15/02/2017 Newsnight

Is reality catching up with the reality TV President?

I think it's very, very unfair what's happened to General Flynn,

the way he was treated and the documents and papers

that were illegally - I stress that, illegally -

We'll ask if the White House can defeat the combined

forces of the Democrats, the FBI and the "fake media".

Did you think this was a stock exchange?

No - this secret data centre in New Jersey

And the closer traders can get to the mainframe,

It's not only being in the building as close

It's where you are in the building, relative to where the exchange is.

A foot of cable equates to a nanosecond, a billionth of a second.

People are getting into pissing matches over

We look at how the playing field could be levelled.

In most known universes, it could be either "conspiracy

theories and fake news" or valid information allegedly

leaked to journalists by intelligence services.

In Donald Trump's universe it can, apparently, be both.

Not yet a month in office and already one National

Security Adviser down, the American President today took

to blame pretty much everybody except Russians and his campaign

team for the reported Russian infiltration of his campaign team.

More on that momentarily, but first a rather more conventional

sortie for a newly-minted President, the Middle East peace process.

Earlier tonight, at a press conference with the visiting Israeli

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump shared his vision.

So, I'm looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one

I'm very happy with the one that both parties like.

The BBC's Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen is here.

He is certainly covering his bases. Did that mark a profound shift in US

policy? It is hard to know, with President Trump. He is rewriting the

rules or making them up as he goes along. If he says it this week, he

might say something else next week. Certainly, the idea that a US

President is backing away from the idea of the two-state solution is a

change in a fundamental of American foreign policy for... Well, the last

four presidents, since 1990, something like that, the two-state

solution has been what they have been pushing for. Do you think

Netanyahu would have been surprised by what came out of Donald Trump's

mouth at the podium? Or would he have had early warning? All of these

are contingent on more conventional politics, these questions. In these

things, there's clearly a lot of preparation that goes into them. I

think Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli right have been hoping

for rather more from President Trump. Judging by the things he said

as a candidate, they were more or less going to get a blank cheque

when it came to the Palestinians, to do what they wanted, build

settlements where they wanted, in the numbers that they wanted. The US

Embassy was going to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, therefore

recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, something the rest of the

world has not done, most of the rest of the world. But as President

Trump, he has reined back on this. In the first couple of days after

the inauguration, Mr Netanyahu approved 6500 new settlements for

Jews, new homes for Jews, in the settlement, I should say, and in a

news conference President Trump is saying, hang on, I want you to hold

hard on settlements, there has to be a deal with concessions. Netanyahu

was a bit taken aback, I thought, and said, well, concessions from

both sides. The reported constant contact

between key Trump aides and Russian officials during the election

campaign is a burgeoning scandal with the potential to shake most

politicians to their core. But Donald Trump is not

most politicians. John Sweeney has been wondering

whether the Teflon candidate might I think it is very, very unfair what

has happened to General Flynn, the way he was treated and the documents

and papers that were illegally - I stress that, illegally leaked. Very,

very unfair. President Trump today mourned the loss of his National

Security Adviser of 24 days. The man who, according to reports, he sacked

in a flash. When he ran for office, they called him the Teflon Don.

Don't worry about it, Little Marco, I will.

I'm running against the crooked media.

That is what I'm running against. He won and carried on regardless. Time

to chuck dirt at the CIA. The intelligence agencies allowed any

information that turned out to be so false and fake out, that they did

that, I think it is a disgrace. I say that, and I say that, and that

is something that Nazi Germany would have done. But the Teflon Don is no

more. The grime is sticking to President Trump as never before. At

the heart of the Flynn fiasco are fears that team Trump had a Russian

connection with Kremlin spies. This morning, the New York Times reported

that US intelligence sources told it that three of his closest election

aides have repeated contact with Russian intelligence officials. All

three deny it. Trump took to Twitter to fight back.

The best evidence for the Russia connection might not be all

nonsense, it was from the man himself in the campaign. Russia, if

you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 30,000 e-mails that

are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our

press. Today, the former reality TV star was clear who was to blame.

America's greatest newspapers and its own spies. So, what is going on?

This building behind me is the case for the defence. It is the new

American Embassy in London. As you can see, like the Trump presidency,

it is a work in progress. Trump has teething problems. But give him time

and he will work perfectly well. The counter argument goes like this. OK,

maybe the building will work, but, for the moment, it has a bloody

great hole in it and it is leaking! Trump this morning praised American

Security journalist Eli Lake. So, who better to ask than the

President's current favourite reporter? We trust the government to

eavesdrop in order to stop terrorism, stop crying, stop foreign

infiltration and so forth. If you want to say Mike Flynn is indeed a

spy, a patsy or agent for the Russians, which nobody is saying,

and I would find hard to believe, having covered the man, that is

interesting. But do that in a court. Let him defend himself. Don't do it

anonymously like this, when you have the allegation hanging over him.

There was a time when this sort of thing was done and it was called

McCarthyism. Perhaps the US the state is at fault and the media are

not giving President Trump a break either. I do think there is not the

same rigour going on in newsrooms. The number of rubbish stories we are

seeing, with reporters rushing to publish, with thinly sourced or

anonymously sourced stories, it is not doing any favours to the

impression that they are out to get Donald Trump. But where are the

media getting the leaks from in the first place? What we are seeing is

we have an establishment faction, like Sean Spicer, and then the

populist faction that sees people in Congress, the leadership in

Congress, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, as sell-outs who have

failed their wing of the Republican party. The number of leaks we are

seeing is people jockeying for power. It could be an explanation

for what happened to Flynn. With his back against the wall, Trump will

need to rely upon Republicans in Congress to push through his agenda.

Tonight, his pick for labour secretary dropped out because of a

lack of that support from his own party. In politics, as in life, in

London, Washington, DC, wherever, the more Knowl View throw around,

sooner or later some of it will stick to you. -- the more mud you

throw around. Let's talk now to Democrat

Congresswoman Jackie Speier, who sits on the Intelligence

Committee in the House It is hard to know where to start.

Let's begin with that word illegal, employed by the President to

describe the passage of information from who knows where into the hands

of American newspapers, with regards to General Flynn. Do you recognise

his description of criminality, illegality? Let's go further back,

to when Sally Yates, then the Acting Attorney General, communicated with

the President through his special counsel that there was concern is

that Michael Flynn was compromised because there were intercepted

communications from the Russian ambassador and inadvertently

received information from Michael Flynn. It is very serious business.

The role of Russia in impacting and meddling in the election in the

United States is real. The President, for the longest time,

denied that Russia was responsible. Now he seems to want to dismiss it.

What we are mostly concerned with is what is the relationship, why is

there such a bromance between our President and Vladimir Putin? In the

last few days, Russia has tested missiles against the treaty dating

back to Ronald Reagan. There was a destroyer that was buzzed by Russian

aeroplanes and also a destroyer on our coast, a spy ship, that was

within 30 miles of Connecticut and Delaware. Forgive me, none of which

addresses the question of off there is a danger, think, that people see

him as being right about everything or wrong about everything. It's

impossible he is 100% right or 100% wrong. Surely, regardless of where

the information has come from, for it to make its way from the

intelligence services to the media is, at best, a dereliction of duty,

and, worst, a form of criminality bordering on treason? Well, I guess

I would disagree with you. The media has to be independent. The extent to

which the President is now is trying to exclude mainstream media and only

provide for opportunities for bloggers that are supportive of him

or local TV stations that are not part of the mainstream media, would

suggest to me that he is trying to silence the media. I go back to the

Sally Yates situation, because it was detected by the CIA and that

information was shared with the President about their concern that

Michael Flynn had been compromised because of the conversations he had

had with the Russian ambassador. Then more information has come out

that there were other people. I haven't seen any of those

transcripts. Whether I will be able to see them as a member of the

intelligence committee is something that we are looking into right now.

But I would say that, if there was collusion by the Trump campaign and

his associates, with the Russian government, that is treason. That is

a crime. Then we move onto a different. The transcripts

notwithstanding, what else is the role of the intelligence committee

now? I don't know how long you have been on it, but have you ever

encountered a phenomenon like this before? No, I have only been on the

committee for two years, but I would suggest to you that this is as big

as Watergate, if not bigger. I think we have an ultimate response ability

to the American people to make sure that we have reviewed all of the

information the CIA has provided, that we have double checked it, that

we have looked into whether or not, beyond what we know today, there

were other relationships that existed between the Trump campaign

and Russian officials. We also need to have the tax return of President

Trump released. It has always been historically the way that

presidential candidates have addressed this issue. He has first

said it was because of an audit, now he says he is not going to release

it at all. We have to find out if there are links between President

Trump and Russian oligarchs, if they have received financing, if there

are relationships that exist. That then puts in question any decision

that is made, relative to Russia, by the President. Many thanks indeed

for your time. One perspective on the unfolding

drama that is often hard for Western watchers to appreciate is that

of the Putin camp itself. Its members could never be accused

of beating a path to the doors Avigdor Eskin isn't exactly in it

but the Russian-Israeli businessman and political activist is a staunch

supporter of the Russian President and frequently lectures

in the country on political science. He's made a reputation by holding

some controversial views. I spoke to him earlier

at his home in Jerusalem, how the Russian media had reacted

to General Flynn's resignation. People could not understand this

whole scandal around General Flynn, because many of us remember him

coming to Moscow one year ago. My colleagues, everybody noticed

that he was kind of redneck American with the type of ideology close

to late Senator Jesse Helms who promoted the American interest

line, America first line, and when someone suspected him

of being somehow leaning towards Moscow, it just sounded

as a joke, as a kind of McCarthyism, which was probably too much

for Senator McCarthy. Flynn is an author of a book

where he describes the fight against world terrorism,

and criticising Russia for many of the things that Russia

presents in this circle of interest and after it, he somehow presents

Washington as being pro-Russia. I mean, it's unbelievable,

it's something unheard-of and nobody Is it really mysterious

to Russians to understand how a National Security Advisor

being economical with the truth to a vice president becomes

a dismissible offence? There are some misunderstandings

between different people, What we are saying is

that Flynn was nothing If he does not force his way now,

to the greater satisfaction of his friends and allies around

the world, and in the United States, He needs to stick to one

promise on every issue, OK, I will park that question of how

it can be uncontroversial to have a National Security Advisor

being misleading I will ask you instead why

Donald Trump was the preferred candidate of the Kremlin

during the American election? We know nothing about it,

Trump was critical of certain However, being a realistic leader

of a first world power sees Russia as a potential ally in fighting

terrorism, which is a mutual threat. He wants to find some neutral ground

for cooperation with Russia, with all the respect to Moscow,

well, Trump is going to disagree It's absolutely clear,

it's absolutely clear. We've are talking about the

realistic approach to this world. Many thanks, Avigdor

Eskin, good night. Even in this era of unprecedented

political upheaval, some of the old conventions

still hold true. And it's fair to say that busy

Prime Ministers don't often turn up on the mid-term by-election stump -

unless they think they've got a very real chance of winning

the seat from another party. Factor in the pub quiz classic

about governing parties not having made a by-election gain since 1960,

defections excluded, and you'll understand some

of the excitement surrounding Theresa May's visit

to Copeland today. Newsnight's Political Editor

Nick Watt was there. For more than 80 years, the Tories

have really had much electoral success beyond the dreamy landscape

of swallows and Amazons countries in the Lake District but now for the

first time since 1981, the Conservatives think that they can

win over the deprived west coast of Cumbria. Today, Theresa May donned a

suitable outfit for this mainly role constituency, as she paid a brief

visit to support her candidate in Copeland, it was not an easy ride as

both Labour and Tories have a strength and weakness in the

by-election -- rural. The Conservatives are on the defensive

why labour. Trying to remove electoral surgery

and midwifery services to Carlisle, 40 miles away.

Labour was today accused of scaremongering, with a warning that

babies could die. The Tory candidate was today criticised for failing to

mention the NHS in her election leaflets but Trudy Harrison is

advocating a rare case for a candidate from a governing party.

She would oppose the reforms outlined in the NHS success regime

consultation. All of the candidates are opposing the success regime. I

think it is a dreadful shame that Labour are using it to score party

politics because it is far too important for that. What is

important is what we do about it. And whilst others have been

designing leaflets, I've been speaking to the health minister.

Feelings are running so high on the NHS that one pensioner who voted

Conservative at the general election is now switching to Labour. In the

Conservative leaflet, the NHS isn't mentioned once. She wants to close

the hospital. Maggie Thatcher was the worst Conservative Prime

Minister. David Cameron was not any better. This woman is in the same

league. Ian Peter is supporting Labour, even though he has strong

doubts about Jeremy Corbyn. I do not think public opinion will keep him

there much longer. You say that you feel confident he will be on his way

out? I don't think he will last much longer. A nurse working in the West

Cumberland Hospital, who normally votes Labour, agrees with the party

's campaign on the NHS but she may switch her vote. Labour are

campaigning heavily on the NHS, why are you pausing about them? I think

possibly due to the leadership. Tell me about it? With Jeremy Corbyn? I

think that he is a weak figure, really. The doubts about Jeremy

Corbyn highlight Labour's principal weakness in this by-election. His

equivocal support for nuclear power in the home of the Sellafield

nuclear reprocessing plant. It employs a vast majority of people

around here. It's under nuclear, it is going to be very difficult for

Labour. But I think it is going to be very close, actually. Labour's

campaign literature barely mentions Jeremy Corbyn, who appeared last

month to offer less than wholehearted support for plans to

build a new, nuclear power station in the community. Eventually he said

he supported the more side project. If you win, you are going to win

despite Jeremy Corbyn, and you? Jeremy has been, and I've had a

pretty good talks with Jeremy... Democracy is that we have a local

candidate who is fighting for their local area. That is what we need

here, someone who really understands the issues in this constituency and

will be a strong voice fighting for this constituency. We need someone

who understands the nuclear industry and understands the investment that

we need for our infrastructure and most importantly, understands that

we need decent health in this constituency to support us when we

most need it. If Labour are struggling with the defining issue

in Copeland, you could believe that they have a clear advantage on the

defining issue in British politics -- Ukip. It was strongly voted here

to leave the EU, 62%. The Tories are obviously saying that they want to

leave but the Prime Minister was a remain, and half the Cabinet were as

well. There are doubts that they will see Brexit through, so they are

thinking of voting Ukip. Despite that, the Liberal Democrats believe

they can appeal across the board by campaigning against hard Brexit. The

Greens have a clear, and some would say brave, message in the home of

Sellafield. Noted nuclear power. Tucked away in a removed

-- removed corner, voters in Copeland often feel forgotten, but

next week they have the power. A Labour win could stabilise Jeremy

Corbyn's leadership at a loss would embolden his critics once again. --

but a loss. Here is a list of all

the candidates standing Back in 2014 the journalist

Michael Lewis caused a storm on Wall Street

and beyond with with He concluded the markets were rigged

against ordinary investors. The book lifted the lid on the world

of High Speed financial traders, who use ever more sophisticated

technology to generate huge profits. They manage to take a tiny slice

of millions of transactions , Two of the stars of the book,

who helped Lewis expose how these traders operate,

have now started a new Stock Exchange to protect investors

from being picked off Our Technology Editor David Grossman

has been to see how they hope to change the odds

so that the fastest operator Who is going to make money today

in New York's financial district? If it's anything like yesterday,

and the day before, it will probably be the people with the fastest

network, the best connections, I've come to New York to meet some

people who think they can rewire the financial system to make it work

for ordinary investors and companies that need to raise capital

for their businesses to grow. They started their

own stock exchange. It's called the Investors

Exchange, or IEX. Brad Katsuyama was a trader

for the Royal Bank of Canada. He set up the exchange

because he became disillusioned with the way stock exchanges

allowed other traders What stock exchanges have become

are vendors of data and technology, where they now make more money

by selling high-speed data and technology,

than they actually do from matching The complexity of the market

is almost overwhelming. 13 stock exchanges in the US alone,

and dozens of other venues, At its heart, each

venue is a computer. How quickly traders can connect

to each of these computers can Selling these ultra fast

connections is a very lucrative They're selling tiers

and levels of access. The more money you'll pay them,

the better and quicker The tourists come to Wall Street

to see the American The institutions they've come to see

are, in reality, long gone. To find them, we have to get out

of Manhattan and head east. The fact is, wherever

the stock exchanges say that they're based -

New York, Philadelphia, Chicago - they're all actually housed in four

highly secure data centres, Forget the idea of traders

waving their arms around, this is what a real stock exchange

floor looks like. This is the Equinix NY5 data centre

in Secaucus, New Jersey. It houses four of America's 13

regulated stock exchanges. To be allowed to have a tour of this

place and film I had to agree not The organisations that pay

to be in here are buying absolute discretion

- absolute secrecy. This is one of the four

main financial data Trillions and trillions

of dollars a day are traded in the computers, the servers,

and the wires in this building. Hundreds of brokers,

asset managers and traders rent space here because they want to be

as close as possible to the exchange's computer,

called the matching engine. This is a graphical

representation of orders, both buy orders and sell orders,

coming into the market. Before he and Brad founded IEX,

he made a very good living installing the ever faster boxes

and cables for traders looking It's not only being in the building,

as close as possible to exchange, it's where you are in the building

relative to where the exchange is. I'll give an idea on that,

roughly 11.8 inches, a foot of cable, equates

to a nanosecond, one People are getting into pissing

matches over the length of their cable in relation

to where the matching engine is. Well, imagine a pension fund

is looking to buy 1 million shares. The order might start in one

exchange, but have to travel around A high-speed trader,

who has paid the first exchange for superfast access,

detects the order in a few millionths of a second and races

around the other exchanges to buy up By the time the pension fund arrives

at the other exchanges, it has to buy it from the trader

at a slightly higher price. It's a guaranteed profit

for the trader and great This is where the New York Stock

Exchange really is, its massive, windowless data centre in Mahwah,

New Jersey. Traders can locate their computers

inside - of course, for a price. It's estimated that if you want it

to connect to all the exchanges in the US, using the highest speed

services available, it would cost They want one team to win

more than the other. Because if the team that was buying

these advantages was losing, So, the price that is being paid

for these advantages helps give you some sense of the magnitude

of the cost. It ends up adding up

to billions of dollars. This is their matching engine,

housed in the CenturyLink NJ2 Not only can you not pay

to get faster access, IEX routes all orders through this

boring looking box. It contains miles and miles

of fibre-optic cable, coiled up. It's a speed bump to slow down

the high-speed traders. What we've done is delayed

the access by 350 microseconds. To give you an idea

what that means, it's 350 millionths of a second,

one thousandth a blink of an eye. Whoever measures this stuff,

it's approximately that. That allows us to interpret what's

going on in the market and ensure the experience on IEX

is as fair as possible. Well, say a pension fund put

in its order to IEX, it goes through a 350 microsecond

speed bump on its way in. But this doesn't matter because,

as yet, no-one knows it's The news of the order also goes

through the speed bump It's only now that high-speed trader

can see the order as it's spread IEX has already had time to check

the other exchanges to see The speed merchants have

lost their advantage. We're not going to let a buyer pay

a price that we know So, in many ways, we prevent

trades from happening. We are lowering our revenue,

but protecting them. We are lowering our market share,

but we are preserving the experience and the quality of the experience

of a buyer on our market by not letting them get

picked off consistently. This is Nasdaq's data

centre at Carteret. Other stock markets have waged

a concerted, but unsuccessful battle against IEX's

approval by regulators. They argue that the 350 microsecond

speed bump meant the new exchange would prevent fair access

to the market. Now, we did ask Nasdaq

for an interview, but they declined, Which is a shame, because there

are plenty of questions No-one can say they're not

cleaning up Wall Street. But a few pine needles

is the least of their problems. Faith in our financial system has

not recovered since the crash. Slowing everything down,

and freezing out the high-speed It could also help the whole system

become more stable and less prone to Last night you heard Graeme Wood

give his view that Isis was part We promised you an alternative

view and here it is, from the academic and philosopher

Tariq Ramadan. Let's go back to where we started,

with President Trump. Is what we have seen so far just

teething problems for an insurgent President, or fundamental problems

of competence and integrity? Let's talk to Dana Milbank

from the Washington Post and Asra Nomani, who has written

for Breitbart and the Hill. I'll start with you, I will mash up

a famous quote about the news being something that somebody somewhere

doesn't want the people to see, everything else is PR. When Donald

Trump talks about fake news, the crew could media, he is talking

about everything that isn't it? -- the crooked media. A correction, I

haven't worked for Breitbart. I now write freelance for a number of

publications. I have to make that correction only because what I

fundamentally see happening in our press in the United States, in our

discourse about so much related to the Trump administration is the

vilification of both the Trump administration and anybody who might

say there is any rational discourse to be had about the administration

and its policies. That is what really concerns me as a journalist.

What do you mean by vilification? I think we have lost our other guest,

this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship! What do you

mean by vilification? I will give you a few examples. 40 years ago, as

you know, you are an old school journalist, Carl Bernstein at the

Washington Post treaded new ground of investigative journalism. Just to

show how far we have fallen, this last week, Carl Bernstein's son, now

a reporter at the New York Times, was busted for calling Melania Trump

a hooker. He owned up to it and apologised. I'm going to insist you

tell me how Donald Trump was vilified, he wasn't busted, he came

forward after an anonymous journalist was identified and, in

something that people may say was dramatic of honest media, said that

me and I apologise profusely. Could you give me some examples of Donald

Trump being vilified? That example is the Trump family being vilified

through the wife. That was a private conversation that wasn't reported.

I'm interested in how journalism has vilified the President. You know as

well as I do that we have a sacred duty as journalists not to have

malice and not to have this type of rabid hatred that I see expressed.

In terms of published journalism? The Washington Post a couple of

weeks ago wrote a piece, a future peace, in which they said Donald

Trump was an ignoramus. An ignoramus? OK. This is not the kind

of language we expect from the media. What we have today, a

columnist for the New York Times, putting forward a hashtag of

Flynngazi, trying to conflated with Benghazi, arguing for new hearings.

The media has, unfortunately, with social media, very important, from

Facebook to Twitter, to traditional legacy media, they have engaged and

participated in this thing that I consider an intifada happening in

America. He has complained about reports regarding his executive

order being turned over by two courts, he has complained about

reports that have led his national security are pointy to resign, he is

no doubt poised to complain about reports on why he can get his labour

secretary pick through a Congress who controls. Being called an

ignoramus is unpleasant, it pales into insignificance when you about

what he levelled at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Ignoramus is just

name-calling, where is the dishonesty? What I find interesting

even in your response, everything high present as substandard

behaviour by the media, you discount as a irrelevance. But it is not

published vilification. What it reflects is a bias that is turning a

lot of people off. You can deflect from it at every turn, every example

I present, but what I am telling you is that there is a constituency in

America that is very turned off to it and they are going to go into

hiding, like they did with the election. But they will come back

for the votes in 2018, 20 20. It would prove gait behoove is to

ignore those that are turned off by the buyers. -- the bias.

We leave you with news that Harrison Ford is facing

the possibility of losing his pilot's license after almost

landing his single engine plane on top of a Boeing 737 at John Wayne

And it's now come to light that this isn't his first offence.

Hello. Most places becoming dry for the rest of the