What up, what up, what up everybody? This is Michael Steele with a quick take from the

Michael Steele podcast. Check it out. He is written about the Trump Russia scandal for

the new Republic Banity Fair in the Washington Post. He's a graduate of Harvard University.

He will forgive you and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Craig, welcome to the podcast. Man, it's great to have you.

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Well, you know, first off, I'm just straight up put out there because we're going to hit it

a number of times in the podcast. Folks, you, this is the other side of the tale, which you

can actually almost look at as an origin story for what we have lived through and have

experienced as the Trump presidency. At the very beginnings of the 2015 campaign, there

were some inklings rumblings that there's something else going on here with Russia, the

intense desire that Trump had to build Trump Moscow, Hotel, Casino, etc. And as you put

together this book, it's interesting that in addition to how you source this with Yuri

Spetz, who's a former KGB colonel, you also had former CIA director Michael Morrell has

called Trump an unwilling agent of the Russians. Former National Security Director James Clapper

has described him, quote, in effect, an intelligence asset. And former CIA director John Brennan

has also said the Trump quote is wholly in the pocket of Putin and quote, what the hell

is going on with Donald Trump in the Russians?

Well, exactly. I mean, that is, I think, one of the key, key questions. And no one really

did the deep dive. And frankly, James Comey trying to do it. He was doing a counterintelligence

investigation when he was fired by Trump and he was at the FBI. Muller, Robert Muller

was supposed to do a counterintelligence investigation. And if you look at the original papers mandating

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