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Hello, welcome to the Rest Is History and we would like to go to Crawford, Texas, where we

are joined by a special guest. I'll answer the question. I looked the man in the eye.

I found it'd be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue.

I was able to get a sense of his soul, the man deeply committed to his country and the

best interest of his country and I appreciate it so very much the Frank dialogue. There was no

kind of diplomatic chit-chat trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward

dialogue and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn't have invited him

to my ranch if I didn't trust him. That was my brilliant impression of George W. Bush.

Wasn't actually that really was George Bush. That was our first presidential guest.

And that was the occasion. In 2001 of his first meeting with President of Vladimir Putin,

in light of the current situation, we thought that it would be interesting to look at some of

the historical context. We've already done an episode on the history of Ukraine, but we thought that

it would be essentially everyone is asking, how did we get here? What is it that's prompted

Putin to do what he's doing? What is the background? What is there an explanation for it that can be

discovered in history, I suppose, and specifically in his biography? This is a field that you are

much more familiar with than I am. But I guess I lived through it, so a lot of it.

Yeah. I think Tom, does that apocryphal say in Bonapolian, isn't there, that if you know the world,

if you study the world when a man was 20, you know how his mind works. And

Vladimir Putin, like any Russian of his generation, he's born in 1952, has lived through the most

...