Lindsey Graham on Trump’s meeting with Putin: ‘Close to the dumbest idea ever’

This Sunday on Meet the Press, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) slammed President Trump over his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying “this whole idea of moving forward without punishing Russia is undercutting his entire presidency.”

Graham was referring to an early Sunday tweet from Trump where he said that he and Putin “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded.” Many of Trump’s critics slammed the tweet for being too lenient on Russia, which intelligence agencies agree meddled in the 2016 election.

“He gave a really good speech in Poland, President Trump did, and he had what I think is a disastrous meeting with President Putin. Two hours and 15 minutes of meetings. Tillerson and Trump are ready to forgive and forget when it comes to cyber-attacks on the American election of 2016,” Graham said.

“When it comes to Russia, he’s got a blind spot,” Graham continued. “And to forgive and forget when it comes to Putin regarding cyber-attacks is to empower Putin and that’s exactly what he’s doing.”

As reported by NBC News, U.S. intelligence agencies agree that Russia was behind hacks and disinformation campaigns during the 2016 election. Additionally, senior intelligence officials believe with a “high degree of confidence” that Putin himself was personally involved.

During the interview, Graham said he was “dumbfounded” by Trump’s overtones to Russia. “I am disappointed and, at the end of the day, he’s hurting his presidency by not embracing the fact that Putin’s a bad guy who tried to undercut our democracy and he’s doing it all over the world,” Graham said.

“He is literally the only person that I know of that has any doubt about what Russia did in 2016.”

Watch the full interview below:

Featured image via screen grab

Sky Palma

Before launching DeadState back in 2012, Sky Palma has been blogging about politics, social issues and religion for over a decade. He lives in Los Angeles and also enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, chess, music and art.