House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy slammed President Biden for giving Russian President Vladimir Putin “a pass” after a summit between the two leaders in Geneva, Switzerland.
“The American people suffered massive disruptions because of Russia-linked cyber-attacks,” McCarthy said in a statement released Thursday according to CNN. “Two Americans, both Marine veterans, are being held as prisoners in Russia. We know Vladimir Putin silences and imprisons his critics.”
“Knowing these facts, President Biden should have used today’s summit to stand up for our national interests and send a message to the world that the United States will hold Russia accountable for its long list of transgressions. Unfortunately, President Biden gave Vladimir Putin a pass,” he added.
This comes after four years of silence from Republicans like Kevin McCarthy on Trump’s close relationship with Putin even after the intelligence community concluded that Russian interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
They remained silent when Trump sided with Putin over the U.S. intelligence community at a joint press conference at a summit with the two leaders in Helsinki, saying he doesn’t “see any reason why” Russia would be responsible for interfering in the 2016 election.
Not to be out done,Trump—who met with North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un for a photo op—called into Sean Hannity’s show on Wednesday night and blasted President Biden for giving Russia a “very big stage.”
“We gave a very big stage to Russia and we got nothing,” Trump said Wednesday night. “And you know, you have to form your own judgments, it’s not for me to say. But I will say that I think it was a good day for Russia. I don’t see what we got out of it.”
Mike Pompeo who served as Trump’s Secretary of State through his disastrous 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki and the photo-op with Kim Jong Un said Biden missed “a chance to make it clear to the Russians that their maligned activity was not acceptable and to make clear that we were going to impose real costs in the event that they continued it.”
Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan defended the talks on Thursday. He said Biden challenged Putin “on a range of issues that the previous president, who Representative McCarthy supported, strongly gave President Putin a pass on.”
“He didn’t side with Putin against the intelligence community on that, quite the contrary,” he said, adding: “I really do not believe it is hyperbole to say that Joe Biden returns from this trip as the clear and the consensus leader of the free world.”
