champ i love you continuing the conversation on the e-mail controversy and more i'm now joined by joe ruben he served as deputy assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs in the obama administration and is president of the washington strategy group a global governmental affairs advisory firm he joins me from washington joe what's the international impact of the junior controversy. larry it's great to be with you and the international impact is significant and it's coming on the heels of a very damaging visit that president trump had last week to the g. twenty meetings where essentially the reviews were that he became more isolated in that state is more isolated now amongst its allies and it has been in recent memory so these e-mails and this controversy now only serves to further undermine the confidence that leaders around the world have in the american word and in our in our presidency right now and it can be very troubling do you go so far as some suggesting that junior might have engaged in treason. well treason is a very specific type of activity that one engages in and i thi

welcome back to politicking i would talking with joe ruben he formally served as deputy assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs in the obama administration and is president of the washington strategy group he is joining us from the nation's capital should we be concerned that steve benen jarrad cushion a meeting with private military contractors about the white house privatizing the afghanistan war. well the overall frame on afghanistan is very troubling this is the longest war in american history over sixty just about sixteen years now it's cost over a trillion dollars we've lost several thousand lives and we need a real policy on afghanistan that wins that gets success and helps to defeat the taliban in a manner where the afghan government can sustainably maintain security in its country and help improve the lives its of its people we don't need two processes though to get there in terms of internal american government decision making we have a national security adviser and a charming master who's very adept highly regarded across the national security community and in the mi