When President Trump sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies, “we hit bottom”, CNN’s Chris Cuomo said Monday night, but there’s actually a “blessing in that, because there can be no more debate on which way is up”.
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As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I am deeply troubled by President Trump’s defense of Putin against the intelligence agencies of the USA and his suggestion of moral equivalence between the US and Russian Federation.
President Donald Trump’s apparent denial Monday of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential elections drew sharp criticism from leaders.
Despite the 12 reason indictments, Trump deflected admissions of the Kremlin’s involvement in the 2016 election, saying “I don’t see any reason” to believe Russian Federation was connected to hacking of the DNC server.
American politicians on both sides of the aisle, as well as former US intelligence officials and diplomats, began sharply criticizing Trump’s remarks, even before the president had boarded Air Force One for the flight back home. The Kremlin, he said, would allow Mueller’s team to visit Moscow and to question suspects.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., last week suggested Putin might have damaging information about the US businessman-turned-president. ‘I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be’.
He even preempted Trump’s meeting with Putin by releasing a statement on Friday calling Trump “a strong leader who realizes that America’s national security interest must come first and foremost”.
Russia’s foreign ministry responded to that by re-tweeting it with the comment “We agree”.
Husseini, an op-ed writer, carried a sign that read “Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty”, an apparent reference to the 1963 treaty signed between former President John F. Kennedy and the former Soviet Union.
U.S. Sen. John McCain slammed Trump following the press conference. In an interview with Bill O’Reilly early past year, Trump shrugged off O’Reilly’s description of Putin as “a killer”.
The summit began just hours after Mr Trump blamed the United States – and not Russian election meddling or its annexation of Crimea – for a low-point in US-Russia relations. Trump was an advocate for the U.S. World Cup bid.
Senator Lindsey Graham strongly criticised Mr Trump for failing to deliver a strong warning to Russian Federation. “He’s got that kind of slouch”, Obama said of Putin, “looking like the bored kid at the back of the classroom”.
A statement by Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) had a similar sentiment: “President Trump’s meeting today with Vladimir Putin of Russian Federation was an appalling display of self-serving posturing by both men”. But key Republicans, Democrats, and others in Washington appeared stunned that Trump refused to publicly condemn Russian interference in the 2016 election, or warn against future meddling during the joint press conference with Putin in Finland.
“I am asking Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan. make sure these four things are done”, he said.
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“It’s hard to imagine greater nonsense”, Putin told a news conference alongside the United States president after several hours of talks during the two leaders’ first summit. Neither did an earlier meeting between Putin and Trump, or the release of emails confirming that Trump’s eldest son met with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, or former Trump adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his contacts with Russian officials.
