Jamie Fly
President Donald Trump’s news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin was “nothing short of disgraceful,” a member of George Mason University’s National Security Institute (NSI) said.
“He turned an opportunity to send a strong deterrent message against future Russian interference in American democracy into an attack on American institutions that only empowers our enemies,” said Jamie Fly, a visiting fellow at NSI and a former foreign policy advisor to Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla. “Instead of pushing back against the long trail of death and destruction that Vladimir Putin has left around the globe, President Trump lowered America to Putin’s level.”
Trump has come under much criticism after his meeting with Putin in Helsinki for not defending his own intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice, which have concluded that Russia meddled in the U.S. 2016 presidential election.
Putin has denied any Russian involvement.
Andy Keiser
“It was ‘Russia first’ at its worst,” Fly said of Trump’s performance.
NSI’s Andrew Keiser, a former senior advisor for the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Trump’s performance shows “a naivete of Russia’s decades-long work against the United States.”
Kaiser added that because Trump undermined his own government’s position with a geopolitical foe by his side and gave moral equivalency to United States and Russian activities around the world, “it seems Russia has been given a green light to nakedly pursue its own interests in Ukraine and Syria, by silencing dissent by any means necessary and by creating trouble all over the globe, from Venezuela and Cuba to Moldova and Georgia, to North Korea and the Arctic.”
Lester Munson
“It would appear that this meeting was a missed opportunity, at best,” said NSI’s Lester Munson, former staff director of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. “President Trump needs real achievements on Syria, North Korea, Russia, cyber attacks on our elections and Russia pulling out of Ukraine. Thankfully, the president must defer to Congress on many of the matters discussed today. He has little flexibility on lifting sanctions against Russia absent real progress on these issues. Congress, particularly the Senate, should step up its direct involvement in policymaking for the betterment of our national security.”
For more information, contact Damian Cristodero at 703-993-9118 or dcristod@gmu.edu.
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George Mason University is Virginia’s largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls more than 36,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Mason has grown rapidly over the past half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity and commitment to accessibility.