MSNBC host Chuck Todd sparred with Republican North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer over former President Donald Trump urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to disclose information on Hunter Biden.
Trump called on Putin to release information surrounding Biden’s business dealings with Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, who paid $3.5 million to his firm, Rosemont Seneca Thornton, on February 14, 2014. She sent a total of $241,797 to the company’s bank account from May-December 2015.
Todd asked the senator why he would “trust propaganda” from the Russian president about the president’s son.
“It’s sort of interesting because [of] Russian collusion, we were to believe everything that was coming out of Russia a few years ago when it was about Donald Trump,” Cramer said. “With that said, my answer to the question was more sarcastic than it was anything because like I said, this is a war criminal. He’s suggesting evidence that there’s been a crime committed by Hunter Biden and by the Bidens, so—”
“So what you’re saying is ‘that was sarcasm.’ You believe the former president shouldn’t be—I mean, I’m sorry, it comes across as almost a bit unpatriotic to ask literally the enemy of the free world right now for propaganda for a political opponent,” Todd interjected. “It just seems like a horrendous thing to do by the former president, no?”
Cramer argued if the tables had turned to having one of Trump’s children in Biden’s place, the establishment media and Democrats would treat the situation differently.
“Senator, that is the laziest attack. It is not about the media, it doesn’t matter about the media! Is it the right thing to do for the former president of the United States to ask an enemy of the free world to do this?”
“What the former president is doing is nothing compared to what the current president is doing in this circumstance,” Cramer pushed back. “That’s really the bigger issue. Donald Trump is Donald Trump, he hasn’t changed, he’s not going to change. It’s more interesting to the Washington press corps than it is to the general public. Was it the wisest thing in the world to say? Perhaps, not. But he’s Donald Trump and he says these things.”
The senator noted that Putin would not be a trustworthy source given that he is a war criminal and that the media took the bait from Trump. Todd followed up asking if he accepts Trump “playing footsie” with Putin.
“There’s evidence that the Democrats fed information into the White House to plant false evidence that he colluded with Russia—” Cramer said.
“How does that make what Donald Trump is doing somehow better?” Todd pressed. The senator replied that President Joe Biden is calling for a regime change in Russia and that sanctions are not intended to deter, and therefore he is more concerned about the current administration than Trump.
via dailycaller