John Kiriakou

There's a fourth thing.

I said, your excellency, when you arrest an American, a female American basketball player and give her a draconian tenure sentence for having a little bit of weed oil.

It's a bad look.

That was the only time he got angry.

And he said, do you have any idea how many Russians are in American prisons?

1,500.

I know that it's 1,500 because I have to send my staff out to visit them.

So if you want to talk about not arresting people, talk to your own government about it.

Well, frankly, I would see that as an opportunity.

That's yet another thing on which we should be engaged with the Russian government.

And we're not.

And it doesn't matter who's in the White House, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican.

We just have this idea that the Russians are bad, bad, bad, and we shouldn't be cooperating with them.

I'll tell you another thing.

My former wife was also a senior CIA officer.

And...

As recently as like 2017, she said to me, the Russians are the gravest threat that the United States has ever faced.

And I'm like, what newspapers are you reading?

Because I know these people and they want to work with us.

They're not going to roll over for us, but they want to be engaged diplomatically.