WaPo:
President Trump offered a fulsome defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend, leaving Republican lawmakers frustrated and flummoxed yet again by the president’s warm feelings toward the rival nation.
In a Fox News interview, Trump, who during the campaign repeatedly praised Putin, again said that he respected the Russian leader and hoped to get along with Moscow, and he seemed to equate the United States with its adversary when pressed by host Bill O’Reilly, who said: “But he’s a killer, though. Putin’s a killer.”
“There are a lot of killers,” Trump said in the interview, which aired Sunday before the Super Bowl. “We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?”
TPM:
"Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd on Sunday grilled Vice President Mike Pence on why President Donald Trump can't seem to find "a negative thing" to say about Russian President Vladimir Putin.... "You know the Putin record here," Todd pressed. "What American leader has done something similar?"
"That's not, not what the President said in the least," Pence replied.
"Then why can't he say a negative thing about Vladimir Putin?" Todd asked.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi urged the FBI to probe President Trump's finances and personal ties to find out if the Russian government is blackmailing him. "I want to know what the Russians have on Donald Trump," the California Democrat told Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I think we have to have an investigation by the FBI into his financial, personal and political connections to Russia, and we want to see his tax returns, so we can have truth in the relationship between Putin, whom he admires, and Donald Trump."
Follow the money, as someone once said.
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