laura rosenberger, director of the alliance for securing democracy, a program of the german marshall fund, that tracks russian influence operations. a foreign policy advisor to the most recent hillary clinton presidential campaign, laura also served in the state department during the george w. bush and barack obama administrations. and, john sipher. he's a 28-year veteran of the c.i.. who was based in moscow in the 1990s. he subsequently oversaw operations against russian intelligence services. he's now with the consulting firm crosslead. laura rosenberger, let's start with you. you've built tools to track these different c's. what have you found? >> we've built aing too that tracks a network of russian-linked twitter accounts that are pushing divisive content. what we see is a lot of what the messaging is these accounts are pushing is really about trying to turn americans against one another, playing on existing divisions in our society, but trying to pull us to extreme, so it's playing on racial divisions, political divisions, issues like immigration that are politically hot and try

let's bring in former foreign policy adviser to the clinton campaign, laura rosenberger.ou for being here. joe, president trump's tweet said speculation about rex tillerson, his secretary of state is fake news, but he does admit that they do disagree. what do you see happening now and how might this hobble what is so important at this moment when we look at north korea, if those two disagree on north korea and what it is doing. >> you know, richard, we have never faced a situation where we've had profound domestic crisis while facing a growing nuclear crisis and the government is in such profound disarray. that's what makes this situation so dangerous. at this moment, the president appears that he is going to remove his chief diplomat, the secretary of state. it isn't that tillerson has done a great job at state, he has not. at least he was trying to promote promote diplomatic solution knowing there's no military option. knowing he will be replaced by mike mom p-- pompeo. at the same time, we don't have an assistant secretary of state for near east, don't have assistant s

steve rosenberg, bbc news, moscow. laura: for more on this, i was joined a short time ago by a former u.s. ambassador to russia. ambassador, when the russian leader says that reports about russian collusion with the trump campaign were invented to question donald trump's legitimacy, isn't that exactly what president trump says, too? >> it is, and both have been consistent in adhering to this line. laura: which is interesting, to put it mildly. vladimir putin said today that he doubts president trump can improve relations with russia because of political opposition. is he right in that analysis? >> it is hard to know, because president trump has fought against his own party, on the congress and elsewhere, who are in many ways very much less respectful, if i can put it that way, of president putin than he is. although you cannot crucify or criticize an american president for having an agreement with a foreign leader. under these mysterious circumstances, however, we have the right to ask questions about that. what is the relat