Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, son of failed presidential candidate Ron Paul, has emerged as a top defender of Russia in the ongoing diplomatic back-and-forth between Washington and Moscow. While the GOP Senator was not among those who stoked the ire of Americans by making the trip back on the Fourth of July, his efforts have turned out to be far more direct than those who visited Moscow over the Independence Day holiday.
Senator Paul will reportedly ask the President as soon as this weekend to lift sanctions on Russian officials who under the current conditions are not allowed to visit the United States, he told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday evening:
The GOP “kingmaker,” as he has preferred to style himself in his time in the Senate by granting or withholding crucial votes on key bills and measures, met with Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, while he was visiting the hostile foreign power. Kosachev told Russian state media during the visit that Senator Paul’s intent was to organize a joint effort between Republicans and their Russian counterparts before the end of the year:
The issue at hand is trying, perhaps, to organize a new meeting, this time at the level of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee during the autumn session, that is, before the end of this year.”
Kosachev himself is only recently the target of new sanctions against Russian oligarchs and suspected corrupt government officials announced and implemented back in April of this year.
Senator Paul’s sudden interest in and defense of Russia in the war of rhetoric and retribution is curious given the traditionally conservative principles of the Republican party, who at one time — prior to the election of Donald Trump — were generally expected to take a hard line against any foreign country who meddled in American affairs.
Russia, in the event you’ve been living in a cave for the last 19 months, has now been conclusively proven to have interfered in the 2016Â American presidential election on behalf of Trump.
Featured image via screen capture
