MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Pres Trump ousts NSA John Bolton."
Interview
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HAYES: Tonight, there are now multiple credible reports that in 2017 the United States extracted a priced high-level spy from Russia amid fears for this person`s safety, fears that their identity could be compromised. That informant is believed to have interacted regularly with Vladimir Putin and fed the CIA information about Putin`s role in ordering the 2016 operation to sabotage our presidential election. CNN was the first to break the story about the decision to remove the former senior Russian official, a reporting that came after that infamous May 2017 Oval Office meeting in which President Trump discussed highly classified information with the Russian Foreign Minister then-Russian ambassador. The decision came amid "concerns that Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy. CNN`s reporting was then followed by pieces from our own NBC News, the New York Times, The Washington Post, all which advanced the story in varying ways. The Post reporting that while Trump`s disclosure of classified information alarm national security officials, it ultimately quote was not the reason for the decision to remove the CIA asset. But the Post and Times reporting that CIA officials grew increasingly worried for their asset safety after according to Times, intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia`s election interference with unusual detail, in part because this asset was the American government`s best insight into the thinking of and orders from Mr. Putin. I`m joined now by Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. What do you make of all this, Senator?
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): Well, I think you are exposing a conflict that is inherent in intelligence gathering. The most important intelligence often ultimately does need to be made public in a way that allows for public policymakers to be able to make decisions. And so, in this case, it may be that this intelligence about the ways in which Russia affected the 2016 election was so important that it ultimately did have to be disclosed in order to move the public and to move policymakers to action. That is something that happens often and often leads to intelligence sources having to be withdrawn or channels shut down. But I also think it stands to reason that the President`s loose lips about intelligence likely chills our ability to gather this intel abroad as well. And what the president has a problem with is not human intelligence, it`s just any intelligence that contradicts what he wants to believe. And so it especially puts in jeopardy those that are collecting intelligence abroad that ultimately is going to be at odds with Trump`s worldview whether it be in Russia or North Korea. So I think it`s likely that both of these scenarios that have been played out as to why the asset was withdrawn could be true.
HAYES: I don`t normally think of the president as a kind of virtue ethicist who has like kind of bright lines and moral do`s and dont`s, but this reporting that he has privately said that foreign spies can damage relations with their host countries and undermined his personal relationships with their leaders, the president believes we shouldn`t be doing that to each other. We shouldn`t be spying on each other which I just -- he seems like a person who`s not you know, too fastidious about moral transgression. I was surprised by that view.
MURPHY: Well, I think that`s simply because some of the most important human intelligence that has been handed to him contradicts the way in which he wants to see the world, right? He was being given intelligence reports, we now know, giving him definitive proof that Putin may have been directly overseeing the interference in the 2016 election which led to Donald Trump`s election. He was given plenty of intelligence to tell him the Kim Jong-un was indeed a really horrible person not worthy of a face to face tete-a-tete with the president but that`s not what he wanted to hear. And so I think it stands the reason that he ultimately doubts human intelligence because a lot of human intelligence he`s been getting tell some things that aren`t interesting to him.
HAYES: Right. You tweeted this morning in the wake of the Bolton`s ignominious and very publicly humiliating departure. "I`m legitimately shaken by the grave instability of American foreign policy today. I`m no Bolton fan but the world is coming apart and the revolving door of U.S. leadership is disappearing America from the world just the moment where a stable American hand is most needed." Counterpoint, also John Bolton is gone.
MURPHY: Right. And so you know, I think you know, my statement maybe lack some subtlety that is necessary in these moments. So obviously, John Bolton`s departure and how we evaluate it is dependent on who replaces him. So we can assume that there`s no one worse than John Bolton but in fact, there may be --
HAYES: No that`s -- I agree. That`s a dangerous assumption.
MURPHY: It`s a dangerous assumption to make. Second, it can also be true that Trump is picking really bad people for these jobs but it is also dangerous to cycle through bad people so quickly that it makes it really hard for us to be credible in the world on the things that are not that controversial. And there are plenty of things that we actually don`t fight about that the National Security Advisor in the Secretary of State and the Department of Defense represent the world, represent America abroad on. You can`t be credible on any of those issues if you`re just pushing people through these posts so quickly. And so I`m simply raising the point that we should be upset that John Bolton was ever in that position, but we should also be upset that the president is moving people through these jobs so quickly because that damages our credibility on all sorts of stuff that the Democrats and Republicans actually agree on.
HAYES: Senator Chris Murphy, thank you as always for being with me tonight.
MURPHY: Thanks.
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