Good Thursday morning, I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your political playbook audio briefing, sponsored by the Alzheimer's Association.

We're kicking off this morning with something to watch.

The New York Times Maggie Haberman had an exchange with Sarah Huckabee Sanders at yesterday's press briefing on a topic that is getting a lot of attention and is going to get a lot of attention going forward.

They went back and forth over Russian authorities claims that they

want to question former ambassador to Russia, Mike McFall. Huckabee Sanders acknowledged that it came up

in Trump's meeting with Putin. She said the U.S. did not make a commitment, and then Trump will

work with his team and let us know when there's an announcement on this front. McFall is a former

U.S. ambassador to Russia who's a fellow at the Hoover Institute at

Stanford. He's a career academics who served for five years in the Obama administration.

McFall has been a big critic of Trump and Putin's. The idea that the Trump administration would

hand over a former U.S. ambassador to a dictator is not going to sit well with many. The State

Department's Heather Naurit said that the

Russian assertions are absolutely absurd at this point. Chuck Schumer tweeted, the president won't rule out

turning an American public servant over to Vladimir Putin, but tomorrow I hope the Senate will.

CBS's Jeff Glor interviewed Trump yesterday. The president said he holds Putin personally responsible

for the 2016 election meddling.

He was also defensive over criticism from Newt Gingrich and Lindsey Graham over his meeting with Putin.

Trump said he thought he did a great job at the news conference and he's living in the real world and

couldn't just go up and scream at Putin. Our colleagues, Burgess Everett and Ileana Johnson,

write that Trump's Russia message is falling flat with the Republicans on Capitol Hill. And the Washington Post has a concerning article about Russians

describing verbal agreements between Trump and Putin, but U.S. officials have no details about

any agreements. NBC's Lester Holt interviewed FBI director Christopher Ray at the Aspen Security

...