Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is calling for continuing investigations into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia after the president failed to condemn Vladimir Putin’s killing of political dissenters.
Pelosi said she wants an investigation by the FBI in the wake of a controversial interview by Trump, during which the president implied an equivalency between Putin’s execution of political dissenters and the behavior of the United States.
“You got a lot of killers,” said Trump on The O’Reilly Factor Saturday. “What, you think our country’s so innocent?”
The president’s remarks reinvigorated conversations on social media about possible ties, in addition to the more formal criticism from Pelosi.
“She’s saying we’ve really got to get to the bottom of what is going on with possible blackmail of Trump in relation to Putin,” said GroundTruth Project Director Charlie Sennott on BPR today. “Where are the taxes? Where are the connections? How could you possibly be comparing our country, the United States of America, to Putin and to Russia?”
Sennott deconstructed Trump’s claims that his sole motivators are improving the country’s relationship with Russia and getting Putin’s help in fighting ISIS.
He elaborated, saying Putin’s interventions in the Syrian civil war have not helped fight the rise of the Islamic State.
“The brutality that Russia has brought to this has come with great effect to prop up [Bashar Al-Assad]; it’s done very little to go after ISIS,” he said. “People want to see us have a better relationship with Russia and maybe that’s a good thing, [but] this moral equivalency is such an outrage to who we are as a country.”
Sennott said the lack of vocal condemnation of the president’s remarks by Republicans is surprising, given the severity of the Russian government.
“They put journalists in jail. They lock up people who are gay... This is a regime in Russia that has had no respect for international law and no respect for human rights,” he said. “Could you imagine if President Obama had said that?”
Charlie Sennott is a news analyst at WGBH, where he also heads up The GroundTruth Project. To hear his interview on BPR in its entirety, click on the audio link above.
