telecom firms accusing them of stealing trade secrets from telecom companies in the united states and thirteen counts of fraud and conspiracy to bypass sanctions on iran. has been battling with accuses from western governments calling him a comp and of spoiling for the chinese state with of course triggering reactions from not only from quark way over the chinese government as well then our children without any solid evidence the us keeps inventing crimes and china out different threats theories it's using state power to suppress the legitimate development of the rights and interests of chinese and prizes that is using political means to intervene in the economy we believe that this is hypocritical unfair and immoral war faeces war and more pressure from the u.s. and its allies the future not only of the two countries is uncertain but the international trade as well. let's bring you more on the developing story this

hour of a shooting that has taken place at an industrial park in a rural in the u.s. state of illinois there are dozens of first responder vehicles outside the warehouse where the incident occurred your thirties have now said the gunman has been apprehended a worker at the building reportedly sort of man holding a pistol with a laser scope and recognize him to be one of his work colleagues several people are reported to be in injured including four police officers the exact number of wounded that is not yet known victims have already been taken to local hospitals soon as information comes in on this story will bring it straight to you think stay with us coming up at the top of the hour see them.

hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle the bipartisan senate intelligence committee shop the liberal media when it is needed there was no evidence of so-called collusion between the trump world and russia so what have the last two years been all about and what is the damage left behind when russia gate fades from the news cycle. talking russia again i'm joined by my guest michael flanagan in washington he is president of flanagan consulting and a former congressman in providence we have a lot of your goldstein he is an associate professor of slavic studies at brown

university and in phoenix we cross to robert pilo he is a civil rights attorney at the patillo law group all right gentlemen cross type roles in fact that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate your let me go to you first because you've been chronicling russia gate on facebook quite vividly and i've always enjoyed it so what has the last two years really been about when the senate intelligence intelligence committee comes out and says well there's not there's no there there which i've been saying all along because there is no evidence and no evidence has been produced and probably will not be produced so what was the last two years about the investigation was the point it wasn't to find anything out it was just to have an investigation go ahead lattimer. well it's it will be as they're hearing and many many observers knew it and call it as it is but a red herring can be always put to a very good use and i know from the perspective or i would say of the establishment

of the start of school a lot of things has been achieved that is you know the president has been bullied has been you know i think the whole process can be summarized the interim so shakespeare's play called taming of the shrew so you know tromp came out with the idea school while some crazy some reasonable but they were definitely a challenge in the style of the score so this investigation of the sons of the bombardment constant pressure you know somehow kind of in organized him put him into a rather narrow mold where those establishment wants him to be so i think from their perspective you know had it not been there it should have been invented because it's a really you know was put to a very good use michael the same question to you i mean is it because trump as a as a candidate challenge foreign policy orthodoxies and he's just being punished to make sure he gets back into line and i would say quite unfortunately he has gotten

back in line he has pompei around him has bolton and he has these people around him that are very neo con ish something that he ran against but it's good to be used as a cudgel all the way through the next two years no matter what it happens because he violated the rules and he had to be put back in line go ahead michael in washington i think the rule you violated was winning the election good lord he really was about its foreign policy views and. the tourney the other day had an excellent observation about the miller commission and that was mohler is a decent guy who got trapped into doing this by a left overs from the chicago cobol d.o.j. . combining with senate democrats and never trumper is to get this whole thing hyped up to try and do their level best to move trump away and also recently rosenstein as observed that they actually had meetings on how to get rid of trump

you know through legal means in the twenty fifth amendment and miller got sucked into doing this commission i don't know if more of miller was an unwitting do perry might have been very well attached to it but the whole concept was to get rid of a duly elected president and it wasn't a deep state desire to straighten out our foreign policy i really don't think so i think it was a deep state desire to overturn an election that they were invested in winning fair point robert in phoenix one of the greatest casualties in it not just because of the investigation but it put a greater focus on the failures of the legacy media because what what is rachel maddow going to do now and she could be unemployed because her favorite subject is gone up in thin air i mean the media is quoted itself very very poorly in covering this breathlessly looking for bombshell bombshell and there never have been any bombshells what kind of credibility they have now not that they had much before

this go ahead robert in phoenix well they would say there's often we saw this in the last administration when conservative media. every other hillary clinton has good point and no demanded that. before that we have the liberal media who is attacking president bush over every single thing that but the as if they were going to somehow bring down the president think the media all turned into this idea that they're going to be the next watergate there to be the person to break the big story and we see to hurt the media's credibility look at dan rather the swift boating. in the national. president bush in two thousand and four or this belief and as a support of the road that's what forces people to be external out. so that's why you see the rise of things like four wars and the blaze and the other. journalists are almost opinion based forms of journalism because the mainstream media just.

opinions journalism the reason not to go to one of these websites that conspiracy theories you know a lot of me are you know speaking of institutions i mean the d.o.j. in the f.b.i. have acquitted themselves very very badly here and as michael was saying i mean we we had collusion on the part of the the the power structures the deep state to get undermined and possibly even still to get rid of this president i mean how do you fix that because the confidence i mean is there going to be any really follow up on the steel dossier is there are going to be any follow up on the clinton foundation there are connections very real connections to to russia that may not have been above board i mean bill clinton came here and picked up a half a million dollars for a speech there is ukranian one still out there but it seems like no one in the liberal media is interested in that whatsoever do you think that trump's new agey

will investigate these things or is it worth even test a geisha go ahead lot of their. i think it is a very interesting issue but you know using the term ones used by hillary clinton there is a definite a vast range in kind of a liberal conspiracy the question is that i want to get involved in it because it is so deep that is you know. forces and a in the liberal media in democratic party they're all talking about the charter that is different that collusion there but you know basically investigating the whole thing it will paralyze the whole country so i think if the president really wants to go ahead he should proceed and you know somehow kind of you know may be too. i should be just you know forced to resign from their positions because they shouldn't abuse their shouldn't abuse their position the way you know some people in our brand are in ca and you know the sort of people who are strong and so on. here yeah

yeah absolutely absolutely they shouldn't be tolerated but basically i think it's just a look ahead and all these agencies have you know work on their hands so just pull it down by you know whatever it is to gays and it's not productive that's something for democrats who want sort of who don't want to face that reality and that's what they want to get in the gate but if indeed it has this kind of you know mandate from american people to get the concert going he should she should be very deeply involved in that ok well michael i mean has a precedent been said here is they did the deed state doesn't like you you're going to have to be worried about it or are emini did the the this is not the way the checks and balances were designed and if you can do it to donald trump will what's this stop them from doing it in the future this is a very dangerous precedent and reflecting a lot of law to me and said there i mean if we just let it go by then it actually. makes it acceptable for the state this state to get involved in the the democratic

political process go ahead michael in washington i can't say you're wrong the was out for a lawyer early and the. the the problem i think is is as it always is lies with congress article one of our constitution says the congress has all legislative power congress is the article one branch it's the number one branch of it and congress has ceded so much of its power to the executive not just this executive series of executives over the last fifty years or so that it's not in control anymore than the executive lives in secrecy and the wielding of power and now basically controls the money as well i mean if they're willing to follow the rules as. trump is they have to find money to do things occasionally but if they're not willing to follow the rules as as president obama and president bush did you know to find money to give to iran or whatever they don't have to follow the rules they just have a printed or borrow it from here from there and nobody says anything congress and

if congress is willing to put up with this sort of behavior by government the deep state that the secretive portions of government is the portions that the public have no control over and the portions that the government people do have control over congress continues to be impotent and make itself impotent as it worries soley about getting itself reelected this will grow and continue to be a problem in the presidency will continue to grow and preeminence and importance and this is not good for the republic and we need to really start asking these very hard questions of ourselves is how much power do we want a president to have and it's not a partisan thing it's a government thing and why are we going to start holding our legislators to account not for producing crazy pieces of legislation or marvelously fantastically interesting tweets but to actually do the hard work of running the government and this is this is a question we haven't asked our legislators in a long time and we need to start having that discussion and let me go to robert

before we go to the brain can robert is the legacy liberal media going to apologize for its appalling behavior over the last two years. i don't think you're going to get an apology by do think that it is crucial that we understand that we do need to get to gays and we need to investigate any sense of impropriety the only thing the holder constitutes a republic together is the confidence of the american people how do they do not believe that everything is happening above board or they do not believe in the kind of the best the gate is independent prosecutors they can bring people to toe then that erodes the believe the american people have that they're both at the controls the nation and let's understand the two years of this investigation has rooted out a lot of that our government everybody from an effort to cull went to the public. it was still going to get to that i mean it's gentlemen i'm going to go to a short break here and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on russia get stayed with talking.

country has gone into a nihilistic fever. thank god it hit the road and get out to traveling across america to find what makes america the charlatans the genius of this place especially american hero this is it we've come a point from which collingwood is gone so we always are on the margins something. called the culture is really important because. we're starting west with. we're going to headed east into the swamp we're going into the belly of the beast i think i want to leave now doesn't do any more gondo them it may be completely different but minister.

the. united states does that all the time it always tries to influence elections when people who are running who are friendly to the united states are running against people who are unfairly we certainly did that all through central america and south america for many many years we know that these efforts are made repeatedly there not criminal every intelligence agency in the world sees as part of its function to make sure that elections turn out favorably to the country. welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to

remind you we're discussing russia. ok let me i want to stay within the the theme of the media here i mean now. one bombshell after another has been shown to be fake news. and is has there been any lessons learned here because again i worry about precedence being set in institutions being destroyed i've said that maybe a couple dozen times on this program over the last two years and the media itself has to be held responsible but can they even come to terms of it with this if they're ideologically so ideologically absorbed in possessed with their their prejudices and their hatreds because we hear that twenty four seven go ahead lattimer yeah with media does is producing some kind of a scapegoat scapegoats which are supposed to. you know the

situation sort of to distract people from real problems you know what they will want to do not by united states raises very serious problems both domestically in terms of economics grow in economic inequality middle class solution is grounds you know more and more you know younger people the middle class cannot afford to leave like their parents and this is seen as it is that this is an. international you know for and with china on the sentences so these are the issues which should be addressed but why should media spend time when they're. trying to reform like mike said you know it's time for congress to get yourself it's time for the country to look at the cells time for the democrats who are the themselves but it's much easier to find some bogeyman some scapegoat and continue sort of to beat the drum of a rush of this that are so that and i think the media did a very good job at that you know they didn't manage to sort of to distract the concert for a very long time they managed to shield democrats from looking very deep at sort of

the concerns of american people working people and they doing a very good job of that so i think what will they change unless there is a cement this pressure from the audience from the leadership pleaser. to us the news that we want to know what's going on in our country want to know what's going on outside the wall why can't we compete with china why is sort of you know what's going on out there until they are quote for that they will continue to create you know. the scapegoating and that's brought us unfortunately the united states is not the first to be engaged in this and that's the us but there's not another position to be had also another thing which media tries to do is to to sort of by every critic every kind of dissident every independent political to russia they try to suppress the dissent and this is also not very good for the public at all basically society which going to deal with its critics is. to take a lawyer you should know because you immigrated from the soviet union so i take

that to heart ok michael if i can i guess suppose it's very early i suppose the at the end of the day the media will say ok we didn't exactly get it right and i'm being generous here we didn't exactly get it right but we're morally right this is what they can't get over going back to what you said at the very start of this program is that drugs trumps cardinal mistake was not collusion his mistake that he is that he got elected in the first place and this is something the liberal media will never ever come to terms with because they think they're morally superior to the audience that they're propagating to because that's exactly what it is propaganda go ahead michael. you are correct here you and your excellent production staff on the show also come from a point of view of producing news of producing useful valuable opinion related to news that's not what they produce in the legacy media and the right and the left they produce entertainment they produce something that is designed around making

a buck and so they have some award show where they all tell each other how'd newsworthy and how ads already are and they serve their consciences that way great they're sure and then they go back to the bottom line and awards and bonuses and salaries and everything else is based upon how much they have made what the bottom line and i am sure that everyone at every one of those channels with all of this hyped up news about russia gate has made bazillions of dollars and considers it a wild success not a failure in any way and that is the rock and that's what's sad about this even when you have commentators on these channels there in you know you see some crazy person waving their arms and saying something absolutely nuts but you keep seeing them and you want to how could this person again television the answer is they focus they focus group very well they have high energy they're they're attractive people they have strong opinions and people's tune in to listen to what this person says it's not about what they're saying it's about how i can keep eyeballs fixated

on the boob tube and that's what's driving it today and that's what's incredibly broken about all of this and as long as that continues to be true the more extreme and crazy the opinion is the more you are likely to see it because it will bring people to the viewership yet robert i'm michael is absolutely let's take the example of a max boot i mean i my name for him is always wrong max boot i mean from two thousand and three all the way to the present eve never got anything right but he goes on there is if he's the crown prince of truth ok. and they look at elliot abrams ok you know here's a guy convicted by. convicted for lying to congress about iran contra had to be pardoned and when he's challenged by a congresswoman about his past why should anyone believe him now i take away was oh

but the story about the congresswoman is her anti-semitism alleged ok and hardly anyone said a word about it and echoing what michael said about congress clawing back some of its responsibilities not to speak of power to hold those accountable to a to account ok the media doesn't like that because the media loves itself the media is the message not news go ahead robert well you're completely correct on that because in large part what the cable news has copied the model of e.s.p.n. and other sports yes which is instead of just reporting what happened that's about the. so much of what happened there doesn't tell you what happened it bears no resemblance to what actually happened example of the state of the state of the union address were people lots. of people there was a great speech but by the time the mainstream media got a hold of it you all thought it was the worst address in the history united states or converts one of the other saw that it was another gettysburg address for people

on the right what we have to get back to simply reporting the facts and allowing the people to make decisions for themselves any time that we stray from the same time that we get away from that fundamental principle is no longer reporting the news what you're doing is giving opinion and that we have merged the field of journalism and opinion whereas we used to have our people just saying what happened that we have the entire evening from about six o'clock till midnight people telling you what they think about what happened that's what shapes opinions we break free of that we're not going to be able to get back to having an actual truthful and fruitful conversation you know. you mentioned crushing dissent and i think you know when i was thinking of envisioning this program and i said now the question to these guys you know what is the lasting impact of it and i think at the end of the day it is the crushing of dissent a new mccarthyism because if you don't toe the line you will be punished and with the invention of twitter which sometimes i regret you have this mob mentality and

where people pile on pile lawn and essentially want to create a. a chilling effect if you don't toe the line you will be severely punished and we see this and again i'm speaking to my international audience right now the issue of racism as they say with new term for me a trigger and and what that does is that it shuts out reasonable debate and discussion even in disagreement because the mob decides and that's what russia gate is been all about it's been a mob effort to. silence anyone that would question because i have said for the last two years i know you have also is that what i'm interested in this discussion can you show me some evidence i don't care what you think i don't your opinion doesn't mean anything i need facts to make a decision here and this is where this is the greatest tragedy of this whole russia

gate thing that is it's acceptable to have a mob mentality go ahead lot of other. well they use it's a double a way one is to try to give police. some activists were to go lie and model them in the sort of russian connection very recently they say or other independent police. who sort of your neurons are going to run for president right their way there is an article in the navy seal something that the russians like are too much yeah so they try to sort of in our target and sort of attack that but it was my to us i think is the use of this russian gate fornier our sygate you know for new is to stifle dissent on internet they now came up with a sort of you know facebook or other media google they now rank the news which are more reliable of the story they labeled dissidents or the foreign or source of information is not reliable as the fake and they'd sort of don't promote that so they were have legitimate sources of information are being sort of you know pushed

aside silence and so the use of russia gave in terms of you know kind of stifling you know free exchange of ideas on the internet is very disturbing and i think it's a great concerns all of us you know we talk about the media not only media is doing wrong but they want to make sure that it would it would challenge of i'm not there and this is very disturbing you know michel if you know it's news guard now i think you know and then my pace book has the atlantic council doing their fact checking that's quite laughable and not even that. and if you look at buzz feed the kids the green checco or green shield it's a you know seal of approval you know after their latest fiasco in a series of fiasco i mean they're the ones that released the the steel dossier and they're still on a roll here but they still get a green check here what how is this affected freedom of speech because a lot of mirrors pointed out you know now they're trying to censor the internet and

it's very real i see it with my own eyes go ahead michael you're right. lattimer's ray roberts right to the problem is we we have so confused facts and information with folks in the end that we're trying to decide whose opinion is right yeah and therefore we have to settle out you know are you right with your interpretation or am i right with my interpretation well who cares just give me the facts give me the information i'll make my own opinion and if i say it out loud and i'm wrong with doesn't mean i'm wrong it just means my opinion is doesn't agree with yours you know it with the old saying you know you're entitled to your own thoughts on the matter but you're not entitled to your own facts we have so few facts i'm reminded of the covington kids in the recent past you know it was. bad information because we had incomplete information but you never really had information what you had were people commenting on opinions offered right people reacting on what they saw an opinion as i want it all opinion over when you know if you run out of time is

insane we've run out of time gentlemen and. come up with a new standards you know it's better if you're morally right your backs are nasty necessary many thanks to my guests and watch it in phoenix and improv in and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. next time and remember.

it would more make its manufacture consent to sell to the public well. when the ruling closest protect themselves. in the final merry go round certainly the one. doing all middle of the room sick.

sometimes decision to quit the i.n.f. treaty takes the world a step closer to an. you clear all of course that's the warning from twenty twenty u.s. presidential candidate who has introduced the bill to try torpedo the move. elsewhere french air force jets turn of the heat on rebel fighters in the central african country of chad's using their firepower to help. and fourteen children with. aids are expelled from.