Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) said President Donald Trump’s Alaskan summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin was a “historic embarrassment for the United States.”
Partial transcript as follows:
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, on Ukraine: You know that the U.S. intelligence assessment is that the battlefield is turning in Russia’s favor, despite the fact that Putin has to rely on Iran and North Korea to keep this thing going. If neither President Biden nor President Trump were ever willing to commit troops, doesn’t the secretary have a point that it has to be hammered out at the negotiating table?
REP. CROW: You know, this absolutely will end at a negotiating table, like most conflicts will. But what happened on Friday was a historic embarrassment for the United States. There’s no other way to put it. Right? You listen to what Marco Rubio and the president have said. They keep on saying they’re dedicating time. They’re making it a priority. They’re focusing their attention on it. In any negotiation, when you’re trying to end an armed conflict, there’s nothing more important than understanding what motivates your adversary. What is making Vladimir Putin tick, in this instance. Vladimir Putin does not care about the amount of time that we’re nego- we’re allocating to this, does not care about a B-2 bomber flyover, does not care about a lineup of F-22 fighters rolled out. He doesn’t care about any of that. What Vladimir Putin cares about is basically three things. He cares about economic pressure in the form of sanctions. He cares about political, diplomatic isolation, being a pariah state. And he cares about military defeat. Those are the three things that will end this conflict if he feels pressure on all of those three fronts. And this administration continues to be unwilling to do anything to assert pressure in any of those three areas.
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