. >> joining me now is cnn political analyst and columnist for "the washington post," josh rogin and cnn politics reporter eugene scott. welcome to both of you this morning. thanks for being with us. >> good morning. >> thanks. >> josh, let me start with you. donald trump said two weeks ago it was a declarative statement, i have nothing to do with russia and to the best of his knowledge, no person he deals with does. yet, now we're finding more and more there are trump advisers and members of his administration who have apparently had meetings with the russian ambassador. so, the question is this. how much of this is just political back and forth and how much is real harmful substance for his administration? >> i think there's a lot of both, actually. i think what we're doing is we're conflating two separate issues. one in diplomatic circles to meet with foreign ambassadors and run into them at conferences. second is lots of trump administration has obscured these contacts from public view and also may have had other interactions with the russians that were not part of the regular dip