Welcome to Pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. My guest is Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian

Studies at Princeton and NYU, author of many books, including his latest War with Russia,

from Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russia Gate. Professor Cohen, welcome back to Pushback.

Thank you, Aaron. So I wanted to have you

on to respond to some of what we've been hearing from the impeachment trial of Donald Trump,

where ostensibly we're supposed to be focused on a case of alleged pressure on Ukraine by Trump,

but Russia has been front and center from the Democrats'

presentation.

And before I play some clips and ask you to respond, I want to acknowledge something, which

is that back when Russia gate and the conspiracy theory about Trump and Russia, back when

that collapsed, I remember saying that finally we

can get to talking about real issues in this country and we can put this Russia madness behind us.

But you said, both privately to me and in interviews with me, that this Russia thing was far from over.

So I'm wondering why you felt so confident that this intense

focus on Russia and hawkish posture towards Russia, especially from Democrats, was not going

away.

And this was even after, or at least now is after the findings of the Mueller investigation, that there was no tie between Trump and Russia.

That's what had been driving Russia into our mainstream for a long time.

I don't know. I've lived with Russia, I guess, going on 50 years now.

And one of the things I've learned is that being highly critical of Russia is good politics

in the United States.

Nobody ever gets any points for saying anything good about Russia and only rarely for advocating

...