Trump and Putin
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2016
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's one of the strangest developments in a very strange election campaign. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, says Donald Trump is "colourful and talented".
For his part, the Republican nominee says Putin "is very much a leader ... far more than our president has been a leader."
More than flattering words, on specific policy points - such as the civil war in Syria, the influence of NATO in Eastern Europe, and sanctions against Russia imposed over the conflict in Ukraine - Trump and his advisors seem sympathetic if not outright supportive of Putin's foreign policy objectives.
Donald Trump's policies are a startling departure from the normally hawkish Republican Party establishment, and Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have wasted no time in painting Trump's Russia links as a threat to national security.
Meanwhile, according to reports in the American press, Russian intelligence agencies are actively looking to disrupt the election. The hack of Democratic National Committee emails, whose contents were released in July, is just one noteworthy example.
In this edition of the Briefing Room, David Aaronovitch asks is Donald Trump Russia's man, or just anxious to rebuild half-burned bridges?
Joining David Aaronovitch in The Briefing Room this week will be:
Gabriel Gatehouse, BBC International Investigations Correspondent
Anne Applebaum, columnist for The Washington Post and director of The Transitions Forum, The Legatum Institute
Franklin Foer, fellow at the New America think tank and a contributing editor to Slate.com
Producer: Michael Wendling Researcher: Kirsteen Knight Editor: Innes Bowen.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, my name's Mike. I'm one of the producers here in the briefing room, and one of the |
| 0:03.9 | strangest developments in what has been, to put it lightly, a very unusual presidential |
| 0:09.1 | campaign in the United States this year, has been Donald Trump's position on Russia. |
| 0:14.9 | Now, traditionally, the Republican Party has been the more hawkish in terms of foreign policy, |
| 0:20.3 | but that's completely been flipped by Trump this year. |
| 0:23.4 | He's praised Vladimir Putin, and Putin has, to some degree, repaid the compliment. |
| 0:29.3 | There's been a lot of claims and counterclaims around. |
| 0:32.0 | And in this edition of the briefing room, we're going to put aside the politics, or at least try to, and look at the facts. |
| 0:38.3 | What exactly are Donald Trump's ties to Russia and to Vladimir Putin? |
| 0:43.1 | How deep do they go and how might it influence the result in November? |
| 0:47.5 | David Aronovich is presenting the program, but first, here's Trump on Putin. |
| 0:58.8 | Music Here's Trump on Putin. If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him. |
| 1:01.8 | I've already said he is really very much of a leader. |
| 1:06.0 | He's been a leader far more than our president has been a leader. |
| 1:09.8 | Donald Trump on Vladimir Putin. |
| 1:12.4 | Now, Hillary Clinton on Donald Trump. |
| 1:15.2 | He very early on, |
| 1:17.9 | allied himself with Putin's policies. |
| 1:21.1 | I mean, to pull out of NATO, for goodness sakes, right? |
| 1:25.3 | And he furthermore has praised Putin. He seems to have this bizarre attraction to dictators. |
| 1:34.3 | Tonight in the briefing room, the links between Trump and Russia. Is it true, as has been asserted, that Russia is directly engaging in an attempt to influence the American |
| 1:44.8 | presidential election, or is this contention an overblown fantasy? Is Donald Trump |
... |
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