pinion, this is my judgment, that only a liar talks in this pattern, so it seems he’s admitted the UK poisoning. Which by the way I don’t think Putin wants the world to not think he does, because it’s a good way to squash dissent. How would you like to be a dissenter against Putin right now when you know he could just poison you wherever you are, whatever country? It’s kind of good for Putin to keep that fear out there. The troll farm part was obviously deception, and the thing about Mueller was just a diversion. So I would say that at this point Putin has essentially confessed publicly in the way that you know people try to hide their true guilt. He’s talked in the way that makes it look completely guilty. Now nothing’s 100 percent. I’m just saying that the way he talked is exactly how a liar talks.

Now let’s talk about the president. The president has said a few things that got people chattering today. Yesterday he said, when asked about the intel, the U.S. intel agencies, and I’m going to paraphrase a little bit, “What about them? They say Russia definitely did it.” And what did Trump say? He said, “Well, Putin says he didn’t do it. He was very strong on that.” How did the media report that? And I think the president also said some things about the lack of credibility for the intel agencies, if he didn’t say it yesterday he said it before. So that’s the context.

So the news reports that as the president believes Putin over his own intel. That didn’t happen. That didn’t happen. So the biggest story of the day is something that you can see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears never happened. Not once did the president say, “Well I’m comparing these two things and this one I believe more than that.” No words like that came out of his mouth. What he did say is that Putin claims he didn’t do it and he was very strong on that. Those two things are factually true. I’m not saying that what Putin claims is true is true. I’m saying that the observation that Putin said it didn’t happen is true. That’s an observation. It’s also true that our intel agencies don’t have great credibility. Now he also mentioned that the server was somehow missing and that that degrades the credibility of our own position. That’s just true. Would anybody argue that the fact that the server was not looked at by our own intel agencies, that’s problematic? Now that doesn’t mean it’s the whole story.

But somebody says I’m twisting his words like Charlottesville. No, you can check his words. You can see that I’m giving it to you straight.

So how do you reconcile that? On one hand, doesn’t it seem to you, let me test your beliefs on this, doesn’t it seem to you, and I’m going to explain all this in a minute, doesn’t it seem to you that the president couldn’t possibly believe Putin? Now he may have some questions about his own intel agencies. That seems clear, especially past performance. But how do you explain that the president seems in public to act like he is believing Putin? Why do you think he’d do that? Do you think the president does believe him?

All right, you have to see this along with his tweet. The president tweeted that we have to forget the past. We have to move past the past. We have to break out of, I’m paraphrasing, we have to break out of our mental prison of the past. Does that sound familiar? What’s the worst way to break away from your prison of the past? Blaming somebody for something they did in the past. That’s the worst way. What’s the best way to break free of your prison of the past? Well you saw it. You saw the president go on television in front of the world and not throw Putin under the bus, even though it should be really obvious to everyone that there were good reasons to throw Putin under the bus.

Now most of his critics, the president’s critics, are saying, “My God, you have to be tough with Putin. You can’t believe him because he lied to all of our other presidents before him, before Trump, and he just says whatever he says and everybody thinks they’re looking into his soul and then you trust him and then it’s a big mistake.” Well how much luck have we had pressuring Russia the way that all of President Trump’s critics want him to act? How productive would that be?

So if President Trump, let’s say he had gone in front of the public and said, “You know I believe our intel people. I think Putin’s lying. I think he lied during the meeting. I think he’s lied every time he talked about this and he’s standing next to me right now and he’s lying to you right now.” That’s what his critics asked him to do, right? Whether they actually asked him not to go to the meeting in the first place, which I think would be the worst solution, to not have a dialogue with somebody who’s an adversary with nuclear weapons. And we have lots of common interests in fighting terrorism and stuff.

So imagine if President Trump had done what his critics wanted him to do. Can you even imagine any scenario where we would come out ahead? I don’t think so. I can’t think of any scenario where you could possibly come out ahead by pressuring Russia the way his critics want him to.

So remember I told you that what President Trump likes to do is enter any situation and then shake the box. And I tell you that he’s the best box shaker because he has one quality President Trump does that you can’t find, if you searched a million people it would be hard to find this quality in a person. He can do things and take the heat like nobody you’ve ever seen before, right? You can’t shake the box unless you’re willing to put up with whatever happens. And that means just insane levels of criticism. Does President Trump seem to be able to put up with insane levels of criti