monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Let's look, first of all, at the operation influence, if you like, and how that's exerted, what we suspect the Russians are doing, not only in the United States, but they did in Britain for the referendum, maybe, in Britain for the election. They certainly interfered in Macron's election in France. So who are these forces? And what is really spooky, I think, and profoundly disturbing is they come from the West as well as the East - that there are oligarchs in the West who are so far to the right that they make a kind of natural cause with those on the other side of the world. Both of them have in common a great contempt for the ordinary conduct of democracy.

They want to diminish it. They see it as their enemy. They see - they've made a dirty word of liberalism - one of the most inviting words in politics. They've - and so they're closing in on the same target from different points of view. That's the first thing. So whether they're called Cambridge Analytica, whether they've got some spooky name and they're hidden away in the Ukraine, they're actually doing much the same job. They're undermining the decent processes of democracy, and that's having its effect. It's had its effect in Europe, in Hungary, in Poland. And I think it's had a quite disturbing effect in my own country. We'll come to that later.

Now, as to what is happening in the other areas of Russian behavior and Mr. Trump's association - there, I think we follow the money trail. I think it's perfectly possible that Trump was taken into what I call a honey trap - that he had ladies found for him, and he misbehaved in Russia. If that film was shown tomorrow worldwide, Trump would get away with it. People would say, well, boys will be boys. Or they would say the different parts of the body in the video don't add up; this is all fake stuff. And 35 experts would testify to that - so wouldn't get any distance on that.

But on the money, that's a deep and persistent theme in Trump's business affairs. It's gone on for a long, long time. It relates, also, to a great extent to property held in the United States, which brings the thing closer to home. And it relates, also, to Mr. Trump's family.

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The power of oligarchs in Russia, what the oligarchs have lent Trump directly or indirectly for his enterprises, the protection they've given him in far places - but none of that will play so well for the downfall of Trump as the domestic stuff, as the properties that he owns around America - how they've been bought, who they've been bought by, in what sums, whether the sums were actually consonant, whether they were gross, whether they look like some kind of backhander or bribe, and the extraordinary number of Russians with criminal records or Eastern Europeans with criminal records who frequent Trump's company.

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Well, first of all, let's remember that Putin, when he was running the KGB from Dresden in East Germany, was a master of kompromat. So when he wanted to obtain a Western diplomat, a Western official, a target of some kind, he would surround them. He would tempt them. He would set stuff up. He would fake a background. They couldn't deny whatever it was.

That's an old skill. It goes back hundreds of years, not just in Russia. But the Russians specialized in it, even in czarist times. And they - the gray czars of today are experts at it. They love it. They love the complexity of it. They love the chess game of it. But I don't think it would work.

So I think the kompromat, if it's taken place, has taken place very largely through Trump's own endeavors to raise money in all sorts of dark places. And together, all those efforts amount to a self-compromising activity, which the Russians have embraced. I think they have him by the short hairs.

In the end, it seems to me, some of this has got to come home to roost. And I think there might be a point - I hope there will be a point when somebody goes to Trump and says, your family is so deeply involved in this that you have a choice - you either fade away or we disrupt the house of Trump in ways that would be very painful to you.

I think, and profoundly disturbing is they come from the West as well as the East - that there are oligarchs in the West who are so far to the right that they make a kind of natural cause with those on the other side of the world. Both of them have in common a great contempt for the ordinary conduct of democracy.

They want to diminish [democracy]. They see it as their enemy. They see - they've made a dirty word of liberalism - one of the most inviting words in politics

Trump’s core personal drive is the need to dominate.

The nation's debt limit is similar to the limit your credit card company places on your spending. But there's one significant difference. Congress is in charge of both its spending and the debt limit. It already knows how much it will add to the debt when it approves that year's budget deficit. When it refuses increase the debt limit, it's saying it wants to spend but not pay its bills. That's like your credit card company allowing you to spend above its limit and then refusing to pay the stores for your purchases.

She hasn't done anything wrong, she is allowed to promote her book and put down her thoughts and feelings on what she feels happened with the 2016 election. I am going to buy it at some point. Possibly a real book vs. digital. Those types who are turning on her now are the same type who never was there for Obama either when things were tough. Fair weather supporters.

Democrats will move back left...

I question anyone who doesn't want to attack political corruption.

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Democrats will move back left...

Left of what? They haven't been "left" since the early days of the New Deal. They helped override Truman's veto of Taft-Hartley, they pursued the Cold War with as much enthusiasm as the Republicans, they waged war on Vietnam. The civil rights gains of the '60s were bipartisan accomplishments; the Great Society programs and the War on Poverty were moderate enough to be backed by Wall Street. I don't see a widespread mandate for real "leftist" policies, just a lot of frustrated voters vaguely dissatisfied with the status quo and tying themselves to a largely undefined "progressivism".

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I question anyone who doesn't want to attack political corruption.

People don't have to be leftist or rightist to want to attack political corruption. If you have solutions to the problem of dark money and the obscene levels of spending required to run a political campaign maybe you could share them here and explain why you think they are "progressive". We had a chance to put another liberal on the Supreme Court and the "progressives" sat on their hands and gave the seat to Gorsuch. Real strategic thinking there.