our voting machines in the united states very stupidly don't have paper trails. >> sreenivasan: mike mcfaullsey is drawing this disfunction, two different kinds of possible interference, is that too generous? >> no, i think those are good categories. i think both of those categories need to be investigated. i have personal experience with that first category. i had lots of disinformation published about me when i was ambar-- ambassador. but i want to be clear, there is a third category jim is leaving out which is stealing data from the democratic national committee and from john poddesta the chairman of the hillry clinton campaign, and then disseminating that information through wikileaks. by the way, i want to underscore wikileaks is a foreign organization as well. and that then having an impact on the campaign. most certainly the people that work in the clinton campaign think that the wikileaks data dump was a devastating impact on their electoral candidate's prospect to become president of the united states. if that was provided by russia, and that is what we learned over the weekend, th

ambassador is mike mcfaul who was banned from russia for what he says are his close ties to president obama. welcome back to "meet the press." >> thanks for having me. >> tell us a little bit about why everyone is so convinced that what happened in the united states fits a pattern of what russia has been doing in other countries. >> well, because russia has this capability. and they're motivated for political purposes to do these kinds of things. what is really striking about the last 48 hours, of course, is that now the intelligence community is starting to directly give us news about the way these dots are connected. remember, you and i have talked about this many times. we knew some things, like we were pretty certain about the dnc hacking by the russians. what we didn't have reported before was evidence that they gave that data to wikileaks. we also didn't have the data that you just described in your intro that they hacked the rnc, the republicans. those are pretty big new facts. and i think they demand real attention in terms of some kind of investigation. >> in your determinati

there was a reset under medvedev as presidentf russia as mike mcfaul said was successful to a point with putin's return. now we see disillusionment in the obama administration. keyed by not only ukraine but syria and now the intervernntio in the united states. i think trump will have to figure out where are the common interests and there are a couple. he also, i think, learns to recognize over time that the area of common interest between russia and the united states is shrinking. i think you will see the same cycle of guarded optimism at the start. but increasing antagonism as we go along. >> you say guarded optimism. isn't it more than guarded optimism? it feels like blatant optimism now for a better relationship with russia from president trump and his team. >> you have to disaggregate what we have gone through and the key issues going forward. syria, the united states was thwarted by russia. russia wanted bashar al assad alive more than the united states wanted him dead. there was an imbalance of interest here. the trump administration has the opportunity to shift u.s. policy with re

all right former ambassador mike mcfaul thank you for your insight. >> thanks for having me. >>> joining me is msnbc's ali velshi. what do we know about his background and tenure? >> like a lot of people from energy companies, betty, and the top 100 companies in america, he's a lifer. he's been there for a long time. he's been there since the 1970s, been the ceo since 1996. he earned a lot of money, got over $150 million in exxon mobil stock, and he followed lee raymond's steps, lee raymond was his predecessor, followed his steps making exxon mobil into not just an oil production company but sort of a multilevel what they call upstream and downstream market or production and he made exxon mobil into a company that's expert at doing things in particular that the russians can't do including drilling for oil in the arctic ocean, which is something they were set to do in partnership with russia right before, within days of the sanctions being imposed on russia, because it went into ukraine. rex tillerson not only as the ambassador has a close relationship with russia with vladimir putin, wit

you have republicans going further than what mike mcfaul just said and even if they did not accept the russian hacking occurred, if it is, they think it is fine because you had a representative saying today that how horrible hillary clinton was. they're taking a step further of part of the response that they don't want the election of donald trump to be challenged but taking it further to some republicans and saying that the hacking itself is not important to investigate or not a big deal because hillary clinton who they see is so horrible was the target. that was a bridge way too far and certain point, americans and every political party have got to agree that we do not want a foreign power deciding or at least try to manipulate who'll be the president of the united states for very specific end. you got a $500 billion deal on the table with the man who maybe our next secretary of state at issues with exxon mobile. there is too much at stake and interference that we know about. we cannot criticize it because it calls into question of the election of the president. >> malcolm nance, do

>> i agree with everything mike mcfaul just said. that said, our own secretary of state, john kerry, has been trying to work out a relationship with putin and sergey lavrov, trying to find areas to collaborate within syria. when you're a permanent five member, they collaborate in iran. there are going to be areas where our interests diverge dramatically. if you drop a bomb on seoul, you'll need russia and china and others aligned in an action. there's this notion that america moving unilaterally through the world is something tor celebrate and boast about it. it's just not the way the world works. >> i gave that extreme case and i hope in our lifetimes we don't see anything like it. but you have to wonder what a guy with gut instincts would do. he would just drop another on them. what would that accomplish? let's take something less drastic. he grabs one of the battltics. he just grabs one. he rushes in askand takes it, l he got the wrong message. remember atchison gave the wrong message to the north koreans in the 1950s. give the wr

>> yeah, and if the russians -- i totally agree with everything that mike mcfaul said.ve been trying to get compromise with the russians. the russians should understand, there will be no peace in syria unless there's a negotiated transitional government, unless the moderate opposition has a seat at the table, because there will be a low level terrorist insurgency or an insurgency against assad in addition to the terrorists already fighting assad. and we tried very hard -- >> assad is not our enemy. neither is russia our enemy. the radical islamicists who have been murdering americans by the thousands since 9/11 -- >> congressman, should we be an accompli accomplice. should we be an accomplice to evil? >> that's the only government who has given refuge to the christian population of that area. >> are you -- >> he's not our enemy. >> hold on. one at a time, everybody. elise. guys, hold on. hold on. hold on. >> stalin -- stalin -- stalin. >> if you could cut dana's microphone so we could have the question asked. if dana will stop talking we'll have the question asked. go a

ambassador to russia mike mcfaul to join that conversation, and germany's angela merkel summons her tophe deadly attack on a christmas market, and a report this morning that they arrested the wrong guy. "morning joe" back in a moment. one of millions of orders on this company's servers. accessible by thousands of suppliers and employees globally. but with cyber threats on the rise, mary's data could be under attack. with the help of at&t, and security that senses and mitigates cyber threats, their critical data is safer than ever. giving them the agility to be open & secure. because no one knows & like at&t. love or like? naughty or nice? calm or bright? but at bedtime... ...why settle for this? enter sleep number, designed to let couples sleep together in individualized comfort. sleepiq technology tells you how you slept and what adjustments you can make. she likes the bed soft. he's more hardcore. so your sleep goes from good to great to wow! give the gift of amazing sleep. only at a sleep number store, save $400 on the c4 mattress, the lowest price of the year! learn more at sleepnum