Rachel Maddow Blasts Senate Republicans For Selling Out America To Russia

Last updated on August 21st, 2020 at 07:34 pm

Rachel Maddow didn’t hold back on Senate Republicans on Wednesday, slamming their vote to allow Donald Trump to prematurely lift sanctions on Russian businesses with ties to Vladimir Putin.

Eleven GOP senators sided with the Democrats, but it wasn’t enough to break the 60-vote threshold needed to block the president’s move.

The MSNBC host slammed a select group of Senate Republicans, including Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney, for selling out to Russia even as they frequently take credit for standing up to Putin.

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“You can thank them all for voting today to give Vladimir Putin‘s government in Russia a huge big economic present,” Maddow said.

Video:

Maddow said:

Well, today, this afternoon, despite those 11 Republican senators breaking ranks and being willing to side with the Democrats on this, it turned out to be not enough because today there was a crucial vote on this matter, which came with not a 50-vote threshold, but a 60-vote threshold to stop the Trump administration from lifting these Deripaska-related sanctions. Schumer and the Democrats and the breakaway Republicans were able to put together 57 votes, but 57 isn’t 60, and so you can thank top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell. You can thank all of these other Republican senators who get all of this public credit for supposedly being so hawkish and so realistic on Russia. You can thank them all for voting today to give Vladimir Putin‘s government in Russia a huge big economic present and voting to give Oleg Deripaska the biggest break of his life even while his potential role in the Russian attack on our election remains a critical matter that is under ongoing investigation related to multiple criminal cases. Last night I said that would be a test case in terms of whether or not the Republicans had any compunction about the Trump administration and the president and its relationship to the Russian government. It was a test case. They didn’t pass the test.

Like Trump, the Republican Party has sold out to Russia

As I noted earlier, there is no longer any separation between Donald Trump and the Republican Party, particularly as it pertains to Russia.

For a while, the conventional wisdom was that the GOP would check Trump if he got too cozy with Putin. After all, Republicans have historically been the party that took pride in standing up to the Russians.

But Wednesday’s vote in the GOP-controlled Senate has confirmed what many already knew: Trump is the Republican Party, and the Republican Party is Trump.

Vladimir Putin doesn’t just have a president in his back pocket. He has an entire U.S. political party working on his behalf.

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