This is John Batchel, a conversation with my colleague Cliff May, the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy.

Cliff is looking to liberation from the Trump White House of so many applying in Keefe, in Caracas, in Havana, in Tehran, looking to the United States to liberate them.

How will we respond?

Cliff especially points out the savviness demonstrated so far by the Secretary of State Mark Rubio,

who's also the National Security Advisor.

Here's Cliff to explain.

More of this tonight.

I think it is.

I think this is putting a bit of pressure on Putin.

And I've been saying for a long time, and others have as well,

that there needs to be much more pressure on Vladimir Putin

if he is to be willing to make any concessions in regard to Ukraine.

You know, it's an interesting thing, John.

Right now there are people in Venezuela, people in Iran, people in Ukraine,

and they're all looking to America, more specifically to President Trump,

and saying, we want to be liberated from tyranny.

Will you help us?

And he has given some assistance, and he's considering giving substantially more.

I'm not going to tell you what choices he makes. But I'm hopeful that there'll be wise choices.

And I think that he has some good advisors in term, Marker Rubio is one of them.