banning over so the city council would rather waste taxpayer money on frivolous ideas like this then actually doing real work. well that's hard news stories like this our dull trumps america first policy gets the crosstalk treatment next peter and guests. is this is hotter than kentucky. oh this move the voice you go grocery fanny's leave.

a co money city it was almost no coal mines left. the jobs are gone all the coal mines are said. that it was a drive to see these people the survivors of disappearing before their eyes. i remember thinking when i was younger that if anything ever happened to the coal mines here that it would become a ghost town but i never thought in a million years i would see that and it's happening it's happened. in a world of big partners through a lot of things and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that made stream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the back and shouting past each other it's taught critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time

is now for watching closely watching the hawks. see it is like that is pending and they can take your pick saudia body and the. it continues on it's just an appendage. so this is what people don't understand is that the u.k. leaving the e.u. the e.u. continues on great but if you take the appendix out of the bodies it's going to wither and travel and die because it has no body to exist anymore and this is what's happening in the u.k. and it's going to be a lot of fun to watch because this is a living you know they're made for somebody hears that.

though and welcome to crossfire we're all things considered i'm peter lavelle on this edition of crossfire we consider one question is donald trump america first policy in contradiction to the washington consensus idea of american exceptionalism the answer to this question will likely define presidency and change the world in the process. cross talking american exceptionalism i'm joined by my guest michael flanagan in washington he's president of flanagan consulting and a former congressman in charlottesville we have david swanson he is the director of world beyond war dot org and in northwood we cross to introduce paul maher he is a professor of international politics at city university london all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always

appreciate it when we go to david first because he's written a book on the topic titled curing exceptionalism ok we have about a year and a half of this presidency i'm getting a pretty good idea what america first means in the mind of donald trump and i know very well what american exceptionalism is. and i'm i'm not a big proponent of it. are is donald trump incompatible with his american firsts policies with washington's insistence. and digging their heels in very deep that american exceptionalism must be maintained go ahead david in charlottesville. i guess the short answer is no i don't see it look at what donald trump does in terms of foreign policy in terms of continuing u.s. imperialism and he is dropping more bombs he is building more bases he is getting more military spending out of congress demanding more military spending out of europe shipping weapons to more places including ukraine continuing to insist on

the us right to do what it wants in places like ukraine and nicaragua and around the world he's not switching policies allowing the people of afghanistan or nicaragua or anywhere else to decide their own fate i mean the changes are all rhetorical and and in terms of mannerisms and style people in. people abroad outside the united states who see him as radically different because he blurts out things he doesn't act on like nato is obsolete seems to me as as superficial as people within the united states who say the people the vote in crimea to rejoin russia was the big threat to peace and stability in the rule of law of the past centuries. looking at actions rather than at. ment's i don't see it continuing us policy but the good points made there michael

nonetheless we we have the reaction of where you are this the epicenter of the swamp they see trump is being very much a threat to the outlook that has been cultivated and inforced i would point out since the end it. the second world war particularly since the end of the cold war so i mean michael is right on all these points here but that's not how the people that used to run the show see it that way and they're pushing back against them in very very severe very peculiar ways and and particularly using the media to push against him go ahead michael. i think the swamp has a collectivist view definitely denies american exceptionalism writ small and that is america has the best workers in the world and we have an exceptional view of our future and we are we view ourselves as as the shining light of the world and then you have experiment exceptionalism writ large which as

a matter foreign policy means that we'll run the world. the i think writ small trump is a huge champion of that written large i think your other guest is correct he's he's not he's not a big champion of america around the world in the sense that we will make foreign policy for the world but we will behave any way we need to to protect our security and that that is often irrespective of what nicaragua wants or what what anybody else wants and i think trump is definitely a proponent of that the swamp would rather have us collectively sit with the european powers basically europe almost exclusively and and discuss what we need to do around the world while we pay the freight and they make the decisions and i think trump is trying to bring an end to that by threatening nato not as an institution like eisenhower did by the way and his presidency but to say that it's not an organization that we're going to support exclusively and move on forward

with interchange you know combined of what we've just heard from michael and david so america first in american exceptionalism to find the worst possible elements of both and there being can bind that's what i've gotten from this conversation so far go ahead nor would i want to and i don't think i would violently disagree with. you just. i think american exceptionalism is a difficult kind of not. and that's not sleaze i'm as a touch to it a great sense of the uniqueness and superiority to a large degree it's also my place behind certain kinds of the news and. where president trump probably it differs from his previous esas president obama and george w. bush as well is that in a way he's he's rejected the rhetoric of values of democracy or human rights and promoting those kind of liberal bias. in favor of the kids are so i would say that

that's the principal difference between those two there is also a strategic disagreement as well and i think that largely is around. the relationship that the united states or president trump is building with russia and the bigger geopolitical picture i think which he has in his mind possibly by and reconsider the home secretary of state about some kind of a possible russian chinese splits and i think there's a big disagreement about that but that's a strategic question we all grow all the united states continues to exert its up but i think the rhetoric around values i think president trump doesn't have any time he's much more about asserting the war are out of the dollar or of the trade of market access and of the american military ok well david i mean it i guess in a way trump is probably more honest than his predecessors because he doesn't talk about democracy promotion as you know but that it's always been

a cover and i think only people in the swamp actually believe in that rhetoric anymore forcefully bringing democracy to the world i don't see where it works no one's ever empirically proven it to me but but so really it's the same thing it's american exceptionalism with the just a different rhetoric against you know that makes a lot of sense go ahead david. that's exactly right the rhetoric has changed a lot more than the substance of the disagreement between the make america great again people and the america already has great people is not around the need for the united states to have double standards and a set of laws only for itself and superiority of the rest of the world that is universally agreed upon in washington the disagreements around rhetoric around domestic policies and around russia and the demand from the from the democrats i wouldn't dignify it by calling it strategic it's more trying to explain hillary

clinton's loss and hating anything trump does so if he threatens north korea that's crazy if he fails to threaten russia that's crazy you know that the disagreement is is around this this mythical story of evil deeds of russia and their gargantuan significance in the in the context of the good us law abiding behavior and there you know you can give trump credit for refusing to bow to the russia gaiters otherwise i give him very little credit for anything. as he continues disastrous policies that are taking this country and the rest of the world over a cliff you know again. the rhetoric is is certainly different but and some of the actions are too i mean i don't think any of us really took seriously that there would be a meeting with kim so soon nothing much came of it and now he wants to meet with the iranian leader a days before in capital letters on twitter threatening and i mean michael how do

you explain that or is that just expediency the midterms it's the here and now and worry about the implications later because i mean from the on the outside looking in this is very confusing and we're supposed to be experts to be able to figure this stuff out go ahead michael. i think one of the hallmarks of trump's foreign policy is that it's trump it's not a collective view of the state department and with weigh ins from d.o.d. and other places and intelligence it's trump it's any proven to be fairly adept at it so far however you may or may or may not like the outcomes he's gotten in with create he's reworked trade agreements in europe and elsewhere some of it has been to our total benefit some of it has been a conciliatory benefit. we enjoy a relationship with china we haven't had and maybe ever. i don't know that that what he.