[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 119 (Monday, July 16, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4969-S4970]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TRUMP-PUTIN SUMMIT

  Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
what happened in Helsinki today.
  Let's not mince words. Today was a terrible day for the American 
brand, for the American people, and for all of our allies. We did not 
negotiate from a position of strength. We acted from a position of 
weakness. As a result, one of the world's worst despots walked away 
today from Helsinki with a win.
  Vladmir Putin is walking away from Helsinki with an undeserved 
legitimacy. The United States took a loss today when we backed away 
from our longstanding commitment to principled American leadership and, 
frankly, basic reality.
  Today the press asked the President of the United States whom he 
believed on the subject of Russia's information operation in the United 
States in 2016. Did he believe in the men and women of the U.S. 
intelligence community or did he believe in Vladimir Putin, a member of 
the Russian intelligence community, a thug turned Russian despot?
  The choice here was between the people who are risking their lives on 
behalf of our freedom and people who go around the world taking 
people's lives to limit freedom. The President of the United States--
how did he answer? He answered that he didn't see ``any reason'' why 
Putin would have interfered in the U.S. election.
  Make no mistake. Putin has a reason. The reason is clear to all those 
who have been watching growing Russian authoritarianism in recent 
years. Putin wants to weaken the U.S. Government. Putin wants to make 
the American people believe that our system of government isn't any 
different than his ``thugocracy.'' Putin wants to destroy NATO, which 
isn't just an alliance. It is, arguably, the most important military 
alliance in two millennia.
  Putin wants to undermine confidence in self-government, not only in 
this country but around the world. That is why Putin, a Soviet-style 
dictator who thinks a lot more about American elections than he ever 
thinks about his sham elections, attacked us in 2016. It is why he is 
planning to attack us this fall in 2018. It is why there are ongoing 
information operations against the United States and against our public 
at present, as everyone who goes into a SCIF and reads their 
intelligence briefing knows. It is why Putin is planning to attack the 
U.S. 2020 election already.
  That is why the men and women of the U.S. intelligence community 
unanimously and without any regard to party understand that Putin waged 
an information operation against the United States in 2016.
  That is why Dan Coats, an esteemed former Member of this body, went 
to the press today--not 6 months ago--and reaffirmed: ``Our assessments 
of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing pervasive 
efforts to undermine our democracy'' remain the opinion of the U.S. 
intelligence community.
  This isn't a question of Republican versus Democrats. This is a 
question of patriotism versus deciding that you want to be on the side 
of sowing discord and doubt in America.
  We shouldn't sugarcoat this. Vladimir Putin is a despot, and he is 
propped up by a band of oligarchs every bit as corrupt as he is. Putin 
fakes democracy while preventing free and fair elections. Putin funnels 
massive amounts of Russian wealth from himself to himself and his 
cronies and keeps an iron grip on the press.
  These matters are not matters of dispute. It is not ``on the one 
hand'' or ``the other hand'' or what some people are saying. The 
Russian people know who Vladimir Putin is. You can ask the leaders of 
political opposition in that country who tried to get a free and fair 
election. You can ask the human rights activists or the international 
observers who try to speak up against what he has done or show up in my 
office to give firsthand accounts in certain situations in which Putin 
has intervened. You can ask the journalists who tried to expose 
corruption in the country.
  Do you know who these men and women often end up being? They are the 
men and women who just randomly, disproportionately happen to fall out 
of fifth story windows of office buildings in Moscow and St. 
Petersburg, the people who just randomly happen to show up in one-car 
accidents that either are never investigated or, when they are 
investigated, unfortunately, there weren't witnesses and there are 
never prosecutions.
  Vladimir Putin is working overtime to make the Soviet Union great 
again. Over the past decade, he has carried out an aggressive, often 
brutal expansionist campaign. In 2008, he invaded next-door Georgia. In 
2014, he invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. Putin has provided 
military support to the Assad regime in Syria. Russian troops are 
responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. Under the guise 
of attacking the Islamic State, Russia has targeted hospitals and 
schools and many other civilian locations.

  Putin is currently flexing his muscle across Europe, although his 
preference there is always for more subtle means than tanks and 
Kalashnikovs, if he can get away with it. One, he has more deniability 
and, two, it is cheaper. In 2007, Estonia was hit with a wave of cyber 
attacks originating in Russia--the beginning of a campaign of cyber 
warfare that has become one of Mr. Putin's primary tools. Not only in 
the Baltics and Ukraine but in Germany and France, as recently as last 
year, Russian hackers attempted to interfere with elections, disrupt 
parliamentary proceedings, and shut down media operations. This is in 
addition to trying to put his thumb on the scale of pro-Putin parties 
across Europe, including by spreading misinformation through 
influential Russian-backed and Russian-originating social media 
accounts.
  These questions are not actually gray--gray space war--but any Member 
of this body who does their homework, any Member of the House down the 
hall who does their homework, and lots of the good and well-meaning 
people who serve around the President who do their homework know these 
things to be true. These questions are not in dispute.
  Putin's most daring performance to date, though, was deciding to take 
on the most powerful country in the world with an influence operation 
inside the United States. National political committees in 2016 saw 
their computer networks breached and their data stolen. Vladimir Putin 
isn't obsessed with the ups and downs of political life here in the 
United States. He isn't an agent of one party or the other--one 
candidate or the other. Vladimir Putin is an agent of chaos, and his 
objective is to undermine trust. His objective is to make Americans 
doubt ourselves and doubt whether U.S. leadership over the last 75 
years has been a good or a bad thing and to doubt whether we should 
keep our word to our allies. Vladimir Putin's objective is to make us 
think there is no difference between countries on the global stage that 
believe in human rights, that believe in free press, free religion, 
free assembly, and free speech versus those who don't. Vladimir Putin's 
goal is to breach a moral equivalency that allows his thugocracy to be 
no less ugly than what happens in our country, where people who often 
disagree decide to argue by means of reason and persuasion, not by 
violence.
  His goals aren't that hard to figure out. His enemy is trust and good 
faith. Vladimir Putin is trying to create mistrust in this country, and 
today the President of the United States decided to let Vladimir Putin 
off the hook and, in so doing, he creates an incentive for Putin to 
ratchet up his campaigns of misinformation. This should be a time for 
all Americans to stand together against what Putin is doing. It is a 
fundamental part of the President's job to articulate basic truths.
  While we are being clear about who Vladimir Putin is, we should also 
be clear about who we, the American people, are. We are a nation that 
believes in human dignity. We believe this isn't just true of 320 
million Americans; it is true of 7.5 billion people across this globe. 
We believe in free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, 
freedom of assembly, and the right of protest--not because government 
gives us those rights but because God created us with dignity.

[[Page S4970]]

  Government is not the author or source of people's rights. 
Governments are just tools to secure the rights that people have by 
virtue of having been created with dignity. In other words, we believe 
the very stuff that terrifies Vladimir Putin.
  Vladimir Putin believes only that might makes right. Americans don't 
believe that. We never have, and may we never devolve to believing only 
that. We are dedicated to the thesis that the dignity of every person 
is worth protecting. It is not the job of the U.S. Government to be the 
policemen of every Nation on Earth, but it is most clearly part of the 
job of the United States to articulate, on the global stage, things 
that are true of everyone, everywhere. We are dedicated to the idea 
that humans should flourish.
  Vladimir Putin is dedicated to the opposite. He crushes men, women, 
and children underfoot for the purposes of keeping his hold on power. 
Americans do not stand with Vladimir Putin. Americans stand with the 
Russian champions of liberty and of free speech, freedom of religion, 
freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right of protest 
against tyrants like Vladimir Putin.
  We believe in peace through strength, and we believe in basic moral 
clarity. That is why, in the wake of the world's two most destructive 
wars, Americans created an international order. It is an American-led 
international order. The international order embodies America's 
fundamental values, and we push back against the drift to Old World 
authoritarianism in all of its forms--the very things Vladimir Putin 
lusts after.
  This world isn't made for the elites, but it is made for American 
interests to be articulated because we are the de facto leader of the 
free world. That is why we have always negotiated from a position of 
strength.
  Sadly, today, we negotiated from a position of weakness. In previous 
years, many Americans, myself included, have spoken out against the 
crazy idea that America could somehow ``lead from behind.'' Today, 
America decided to simply give in. As I came to the floor tonight, the 
President tweeted that ``in order to build a brighter future, we cannot 
exclusively focus on the past.'' Fair enough, but let's talk about that 
future. What do we want from it and at what cost? Is the cost of the 
future President Trump wants the sacrificing of American moral 
leadership on the global stage? Is it walking away from the idea that 
7.5 billion people have been created with dignity? Is it walking away 
from the idea that America fundamentally announces to the world that we 
believe everybody has the rights of free speech, press, religion, 
assembly, and protest not because a government might decide to 
condescend and grant you this right? The government's job is to serve 
the people by preserving these rights which come from nature and 
nature's God.
  The problem today is not the United States. The problem today is not 
the Russian people. The problem that needed to be named today was 
Vladimir Putin. Instead, our President decided to advance a faith moral 
equivalency that plays right into the hands of Vladimir Putin's bloody 
hands. Everyone in this body should be disgusted by what happened in 
Helsinki today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.

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