Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Tuesday said he is willing to consider additional sanctions on Russia.
Yes, that’s all of the commitment we have from the Republican Speaker of the House, even after his party’s president announced in front of the entire world, while standing next to President Putin, that he backed Russia over his own country.
Speaking to reporters just one day after Trump’s Helsinki National Security Crisis debacle, Ryan said if congressional committees believe further sanctions on Russia are necessary, “I’m more than happy to consider those.”
So Ryan can’t commit to actually taking any action. He is still stuck on reiterating reality as if that is strong push back, and apparently it is in Trump world. So Ryan said, “Russia is a menacing government that does not share our interests and it does not share our values.”
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This is a national security crisis. We have a president in the White House whose actions repeatedly tell us he trusts Russia more than his own government and the people he has hired, and yesterday he confirmed this publicly in a way that is impossible to ignore.
The scariest part is waking up Tuesday and NOT hearing actual plans being implemented to protect our country. Instead, more insipid pretenses at being “strong” by repeating facts, as if somehow words will fix what ails us. And even then, the facts repeated by this Republican are always careful to appease the president as much as possible.
What happened is Russia stole an election for Trump and they are, by all accounts, set on continuing this assault and have found the Republican Party to be open to their advances enough that this relationship seems to be working for the parties involved.
Last night, even as Trump announced his alignment with Russia, Trump’s treasury moved to protect dark money donors like the NRA, which oh gee, was mentioned in the indictments of the 12 Russians, from disclosure. It has looked for a while as if Russia laundered money meant for the Republican Party and Trump through the NRA. This isn’t an established fact, but the pieces are there and now the actions that are otherwise hard to explain are there as well.
Why would Trump’s treasury have made that move yesterday of all days?
If our fate is in Paul Ryan’s hands, we are not headed for a good ending. He simply isn’t up to the task.
(Additional reporting by Amanda Beckel)
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