Some highlights from the transcript...

On the rhetoric comparing 2016 meddling with Pearl Harbor and 9/11:

GLENN GREENWALD: So, I mean, I think this kind of rhetoric is so unbelievably unhinged, the idea that the phishing links sent to John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee are the greatest threat to American democracy in decades. People are now talking about it as though it’s on par with 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, that the lights are blinking red, in terms of the threat level. This is lunacy, this kind of talk. I spent years reading through the most top-secret documents of the NSA, and I can tell you that not only do they send phishing links to Russian agencies of every type continuously on a daily basis, but do far more aggressive interference in the cybersecurity of every single country than Russia is accused of having done during the 2016 election. To characterize this as some kind of grave existential threat to American democracy is exactly the kind of rhetoric that we heard throughout the Bush-Cheney administration about what al-Qaeda was like.

On Trump being a Russian puppet:

GLENN GREENWALD: No, I mean, I’ll believe that when I see evidence for it. So let me just make two points. Number one is, if you look at President Obama versus President Trump, there’s no question that President Obama was more cooperative with and collaborative with Russia and the Russian agenda than President Trump. President Trump has sent lethal arms to Ukraine—a crucial issue for Putin—which President Obama refused to do. President Trump has bombed the Assad forces in Syria, a client state of Putin, something that Obama refused to do because he didn’t want to provoke Putin. Trump has expelled more Russian diplomats and sanctioned more Russian oligarchs than [Obama] has. Trump undid the Iran deal, which Russia favored, while Obama worked with Russia in order to do the Iran deal. So this idea that Trump is some kind of a puppet of Putin, that he controls him with blackmail, is the kind of stuff that you believe if you read too many Tom Clancy novels, but isn’t borne out by the facts.

On meeting with Putin and failing to criticize him being a special endorsement of him:

The other issue that I want to make is that, you know, again, this idea that somehow that you are endorsing the repression of other countries’ leaders if you meet with them—it is true that Trump has never criticized Putin, although he has taken all the steps I just outlined against Putin. But he’s also never criticized Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s also never criticized the incredibly repressive leaders of Saudi Arabia. He’s never criticized the fascist president of the Philippines. It is true President Trump likes fascist and authoritarian leaders, and that is a problem, but it’s not like Putin is the only leader that he doesn’t criticize.

On criticizing the sacred international orgs:

But what he has been consistent about for a long time—and this is something that Joe himself recently said, that I agree with completely—is that a lot of these international institutions that are supposed to be off limits from criticism, like free trade organizations, the World Trade Organization, NATO, the EU, have devastated the working-class populations of multiple countries. And if we want to understand why we have a Donald Trump and why we have a resurgent “alt-right” throughout Europe and why we have Brexit, we need to start asking questions about whether or not these institutions, that have been so sacred for so long, are actually ones that are serving the interest of our country. And until we figure out how to solve the root causes that have given rise to Trumpism and to fascist extremism in Europe and in the country I live in, Brazil, which is that these institutions are destroying the economic future of tens of millions and hundreds of millions of people in order to benefit the rich, we’re just going to have more Trumps, no matter how much we kick our feet and call him names. And that, I think is the issue that is most being ignored by all of this rhetoric.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4029239&forum_id=2#36451835)

Note the differences between this and CNN

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4029239&forum_id=2#36451868)

GLENN GREENWALD: It’s continued. I mean, even now, we continue to add former Soviet states, very close or close to the Russian border, including Macedonia, into NATO. And if you look at a map of NATO states—I mean, just imagine if you were an American living in the United States, and everywhere you look you saw Warsaw Pact countries, including on your own borders, in Canada and Mexico. Of course you would feel threatened and besieged, much the way that Iran feels besieged by U.S. bases all surrounding it. Now, that isn’t to justify anything that Russia’s doing, but it does, I think—I do think it’s important to sometimes look at our own behavior and ask, “What is it that we’re doing to contribute to some of these tensions? And what is it that we can do to reduce them?”

I also think that that last point that Joe made is actually an important one, and it does put people like me into a difficult position, which is, you know, on the one hand, of course I don’t think that Donald Trump is well intentioned and is going to have the diplomatic skill to negotiate complicated new agreements of trade and of arms control with very sophisticated regimes like the one in North Korea, or at least complicated regimes in North Korea, or in Russia. On the other hand, as we’ve been discussing, unfortunately, he’s the only game in town. There is nobody else who’s saying that we ought to question NATO. Democrats, when you say we ought to question NATO, act like you’ve committed blasphemy. There is nobody else talking about tariffs and the unfairness of free trade agreements, except for a couple of fringe people within the Democratic Party. Just like this week, when he said that the European Union was a foe, what he said was something that for a long time on the left was really kind of just uncontroversial orthodoxy, which is that of course the European Union is an economic competitor of the U.S., and a lot of what their trade practices are do harm the American worker. We put up barriers against Chinese products entering the U.S., and yet the EU buys them and then sells them into the U.S., indirectly helping China circumvent those barriers in a way that directly harms U.S. workers. This is something that people like Robert Reich and Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders have been talking about for a long time. So it does make it very difficult when the only person who’s raising these kinds of issues and talking about these things—we need to get along better with Russia and China, we need to reform these old, archaic, destructive institutions—is a megalomaniac, somebody who’s completely devoid of any positive human virtue, which is Donald Trump. So it puts you in the position of kind of trying to agree with him, while knowing that he’s really not going to be able to do anything about those in a positive way.

On the other hand, I don’t feel comfortable being aligned with people like Bill Kristol and David Frum and all of those Bush-era hawks who are now the best friends of MSNBC and the Democratic Party, either, because they’re not well intentioned, either. And so, what I try and do is use Donald Trump and the kind of shifting alliances, that we started off by talking about, to open up a lot of the debates, that will remain closed if you only look at U.S. politics through the prism of the 2016 election and Republicans versus Democrats. And I think the most important point is the one that, as I said, Joe made just this week, which is that until the Democratic Party figures out—and this is true not just of Democrats but of center-left parties all throughout Europe and here in Brazil—until they figure out how again to reconnect, not with the highly educated class and the rich and the metropolitan enclaves, but with the working class of these countries, that feel trampled on and ignored, and for that reason are turning to demagogues, we’re going to have more Donald Trumps and worse Donald Trumps, not just in the United States, but throughout the world. And that is, for me, the greatest problem that we face politically.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4029239&forum_id=2#36451982)