Last updated on January 24th, 2019 at 04:28 am

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Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) called out Senate Republicans for siding with Trump and doing Putin‘s bidding by blocking the effort to keep sanctions in place on a Russian billionaire.

Van Hollen said on MSNBC‘s The Beat with Ari Melber:

Well, this was an all-out push from the Trump Administration. They sent Treasury Secretary Mnuchin down to the hill just before the vote to say that President Trump really wanted to loosen the sanctions on Deripaska and what we see is what we’re seeing far too often. That Republican senators at least enough of them, fell in lockstep with president trump and did the president’s bidding, and in doing so, gave this big win to Putin and the Kremlin.

It was a very shameful day. You’re right, it got lost in the news. I’m sort of glad you’re covering this. There was want a lot of attention given it to at the time, but that’s what happened. Signal the Trump Administration sent to Russia and President Putin is, you know, all the sanctions we put on, we are just looking for our first opportunity to roll them back. And we all remember president trump way back when he met in Helsinki with Putin. He sided with Putin on the whole issue of election interference.

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Republicans who do Trump’s bidding are doing Putin’s bidding

The vote to move forward on the legislation that would keep the sanctions in place fell two votes short. This isn’t a difficult concept. Donald Trump is siding against the interests of the people of his own country. When Senate Republicans back him up, they are also working for Putin and against America.

It isn’t just Trump doing Putin‘s bidding. A group of Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have been paving the way for Putin‘s agenda in the United States.

What the group of Senate Republicans who stood with Trump did was un-American. They put their compromised president ahead of their country. Voters should not forget this fact as they must make it their mission to remove Republicans from power in the best interests of the nation.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association