I remember in fact when our intelligence community came out with their

statements saying what Russia had done, this was a huge bombshell and it was I

think entirely appropriate that the intelligence community come out with that

bombshell because of the ways in which when President Obama spoke to any

issue really there was such a large constituency of people who just wanted to

say and do the opposite of whatever he wanted to say and do and so since it

was a technical finding with a strong evidentiary basis when they came out we

expected people from both parties to jump up and down and and be as seized with

this as we were within the executive branch I used to when I was in the

security council talk a lot about how I had just entered upside-down land you

know that was up was down was black was white and vice versa and then little

did I know that my own country and my own president would in effect create

and inhabit his own upside-down land. One point I'd like to make Anderson I don't

think has come up very much before and and I'm alluding now to the president's

criticism of President Obama for all that he did or didn't do before he left

office with respect to the Russian meddling if it weren't for President Obama we

might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that

set off a whole sequence of events which are unfolding today notably

special council Mueller's investigation. President Obama is responsible for that

and was he who tasked us to do that tells community assessment in the first

place I think it's an important point when it comes to critiquing President Obama

former president Obama's ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Powers has

...