How on earth can Pat Toomey even show his face today at Philly’s Ukrainian Independence Day celebration when he stands behind pro-Kremlin, anti-Ukraine Donald Trump? Until Toomey stands up to Trump the bully, he is allowing Trump continue his dangerous pro-Russia posturing that threatens our economic and national security. Toomey is proving over and over again that he is nothing more than a cowardly politician contorting himself into politically expedient positions because he’s facing an uphill battle to win reelection.
Toomey stood by while Trump continues to prove that his presidency would threaten Ukraine and advance Vladimir Putin’s anti-U.S. agenda:
- Trump threatened to disband NATO and abandon our allies like Ukraine if Russia invaded.
- Trump specifically questioned the U.S.’s need to be involved in Ukraine.
- Trump pledged to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, despite U.S. and international opposition — seeing it as a Ukrainian territory invaded by Russia in 2014.
- Trump promised to improve relations with Russia, explaining that “If we can get along with Russia, that’s very good.”
- Trump praised Putin’s leadership as “strong” and defended Putin against allegations of murdering journalists, political opponents as “I think our country does plenty of killing also.” He said he would probably “get along very well with Putin.”
- Trump had significant financial and investor ties to Russia.
- Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, represented pro-Putin Viktor Yanukovych in his campaign for president of Ukraine and helped organize anti-NATO protests. Manafort might have been paid nearly $13 million under the table from the pro-Kremlin political party.
- Trump’s foreign policy advisor Carter Page was an advisor to Gazprom, the majority-state owned Russian natural gas producer, owned Gazprom stock and attended annual investor meetings.
- Trump called on Russian hackers to “find the 30,000 [Clinton] emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” which brought widespread condemnation from top national security officials. A former National Security Council official even said Trump’s comments were “tantamount to treason.”
This is the same Trump who claimed he understood Russia because he had a Miss Universe pageant there “two or three years ago” — The same Trump who Toomey now supports even as he spends today pandering to Ukrainian Americans while refusing to revoke his support for the Republican nominee.
Background here.
Published: Aug 24, 2016