Axios’ Jonathan Swan appeared on MSNBC Wednesday night to discuss his new interview with President Donald Trump and the preview already released showing him confronting the president on the alleged Russian bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. troops.

Lawrence O’Donnell played the full exchange for his audience, commending the way Swan grilled Trump on the subject — something that other journalists noted the president wasn’t getting asked about in several recent interviews.

Trump told Swan he didn’t raise the matter in his recent call with Vladimir Putin.

“To go that long without being questioned seriously on this matter,” Swan said, “was unacceptable. And it’s not a matter that’s sort of boutique or niche or outside the realm of American life. This relates to U.S. service members. This is the lives of U.S. service members. This is the Taliban, which until recently has been killing U.S. service members.”

He noted that there isn’t consensus on the intel, but said that’s not itself unusual and pointed out this was taken seriously and certainly carried more weight than “some flimsy piece of gossip.”

“And what I found striking in the interview was that he was incurious about this. He dismissed it on its face. He wrote it off as fake news,” Swan continued. “And it did not comport with his world view in the way that he thinks about Putin and Russia. So, therefore, it was immediately off the table.”

He was also struck by Trump’s reaction to his own former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan saying Russia was supplying arms to the Taliban. “And for him to say that he hadn’t heard about it or that he maybe heard about it but it hadn’t reached his desk, I don’t know what it requires to reach his desk, but I would have thought that when the top military officer in that region says something publicly, that that information, by definition, should be on his desk.”

You can watch above, via MSNBC.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2XbyQut