[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2182]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          NO MORAL EQUIVALENCY

  (Ms. SPEIER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. SPEIER. Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, I and many Americans watched in 
horror as our President continued to wax poetic on TV about the 
bromance with President Vladimir Putin.
  When the host noted ``But he's a killer,'' our President came back 
with: ``There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so 
innocent?''
  While our country has made many mistakes, we have not yet seen an 
authoritarian regime brazenly assassinate its political dissenters.
  The same cannot be said for Putin and the growing list of murder 
victims and dissenters in Russia, including liberal politician Boris 
Nemtsov, former Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, former KGB agent 
Alexander Litvinenko, and journalist Anna Politkovskaya, to just name a 
few.
  There is no moral equivalency between the United States and Russia. 
We are not yet an autocracy. We are not like Russia, and the President 
needs to stop relying on alternative facts.

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