Thread: McConnell rebukes Trump's judge attack

McConnell rebukes Trump's judge attack

The Senate Republican leader also distanced himself from the president on Russia, voter fraud and the travel ban.

By Isaac Arnsdorf
02/05/17 09:57 AM EST

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday distanced himself from President Donald Trump's positions on Russia, voter fraud and the travel ban, while criticizing the president for attacking a federal judge.

"It is best not to single out judges," McConnell told Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union. "We all get disappointed from time to time. I think it is best to avoid criticizing them individually."

McConnell was asked about Trump's tweet on Saturday calling the George W. Bush-appointed judge who temporarily halted his travel ban a "so-called judge."

The Kentucky Republican said he wouldn't consider legislation to implement the travel ban, instead leaving it to courts to determine the legality of Trump's executive order.

"The courts will decide whether or not the executive order of the president that is issued is valid or not," he said. "I think proper vetting is important, but there is a fine line here between proper vetting and interfering with the kind of travel or suggesting a religious test."

McConnell declined to directly comment on Trump's statement in an interview with Bill O'Reilly comparing Vladimir Putin's killings with some past American actions. ("We've got a lot of killers," the president said. "What do you think? Our country's so innocent?") But McConnell made clear he does not share the president's view of Putin.

"He is a former KGB agent, a thug, not elected in a way that most people consider a credible election," McConnell said of the Russian leader. "No, I don't think there is any equivalency with the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does."

McConnell, while saying that voter fraud does exist, also impugned Trump's false assertion that 3 million people voted illegally in the 2016 election and opposed Trump's call for a federal investigation into voter fraud.

"There is no evidence it occurred in such a significant number that would have changed the presidential election," McConnell said. "And I don't think we ought to spend any federal money investigating that. I think the states can take a look at this issue."

On Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, McConnell also sidestepped Trump's suggestion that the Senate should eliminate the filibuster if needed to overcome Democratic opposition.

"If we have to get 60 votes, I'm confident that we will," McConnell said.

CNN rejected the White House's offer to interview adviser Kellyanne Conway.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...-attack-234660

McConnell declined to directly comment on Trump's statement in an interview with Bill O'Reilly comparing Vladimir Putin's killings with some past American actions. ("We've got a lot of killers," the president said. "What do you think? Our country's so innocent?") But McConnell made clear he does not share the president's view of Putin.

LIARS!! That is not what he said in the interview, Politico. He said "there are a lot of killers." He didn't say "we've got a lot of killers".

Even CNN got that right, and I watched the actual clip advertising the interview on Fox, but here's the actual quote from CNN which is correct.

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump appeared to equate US actions with the authoritarian regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview released Saturday, saying, "There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?"
Trump made the remark during an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, saying he respected his Russian counterpart.
"But he's a killer," O'Reilly said to Trump.

"There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?" Trump replied.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/04/politi...ladimir-putin/

"He is a former KGB agent, a thug, not elected in a way that most people consider a credible election," McConnell said of the Russian leader. "No, I don't think there is any equivalency with the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does."

That was a long time ago when Putin was part of the KGB, McConnell. He was an agent, that was his job, no different than members of our CIA. GWH Bush was Director of the CIA. Did that make him or any of our intelligence officers "thugs"? When they kill in the course of their job, does that make them "killers"?

Trump is right, "there are a lot of killers". And we're not so innocent.

And no one has "killed more" or ordered more deaths than agents of the Democratic Party, so just stop with not supporting or trying to counter Trump. He says and does these things for very specific reasons, and when you put him down or don't support him, it just makes you look stupid when the reason he says and does something becomes apparent and he's proved right, every single time.

McConnell, your job is to support and encourage a new improved relationship with Russia, the same as with any and all countries. Russia has never done anything to harm the United States. They've always been our friend if not secret friend during the past 50 years. It's time to bring the true relationship between the US and Russia to the surface for their benefit and ours, because that will lead to greater peace on earth, in my opinion. There is much to gain for both countries to turn Russia into a true and open ally.

Get rid of traitor mcConnell - audacious to utter such words - he obviously does not know his place nor job duties. Who cares what you think turkey neck. Go drink some coal water you can now dump into your streams again- oh it saves jobs - no it is cheaper to dump it into our water supply than dispose of it properly. GET BENT!

Correction! I just listened to the interview again and it sounds like he said both. Part of it was so soft I didn't catch it. But this is how that whole string went:

"there are a lot of killers, we've got a lot of killers, and we're not so innocent."

You can barely hear the "we've got", he says it so soft so you think he's just repeating the "there are".

So Politico didn't lie, they cherry-picked the statements.

Judy wrote (excerpt):

McConnell, your job is to support and encourage a new improved relationship with Russia, the same as with any and all countries. Russia has never done anything to harm the United States. They've always been our friend if not secret friend during the past 50 years. It's time to bring the true relationship between the US and Russia to the surface for their benefit and ours, because that will lead to greater peace on earth, in my opinion. There is much to gain for both countries to turn Russia into a true and open ally.

Vladimir Putin will always be America’s enemy

By Ralph Peters

December 11, 2016 | 7:17pm

Modal Trigger
Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is our enemy. Not because we want him to be, but because resentment and hatred of the United States is central to his being. Russia’s president yearns to do us harm.

He blames us for the Soviet Union’s self-wrought collapse. He blames us for Russian stagnation. He blames us for the derelict lot of his drunken, diseased country. And he wants revenge.

Putin has five strategic goals: He wants international sanctions lifted, Europe divided and NATO destroyed. He seeks to restore the empire of the czars. And he wants to humiliate the United States.
Americans and Europeans are targets of a ruthless, audacious and skillful disinformation campaign portraying Russia as a victim, not an aggressor. Not since the heyday of the Soviet-sponsored Ban-the-Bomb movement in the 1950s has Kremlin propaganda thrived so broadly.

We naively insist the truth will prevail. That’s nonsense. Putin knows that big lies work, if repeated until absorbed. And he’s aided by Western stooges who, for money or malice or moral malfeasance, abet Putin in deluding our populations.

The current pro-Putin narrative holds that Russia’s a martyr to Western aggression, that we’ve abused Russia since the USSR dissolved and that NATO’s eastward expansion equals aggression. Then there are the preposterous claims that Russia’s battling Islamist terrorists on behalf of civilization, even as Russian bombs butcher civilians by the thousands.

We can’t polygraph all the pro-Putin voices (although I’d love to, publicly), so let’s look at the facts of what *Putin has done.

• He interfered with our presidential election via computer hacking, the use of front organizations and fake news (Kremlin-gate may prove our worst political scandal). His military challenges us in the skies and at sea. In Afghanistan, his agents assist the Taliban. In Syria, his jets target Syrian hospitals, clinics and civilians in a literal “Slaughter of the Innocents” at Christmastide.
• He invaded Georgia and Ukraine (the latter twice). He threatens the NATO-member Baltic states and subsidizes Europe’s extremist political parties to radicalize electorates, undercut democracy and realign *nations with Russia.
• At home, he suffocated Russia’s nascent democracy, crushed the free press, jailed and murdered his opposition, cheated foreign investors and turned Russia into a gangster state where the czar is the only law.
• What of his claim of a vast Western conspiracy to harm Russia?

I served in Washington (traveling often to Moscow) as the Soviet Union died of organ failure. Far from attempting to punish the “new” Russia, we and our European allies fell all over ourselves to indulge Moscow’s whims and encourage investment. Our State Department’s infatuation with the “new” Russia was embarrassingly extreme.

Nor did our goodwill end with the Clinton administration’s witless indulgence. President George W. Bush insisted he’d seen into *Putin’s soul and that we could be partners. Putin then embarrassed Bush with glee. Next, President Obama fooled himself into believing he could deal constructively with Putin behind the backs of American voters. He wound up shocked and humiliated.
Putin would be delighted to chump another US president.

Russia’s problems are made in Russia. We’ve tried to help, not harm. But Russians refuse to help themselves, preferring brutality, squalor and hostility to the rule of law and civilization.

As for the upside-down charge that NATO’s eastward expansion signaled aggression against Russia, look at how *Putin has treated non-NATO-member Ukraine and you’ll understand why the newly free states of eastern Europe cling to history’s greatest peacetime alliance.

Putin suggests a Russian right to the Baltics and Ukraine, as well as to hegemony in Eastern Europe. Russia has no such rights. Ukraine has not “always” been part of Russia. It was conquered in the 18th century and, ever since, Moscow has tried to crush Ukrainian identity, from czarist-era bans on the Ukrainian language to Stalin’s horrific man-made famine that killed at least 10 million.
Is it any wonder Ukraine doesn’t want the bear back? Or that Ukrainian (and Baltic) partisans continued to fight the Red Army and its commissars after World War II?

As for the Baltic states, when they gained independence after World War I, they went through an incredible cultural flowering — only to be invaded by the Red Army, the Nazis and the Red Army again. Now they want to live in peace and freedom, as part of the West to which their cultures belong. How is that aggressive? Is little Latvia going to march on Moscow?

The east-European states — above all, Poland — know too well how savage Russian mastery can be. The key event in modern Polish-Russian relations remains the mass murder in the Katyn Forest of 15,000 Polish-officer POWs by Stalin’s secret police. The nightmare of Soviet domination followed. Is Poland wrong to fear Russia?

Should those who suffered under Moscow’s tyranny forget the slaughter of workers in Berlin in 1953? The bloodbath in Hungary in ’56? Soviet tanks rolling into Prague in ’68? Or the millions who disappeared into the Gulag?

Russia’s victims scream warnings from the grave.

In today’s age of cyber-assaults, Russian subversion and Putin’s *naked aggression, fear is back. We must decide what we value, either freedom and decency, or foolhardy efforts to make friends of monsters.

To align ourselves with Putin in 2017 would be the equivalent of *allying with Hitler in 1937.

Ralph Peters was a US Army foreign-area officer for the former Soviet Union and Russia. He is currently Fox News’ strategic analyst.

http://nypost.com/2016/12/11/vladimi...mericas-enemy/

I think Trump will prove all these idiots wrong. The Russians have never been our enemies.

The Russians are from a different area of the world, been thru different experiences too. Yes they are aggressive, yes they are chess players - but you now what you are dealing with. If you look at all the ways hillary, obama, kerry tried to cut everything off, to cripple them - they got ukraine to abandon Russia for the EU, even though owing them $$$$$. They also encouraged every single country dependent on Russian gas to frack for their own after buying all equipment and cancer causing chemicals from us - 80,000lbs per well.

Putin Crushes BBC Smartass INCLUDING BBC propagandist's question



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwWMaJJ_MSg

Thank you for posting that video artist. I think Americans who understand this strange effort by our government to create an enemy out of Russia and as Americans want a better relationship with Russia should start speaking up. The facts of our history with Russia do not support the prevailing government position that Russia is our enemy, it supports Trump's position that we should be try to be friends, because I think they really are our friend, they were our ally in WWII, so lets speak up and support Trump to give it a try.

Remember, the same people who call Russia our enemy call Mexico our friend. That's really all you need to know to realize we've been PUNKED by our own government for decades and is just another example of what I cal our:

PERIOD OF IRONIES AND OPPOSITES

Originally Posted by Judy

Correction! I just listened to the interview again and it sounds like he said both. Part of it was so soft I didn't catch it. But this is how that whole string went:

"there are a lot of killers, we've got a lot of killers, and we're not so innocent."

You can barely hear the "we've got", he says it so soft so you think he's just repeating the "there are".

So Politico didn't lie, they cherry-picked the statements.

CORRECTION AGAIN!!!

Just listened to the video tape of the interview that GeorgiaPeach posted for us, and Trump DOES NOT SAY "we've got", he says "you've got a lot of killers out there".

POLITICO DID LIE!! They had the video, they could have replayed it and replayed it to get it right, but they didn't. SHAME ON YOU POLITICO!!!

Trump said:

"there are a lot of killers out there, YOU'VE GOT a lot of killers out there, and we're not so innocent"

Originally Posted by Judy

I think Trump will prove all these idiots wrong. The Russians have never been our enemies.

Are you forgetting the Cuban, Vietnam, and Korea?