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Republicans block $250 million to beef up election security

National Intelligence Director Dan Coats says he wishes President Donald Trump had made different statements in Helsinki, where he appeared to give credence to Russia's denial of interference in the 2016 U.S. election. (July 19) AP

Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16, 2018.(Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

WASHINGTON Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic push Wednesday that would have provided $250 million to beef up election security.

The money would have been doled out in grants through the Federal Election Assistance Commission and helped, among other things, replace outdated voting equipment and increase cybersecurity efforts.

But the amendment failed Wednesday on a 50-49 vote,10 votes shy of the 60 needed for it to pass. The votes fell almost entirely on party lines as only one Republican Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.) voted for the grant.

"The integrity of our elections, which are the foundation of our democracy, should not be a partisan issue," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who proposed the amendment, said in a statement. "It is unfortunate that the Senate has followed the same path as House Republicansin blocking the funding our states need to help upgradetheir infrastructure and secure our elections."

Last month House Republicans similarly blocked an effort for $380 million to bolster election security efforts.

Congress had allocated $380 million in election security grants in March after intelligence assessments detailed a coordinated and continued effort by Russia to interfere in U.S. elections.

The blocked $250 million would have covered the fiscal year 2019, which starts Oct. 1, just ahead of the midterm elections.

Republicans have argued it is too soon to allocate new money for the following year and want to see how states use the $380 million already set aside for election security efforts.

More: 12 Russian intelligence officers indicted for hacking into DNC, Clinton campaign

More: Obama cybersecurity czar: Russian hackers likely scanned election systems in all 50 states

In 2016, Russian hackerstried to breach election systemsin at least 21 states but likely scanned systems in all 50 states, according tohomeland security officials. Although no actual votes were changed, hackersbroke into Illinois' voter registration database and stole some information.

Russia also mounted a major effort in 2016 to influence the U.S. election through the use of social media on Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Russian troll farms created fake social media accounts and websites to try to sow dissent among Americans on divisive issues such as race, gay rights, gun control, and religion.

Last month, 12 Russian military intelligence officers were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in a far-reaching hacking scheme that targeted the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaign as part of the Kremlin's effort to undermine the 2016 election.

Contributing: Erin Kelly and Kevin Johnson of USA TODAY; Associated Press

The indictments were announced Friday by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as part of the ongoing special counsel probe into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. (July 13) AP

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Republicans block $250 million to beef up election security

Republicans, Democrats look to use Kavanaugh nomination as …

The campaign is underway.

Not the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. No mentions of Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., or former Vice President Joe Biden.

Its the campaign for the Supreme Court.

Democrats and Republicans will burn tens of millions of dollars in a campaign to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh or torpedo his nomination. Everyone will try to force the hands of swing votes like Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind.

The Kavanaugh nomination is about the midterm elections as much as it is about the balance of power on the Supreme Court.

Republicans have used judicial nominations to gin up their base for years. Theyll certainly attempt to excite Republican voters this fall with Kavanaugh. Many observers see the confirmation as Kavanaugh as a possible path to overturning Roe v. Wade or ruling against the labor movement.

Democrats can play at this game, too.

Democrats have never deployed the issue of judges in quite the same fashion as Republicans. But Democrats have the chance to do so this year. Kavanaughs nomination provides Democrats with a foil even if the Senate confirms the nominee just weeks before the midterms. Naturally Democrats would prefer to derail Kavanaughs nomination. But if Democrats play their cards right, they may be able to invigorate their base especially suburban women and capitalize on Kavanaughs confirmation.

Why havent Democrats exploited the federal judiciary for political gain the way Republicans have?

We are not as Machiavellian as they are, said House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Linda Sanchez, D-Calif.

But Sanchez says Kavanaughs nomination presents the party with an opening.

Giving Democrats the majority despite Kavanaugh gives Democrats the opportunity to fix some (court) overreaches, said Sanchez.

The Kavanaugh nomination may appear like bad news for Democrats. But if Democrats are crafty enough, they could swivel Kavanaughs confirmation into a midterm battle cry.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution requires the Senate to confirm Supreme Court nominees, via Advice and Consent. But the process leading up to that confirmation vote evolved over the years.

Senators never even met with nominees until 1925. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone was the first nominee to appear in person to field questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of his confirmation to the High Court. Senators raised concerns about Stones ties to Wall Street. The process of a modern confirmation hearing began with the nomination of Justice John Harlan Marshall II in 1955. The advent of television ushered in a different model for a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. It culminated in 1991 with dramatic, wall-to-wall, televised hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment when they worked together at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The confirmation process has turned into a political campaign for office, said Ron Bonjean, former communications director for former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. You have judges that have brilliant legal minds. But they are literally running for office for the first time. Having a sherpa or a campaign manager help them through the process is extremely useful.

As a result, the nominee, or candidate, as the case may be, spends weeks touring the Senate for conclaves with nearly all 100 senators. Heres where the sherpa comes in. Capitol Hill may only stand 88 feet above sea level. But trekking to the highest court in the land necessitates a political alpinist, lest the nominee plunge into a Senate crevasse.

You can call it a guide. Or sensei. Or teacher. Or whatever. But the sherpa is usually the guide. It is somebody you are looking to as you go through a process, said Bonjean. When you have a sherpa, it is not for the rest of your life. It is usually because you are on a trip and you need help getting from point A to point B.

Bonjean worked with former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., as she served as sherpa to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch during his confirmation process last year. Bonjean was also once a top aide to former Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. The Trump Administration tapped Kyl to escort Kavanaugh to his Senate appointments this year.

I would want (Kyl) in my foxhole any day of the week as a legislative sherpa, walking around Brett Kavanaugh, said Bonjean.

Some lament alterations to the contemporary confirmation process. Meeting the nominee used to be rare. Now its not. Hearings didnt happen. Now theyre a marquee event. The same with TV. And as part of that evolution, the campaign for the Supreme Court is here to stay.

Is that a problem?

Theres been talk in Major League Baseball of late about shifts. Thats where the team in the field adjusts to the trends of the batter, repositioning defenders accordingly. For a left-handed pull hitter, the third baseman stands close to second base, the shortstop is where the second baseman usually plays and the second baseman patrols short right field. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is considering proposals to police defensive shifts, regulating their use and restricting where players may stand.

The solution for hitters? Adjust. Choke up on the bat. Cue a flair into left field. Drop a bunt down the abandoned third base line. Granted, tweaking the way you hit is easier said than done. But there are always options.

If senators and the public dont like how Supreme Court nominees now must run a campaign, consider ways to overcome the shift on Capitol Hill.

Lisa Murkowski is one of the most-watched senators in this campaign. A defection by Murkowski or fellow Republican Susan Collins could upend the nomination. The Senate functions with a narrow 50-49 GOP edge these days. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., remains out, suffering from brain cancer.

Its okay to take it slow, said Murkowski who opposes an expedited track for Kavanaugh. In fact, the Alaska Republican observed that lawmakers on both sides made snap judgments about Kavanaugh, minutes after President Trump unveiled his nominee.

There is such an immediate reaction, both pro and con, said Murkowski. They seem to be so absolute in their opinion. They believe that he should be absolutely confirmed or absolutely not confirmed.

Every senator is seeking something different in the confirmation process, right down to the nominees judicial philosophy.

Im looking for a cross between Socrates and Dirty Harry, opined Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In 2017, three Democratic senators voted to confirm Gorsuch: Sens. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Joe Donnelly. All three face challenging re-election bids in red states this November. But theres another factor in the Kavanaugh campaign which didnt exist last year. Thats the election of Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala. No other Democratic senator represents a constituency as conservative as the one Jones has in Alabama.

Theres a good chance we pick up a number of Democrats, observed Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., about the Kavanaugh nomination. It would serve Jones well in the state of Alabama to support a conservative judge for the Supreme Court.

When initially asked about his take on Kavanaugh, Jones replied I havent done that deep a dive yet.

Democrats hope to slow down Kavanaughs nomination to parse his voluminous record. Thats an important tactic. The more time to study, the better the chances Democrats find a tripwire for Kavanaugh.

On Thursday, the Trump Administration yanked the nomination of Ryan Bounds for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, moments before his confirmation vote. The nominee lacked the votes after senators unearthed controversial writings from Bounds.

Democrats immediately seized on Bounds writings as an undergraduate at Stanford as a reason Senate Republicans should grant them ample time to review Kavanaughs record.

This shows when you first ask for writings, maybe they dont show you everything, said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., of Bounds. The same rule should apply to Kavanaugh.

But dragging it out could backfire on Democrats. Sure, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., prefers to confirm Kavanaugh when the Supreme Courts new term starts October 1. But McConnell could call the Democrats bluff and schedule the confirmation vote as close to the midterm elections as possible. That would apply maximum pressure on Democrats from battleground states to vote yes.

After all, this nomination isnt just about the Supreme Court. Its a campaign for the midterms.

Capitol Attitude is a weekly column written by members of the Fox News Capitol Hill team. Their articles take you inside the halls of Congress, and cover the spectrum of policy issues being introduced, debated and voted on there.

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Republicans Have an Alger Hiss Problem Named Mariia …

Alleged Russian spy Mariia Butina was arrested just a few days short of the 70th anniversary of the last major accusation of Russian infiltration in Americas political system: when on Aug. 3, 1948, Time editor and ex-communist Whittaker Chambers publicly accused former high-ranking State Department official Alger Hiss of being a Soviet agent.

Rattled Democrats, including President Harry Truman, handled the fallout poorly, hesitating to distance themselves from Hiss and unwittingly feeding a conservative narrative that they were soft on communism.

Story Continued Below

Republicans are now having their own Alger Hiss moment. Butinas alleged efforts to ingratiate herself with conservative movement organizations and the Republican Party shows that Russias interest in Trump is not an operation focused on one man. As explained in the Justice Department affidavit, in October 2016 Butina reported to her Russian mentor that Republicans are for us and Democrats against. This is not just about one seductive spy, or even one president; its about how intertwined Russia and the Republican Party are becoming, and whether the Republican Party is willing and able to disentangle itself.

Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950, for falsely denying in his 1948 congressional testimony that he gave Chambers confidential State Department documents to be delivered to the Soviets. He served 44 months in prison, then spent the next 42 years maintaining his innocence, ever after intercepts declassified just before his death strongly indicated Hiss was a Soviet agent for years.

Shortly before his fall, Hiss had risen high enough in the State Department to serve as the acting secretary-general of the United Nations, during the 1945 San Francisco conference that finalized the international organizations charter. When rumors of his Soviet ties prompted his resignation at the end of 1946, his reputation remained strong enough for a Republican, John Foster Dulles, to engineer a smooth transition into the presidency of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His guilt, while hotly debated for decades, left a lingering stain on the Democratic Party and on liberalism, making it difficult for the party to win the public trust on matters both foreign and domestic. If Republicans handle their Alger Hiss moment as awkwardly as Democrats did, they face a similar fate.

Why was Hiss such a touchstone for the Cold War era? Because for much of the left, he was an honorable man who served 14 years in three government departments during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, only to be smeared in a wave of anti-communist hysteria. For the right, he was proof that communists were crawling throughout our government and that liberal Democrats should be suspected of harboring secret, anti-American agendas. As Chambers wrote in Witness, when he fingered Hiss and aimed at Communism, he also struck out at the forces of that great socialist revolution, which in the name of liberalism has been inching its ice cap over the nation for two decades. Once Hiss served time even though he was never convicted of espionage the right had the upper hand in the argument.

The case marked the beginning of the post-World War II ideological fault lines that would shape American politics during the Cold War. The dueling testimonies of Chambers and Hiss to the House Un-American Activities Committee riveted the nation. The relentless pursuit of Hiss made a young congressman from California Richard Nixon a rock star in his party before there were rock stars. Days after Hisss conviction in 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy infamously took the anti-communist crusade to the next level, waving a long list of names he dubiously claimed were Communist Party members working in the State Department.

The Truman administration was blindsided, though it shouldnt have been. The FBI had been investigating Hiss in 1945 and 1946, and then-Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes and Under Secretary Dean Acheson were fully aware (though Truman may have not been). That scrutiny led to Hisss quiet resignation. And yet, Truman condemned the 1948 hearings as a red herring that was serving no useful purpose and slandering a lot of people that don't deserve it. After the conviction, Acheson, now secretary of state, remained loyal to his longtime friend. Whatever the outcome of any appeal I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss, said Acheson, citing the Gospel of Matthew for good measure (I was in prison and ye came unto me.) All Truman would offer was a less dramatic no comment.

Their posture was politically devastating, especially since the Hiss case overlapped with the communist takeover of China. Truman and Acheson lost China, conservative Republicans thundered. One Republican senator even speculated that Hiss had shaped the State Departments China policy.

The 1952 Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson, suffered as well. In 1949 he had given a deposition for the perjury trial in which he said Hiss had a good reputation and that he hadnt heard any speculation of communist sympathies. The Republican vice-presidential nominee, the newly famous Nixon, hammered Stevenson for bad judgment. The man at the top of the ticket, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, campaigned with McCarthy and charged that communism had poisoned two whole decades of our national life. Stevenson won just nine states.

The cruel irony was that Truman and Acheson were no softies when it came to communism. They were the architects of the anti-communist, quasi-militaristic containment strategy after World War II, a policy both credited for ultimately winning the Cold War and maligned for goading the U.S. into the messy Korean and Vietnam wars hardly evidence of communist control of the State Department.

The Truman administration received little contemporaneous credit for containment at the time, thanks to the triumph of Mao in China and the unpopularity of the inconclusive Korean War. Theres not much Truman and Acheson could have done about those events (short of staying out of Korea and allowing it to follow Chinas lead) but they could have taken the Hiss scandal far more seriously.

Acheson was blinded by friendship. Truman genuinely believed there was little to it, not just Hiss but the whole, in his words, communist bugaboo. A year and a half before the Hiss revelations, Truman had already been pressured to install a loyalty program for federal employees, which vetted three million people through 1951. Several thousand resigned, but no one was indicted for spying.

That wasnt good enough in the wake of the Hiss conviction. In retrospect, Truman and Acheson would have had far more credibility and perhaps could have even blunted McCarthys witch hunt if they had expressed their own outrage after the Chambers allegations and renewed their vows to eradicate any communist traces in government.

Fast forward to today. We have evidence of a Russian spy infiltrating the conservative movement and the Republican Party in order to influence U.S. politics and foreign policy. We have copious evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election to help elect a Republican president, who has proceeded to frequently parrot the Putin line.

Surely, our conservative elder statesmen, who for years crowed about Hiss, wouldnt repeat the same mistakes as Trumans Democrats. Right?

If anyone should have learned political lessons from the Alger Hiss affair, it should have been the fervently anti-Russia yet pro-Trump conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt. One of his radio show trademarks is asking first-time liberal guests whether they believe Hiss was a communist and a spy. If guests say no or dodge the question, unable to allow Hisss culpability to complicate the liberal narrative of a 1950s sullied by McCarthyism, Hewitt shreds their credibility.

Hewitt, like most Republican officeholders and conservative media figures, expressed disappointment at Trumps performance in Helsinki, but treated the president as if he had goofed rather than actively pursued a strategy of closer ties with Putin. Every presidency has a worst day. I hope and pray yesterday was that, Hewitt tweeted. On air, he lamented that Trump got played and conceded, I thought he could handle Putin, and I was wrong.

Hewitt notably drew a connection between the Hiss and Butina cases, posting on Twitter that Butina is not a one-off. But hes not dwelling on it. He offered no scolding of Butinas conservative abettors. And he proceeded to criticize the latest indictments issued by the special counsel of 12 Russian officers for being issued just before Trump traveled to Helsinki, echoing his on-air guest Alan Dershowitzs opinion that the Justice Department is inappropriately interfering with foreign policy. If one were genuinely horrified by Trumps foreign policy agenda, interference with it would not be ones top concern. (Its also worth noting that, according to Bloomberg, the DOJ gave Trump the option of having the indictments made public after the summit, and he chose to do so beforehand.)

Other prominent Republicans also stopped well short of determined outrage in the face of increased Russian infiltration and influence. The typical Republican reaction on Capitol Hill was to welcome Trumps grudging, not-so-credible walkback from a few of his Helsinki comments. On the Butina case, we mostly hear silence from conservatives including from Butinas main mark, the NRA though Fox News host Tucker Carlson spent three minutes with the Washington Examiners Byron York downplaying the charges. And some fringe right-wing voices are even thanking Russians for their participation in American politics; they saved us from Hillary Clinton after all. (One exception on the Right: Daily Beast columnist and my The DMZ podcast co-host Matt Lewis, who explored why conservatives have become vulnerable to being duped.)

Even among Putin critics, flirtations with Russia dont enrage conservatives today the way they did 70 years ago because we are not presently in a titanic struggle between communism and capitalism that seems to threaten the American way of life. Of course, at the time when Hiss and a handful of others lower in the Roosevelt administration were part of the communist underground in the 1930s, the Cold War had not yet begun, and during World War II, America and the Soviet Union were allies of convenience.

Chambers biographer, Sam Tanenhaus, suggested Hiss and others functioned less as moles than as ideological freelancers trimming the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union These were not dual loyalties; they were negotiable loyalties. Another prominent New Dealer fingered by Chambers as a Soviet informant, Assistant Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White, was described by historian Stephen Schlesinger as someone who wanted to help the Russians but did not regard the actions he took as constituting espionage. However, their actions looked much different when they came to light after World War II ended and the Iron Curtain came down.

Conservatives who have reveled in the history of Alger Hiss should be acutely aware of the risks inherent to guilt-by-Russian-association, and should be doing everything in their power to fully sever those associations. Granted, this is easier said than done. The contemporary figure who most closely parallels Hiss is not Butina, but Trump. Butina is a Russian who can easily be cast aside. But polling still suggests that rank-and-file Republicans are unfazed by Trumps ties to Russia the vast majority of Republicans approved of Trumps performance in Helsinki. For a Republican officeholder to vociferously attack Trump as a Putin ally is to risk losing office in a Republican primary.

But conservatives have long lionized Chambers for being a brave truth-teller. They may wish to re-read his memoir, which begins with his pessimistic belief that by leaving the Communist Party, he was leaving the winning world for the losing world. Still, it was better to die, if necessary, rather than to live under Communism.

Soviet communism is dead. But Putinism lives, and is all too often echoed by Trump and his loyalists. Republicans have a choice to make: Repeat the mistakes made by Alger Hiss defenders out of short-term political expediency, or live up to the honorable example set by Whittaker Chambers, even if it means taking the chance of joining the losing world.

Bill Scher is a contributing editor to Politico Magazine, and co-host of the Bloggingheads.tv show The DMZ.

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Republicans Have an Alger Hiss Problem Named Mariia ...

Republicans Act on Russia – redstate.com

Two days ago, I published Here Are Actions Republicans in Congress Could Take Rather Than Tweeting, offering suggestions such as resolutions supporting the findings of the American intelligence community; stripping the executive branch of power that belongs to the legislative branch; and censure, among others. Yesterday, there were several actions taken by Republicans in Congress suggesting they may be unwilling to accept Trumps missteps regarding Russia:

S.Res. 584

The Senate presented a unified front and unanimously voted 98-0 (Arizona Senator John McCain and Alabama Senator Richard Shelby were absent) in favor of a resolution opposing Putins proposal to allow the Russian government to interrogate certain Americans. S.Res. 584 was introduced by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and states:

It is the sense of Congress that the United States should refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official, or member of the Armed Forces of the United States for questioning by the government of Vladimir Putin.

Michael McFaul,former U.S. ambassador to Russia,was one of the individualsspecifically mentioned by Putin as a target for interrogation. He expressed his gratitude to the Senate for rallying behind him and other Americans.

DETER Act

A bill introduced by Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in January gained momentum yesterday when eight senators joined the bill as co-sponsors. The eight senators were evenly split across the parties, with four Republicans Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ben Sasse (R-NE), and Charles Grassley (R-IA) and four Democrats Senators Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Chris Coons (D-DE), Maria Cantwell (D-WA).

The bill would require the Director of National Intelligence to timely determine if any foreign governments attempt to interfere in American federal elections. It includes a list of actions that constitute interference and would trigger penalties including sanctions, the blacklisting of any individuals identified as participating, and partnering with allies to strengthen the punishment.

According to Sen. Rubios press release yesterday:

The legislation sends a powerful message to Russia and any other foreign actor seeking to disrupt our elections: if you attack American candidates, campaigns, or voting infrastructure, you will face severe consequences. The DETER Act uses the threat of powerful sanctions to dissuade hostile foreign powers from meddling in our elections by ensuring that they know well in advance that the costs will outweigh the benefits.

Will Hurds NYT Op-Ed

Former C.I.A. officer and current U.S. Representative Will Hurd (R-TX) published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he observes Trump is being manipulated by Putin and offers recommendations on how to protect the United States.

Rep. Hurd notes Russia is a danger to freedom-loving people everywhere and has been for decades:

Russia is an adversary not just of the United States but of freedom-loving people everywhere. Disinformation and chaos is a Russian art form developed during the Soviet era that Russia has now updated using modern tools. The result has been Russian disinformation spreading like a virus throughout the Western world.

Last week, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats announcedthe warning lights are blinking red when it comes to Russian cyberattacks. Rep. Hurd, who sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, echoed Director Coats concern and warned the threat of Russian meddling in United States elections is not behind us.

His op-ed includes ways for Congress to take the lead on European security issues and emphasizes Congress oversight responsibilities.

Rep. Hurd also warns how lack of action will impact the United States which will therefore affect the world: Without action, we risk losing further credibility in international negotiations with both our friends and foes on critical trade deals, military alliances and nuclear arms.

Summary

These actions may not be perfect; acts of Congress almost never are. Indeed, it is necessary to ensure any actions by our government are constitutional, dont violate the rights of Americans, and dont impede liberty of citizens at home in the name of security. We must also make certain that were considering unintended consequences or future abuses of power.

However, as the majority party in Congress, its reassuring to see Republicans taking steps to protect America from attack. Republicans have for a long time claimed the mantle as the party of national security and foreign policy, and it would be a shame and a danger to our country and to the world to see them cede that ground.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent those of any other individual or entity. Follow Sarah on Twitter:@sarahmquinlan.

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Republicans Act on Russia - redstate.com

Republicans Rebuke Trump for Siding With Putin as …

But these were not the errant tweets of a novice politician, he continued. These were the deliberate choices of a president who seems determined to realize his delusions of a warm relationship with Putins regime without any regard for the true nature of his rule, his violent disregard for the sovereignty of his neighbors, his complicity in the slaughter of the Syrian people, his violation of international treaties and his assault on democratic institutions throughout the world.

Mr. McCains fellow Republican senator from Arizona, Jeff Flake, released his own rebuke: I never thought I would see the day when our American President would stand on the stage with the Russian President and place blame on the United States for Russian aggression. This is shameful.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican Alaska, struck a mournful tone: Sadly President Trump did not defend America to the Russian president, and for the world to see. Instead, what I saw today was not America First, it was simply a sad diminishment of our great nation.

Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska and a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, echoed the sentiment. Everyone in this body should be disgusted by what happened in Helsinki today, he said Monday in a speech on the Senate floor.

Even for congressional Republicans used to avoiding commenting on the presidents outbursts, Mr. Trumps performance in Helsinki was difficult to ignore. For those who are accustomed to speaking out against Mr. Trump, and those whose impending retirements have freed them to do so, it was yet another occasion for public hand-wringing.

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the retiring chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that he did not think this was a good moment for our country.

It was, he added, a very good moment for Mr. Putin.

It was almost an approval, if you will, a public approval by the greatest nation on earth towards him, Mr. Corker told reporters. I would guess hes having caviar right now.

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