[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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