News Exercise #169

1. Complete this quotation and explain what it means:
0:33 “When _____________________________, you ____________________________.
2. What is it that seems “troubling” to the former CIA chief?
3. What is his opinion on Trump’s unwillingness to listen to his own intelligence sources (the CIA)? (2:19).
4. What is his final summary of this? (3:40)

Answers:
1. Complete this quotation and explain what it means:
0:33 “When you’re out there on the outer edges of executive prerogative, you want the executive’s ‘ok’.
This means that someone high up in the government making a very high-level decision that could affect national security. that person certainly wants to get approval from the highest authority – in this case Putin.
2. What is it that seems “troubling” to the former CIA chief?
He is troubled by Trump’s unwillingness to criticise Putin, because there is a lot of evidence and in fact europe does criticise Putin and his actions, but that Trump goes out of his way to avoid it.
Here is the exact quote: “There does seem to be an affinity… you know, that’s internal. What I see external, which is the reluctance, in all cases, to criticise the Russian president. That does seem troubling to em because I think there’s a good evidentiary stack available that suggests Europe, from time to time, criticise him and his actions, but he just goes out of his way to avoid it.”
3. What is his opinion on Trump’s unwillingness to listen to his own intelligence sources (the CIA)? (2:19).
“Our system gives great authority to the president in the conduct of foreign and security policy. The President Elect seems to have almost infinite confidence in his own intuition and in his own a priori assumptions of the world, and he doesn’t seem to entertain the possibility that he could be affected by his intelligence community, which after all is designed to help him.
4. What is his final summary of this? (3:40)
“I would put this in the ‘win’ column as one of the most successful covert action, covert influence programmes in the history of covert influence programmes. At a minimum, what we now have is the President Elect of the United States condemning, criticising, refusing to accept – pick your package (meaning all three phrases are equally valid) the word of the American INtelligence community, and siding with the word of the Russian president.