Fiona Hill

He's egging him on about Greenland.

He's egging him on about this.

He's egging him on about that.

And he's just extraordinarily good.

And I saw him do that in Helsinki.

at the lunch, when he just basically, deliberately, the very end where I thought, God, we got through that lunch without any, you know, major problem there.

He starts to introduce, you know, kind of a question about US domestic politics and sends Trump off on a rant about Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden and, you know, anybody who looked like they might be a potential challenger for him in, you know, a future presidential election.

Well, first of all, it was one of these where they make it clear that, you know, if you bite on this, you know, this could go somewhere.

But it was kind of, you know, framed more in very heavy, obvious hints, you know, framing, you know, discussions of Ukraine in the context of Venezuela and the U.S.

interest in this, talking about the Monroe Doctrine, talking about U.S.

interest historically in the Western Hemisphere.

And then in the same breath, you know, without almost pausing, talking about their own interests in their own sphere.

There were articles in, you know, Russian press, you know, often in English, you know, so that they were intended there, you know, for an audience meetings with, you know, think tankers.

I mean, I wouldn't say it was a full on full court press, but it was definitely meant to entice.

And again, like these recruiting exercises, if you bite, you know, want to know more, you know, kind of then they'll take it further.

And so I, you know, was kind of basically instructed to go and turn it off.

because of that particular time, certainly the people who were managing Venezuela.

And, you know, this was, remember, in that first instance, there was the coalition provisional government of Juan Guaido.

I mean, everyone's talking about him now, poor man.

And the whole idea that there would be an effort to try to get Maduro to leave, go to Costa Rica or God knows where, and, you know, just leave the scene.