Paul Ryan Rebukes Trump’s Praise for ‘Aggressor’ Putin
House Speaker Paul Ryan issued a rebuke Thursday morning to Donald Trump for having praised Russian President Vladimir Putin at a foreign policy town hall on NBC Wednesday night.
Asked if he was concerned about Trump’s praise, Ryan , “Vladimir Putin is an aggressor who does not share our interests.”
He added that Putin was “violating the sovereignty of neighboring countries,” and confirmed that Putin-sponsored actors were apparently behind the cyber attacks against “our political system.”
“That is not acting in our interests. And that is an adversarial stance and he is acting like an adversary,” Ryan added.
Trump told NBC’s Matt Lauer, “If [Putin] says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him.” He added that Putin had stellar approval ratings without elaborating and affirmed that he had “been a leader far more than our president has been.”
This is far from the first time that Ryan has taken issue with Trump’s incendiary statements: He previously called Trump’s attacks on a Mexican-American federal judge “the textbook definition of racism”. And after Trump publicly invited Russia to hack into and release government documents, a Ryan spokesperson said, “Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug. Putin should stay out of this election.”
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Sam Reisman (@thericeman) is a staff editor at Mediaite.
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