It’s Friday the 13th and not a good day for Donald Trump, who after throwing a grenade into the NATO summit and making a spectacle of himself undermining Theresa May In the UK, has had his dreamy eyed contemplation of meeting with Vladimir Putin after the weekend dimmed by none other than Chuck Schumer, who insists that in the light of the indictments of Russian intelligence agents today, that the meeting be cancelled. ABC News:
“These indictments are further proof of what everyone but the president seems to understand: President Putin is an adversary who interfered in our elections to help President Trump win,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement Friday.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that if Trump is to proceed with the meeting, he’s afraid he’d be taken advantage of by Putin.
“In going forward, there should be no one-on-one meeting between this president and Mr. Putin,” Warner told reporters at the Capitol Friday. “There needs to be other Americans in the room.”
“Secondly, the president and his team are not willing to make the facts of this indictment a top priority of the meeting in Helsinki. Then, the summit should be canceled,” he said.
Trump is not just taking incoming fire from the Democrats, McCain and Sasse have made their views known and they’re making complete sense.
But Arizona Sen. John McCain – a frequent critic of both Trump and Putin – said in a statement Friday: “If President Trump is not prepared to hold Putin accountable, the summit in Helsinki should not move forward.”
Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, another frequent Trump critic, took a veiled shot at the president for his forgiving attitude towards the Russian dictator.
“The U.S. intelligence community knows that the Russian government attacked the U.S. This is not a Republican or a Democrat view – it is simply the reality. All patriotic Americans should understand that Putin is not America’s friend, and he is not the President’s buddy. We should stand united against Putin’s past and planned future attacks against us,” Sasse said in a statement.
And John Kennedy, back from spending the 4th of July in Moscow, is talking tough as well.
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, a member of the delegation, told CNN Monday that he exchanged tough words with Russian officials and told them to “stop screwing with our election.”
Kennedy said he warned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Congress will “double down on sanctions…if you screw with the elections this fall.”
But Elizabeth Warren is making the most sense of all.
DOJ's criminal charges provide hard evidence that Russian intel agents attacked America to boost their favorite candidates, undermine others, and influence our elections. @realDonaldTrump, cancel your ridiculous Putin summit and get your butt on a plane back to the United States.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 13, 2018
Or alternatively, stay in Russia and we’ll accept your resignation from there and forward your mail to the Kremlin.
So, to Pokey-hauntus makes the rules now and tells the President what to do? Highly amusingn