Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told Breitbart News in an interview on Tuesday that America and the world “will be better” as a result of the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, Finland.
Congressman Massie voiced support this week for President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian Vladimir Putin, stating that dialogue with other countries is important.”
“President Trump was right to meet with Russia to promote peace and commerce, just like President Obama was right to meet with Cuba,” Massie added:
Dialogue with other countries is important. President Trump was right to meet with Russia to promote peace and commerce, just like President Obama was right to meet with Cuba.#transpartisan
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) July 17, 2018
Rep. Massie told Breitbart News why he supports continued dialogue with Russia: “I completely support the president talking with Putin.”
“I pointed the left is being very hypocritical on this because they were very excited to see Obama meet in Cuba, and now they’re upset that Trump is meeting a Russian leader. I think that is hypocritical. By the way, I supported both meetings,” the Kentucky Republican mentioned.
“I’ve been consistent on this because I’m not in favor of being in wars all over the world,” Massie emphasized.
The Kentucky Republican especially commended Trump’s meeting with Putin given the establishment’s resistance to any form of détente with Russia.
“I think the president was very selfless in going through it. You know that he was burning political capital in order to keep us out of another Cold War and countless hot proxy wars,” Massie explained. “He did it anyway, knowing that it wasn’t going to endear him to the media and some of his supporters back home, but he did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. He pointed that out–that this was not the politically expedient or the popular thing to do.”
Massie then charged that Trump’s continued dialogue with Putin as well as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will help America and the world.
“Ultimately, not just America, but the world will be better off because of the dialogue that Trump has initiated that other presidents were too afraid to initiate,” Congressman Massie said.
Congressman Massie then chastised the media for unfairly asking President Trump whether he believes the intelligence community or Putin about alleged Russian interference.
Massie said, “It’s very unfair in terms of how the media posed the question for Trump: ‘Do you believe the intelligence community, or do you believe Putin?’ The problem is, in a press conference, how do you answer that, knowing that the media has been successful in conflating spying and propaganda with the interference of an election? Spying on other countries is what countries do, and propaganda is what countries do.”
“This is being confused with propaganda, not the physical interference of an election,” Rep. Massie said. “Not a single vote, not a single ballot box was changed by the Russians, but they lead you to believe that what has transpired is just as serious as that, where it’s not.”
Congressman Massie then told Breitbart News that, as a member of Congress, he has access to classified intelligence briefings in which they assign confidence levels for the various issues about which they brief lawmakers.
“The briefing of the so-called Russian meddling in our elections had varying degrees of confidence level expressed by the intelligence community at various points,” Massie said, alleging that evidence for Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is not as clear as the media may suggest.
“To say it’s black and white or absolutely true or not true is not even the way the intelligence community reports the information in classified briefings,” Massie said.
Massie then suggested that as long as there is a cold war between Russia and the United States, the D.C. swamp will continue to make money.
Rep. Massie said, “This may be why the only type of diplomacy that the establishment understands, whether it’s the GOP establishment, and pretty much all of the liberals at this point, is either a full-on war or a cold war or sanctions, they completely underestimate the value of just talking to your would-be adversaries, but that doesn’t make anyone money in Washington, DC.”
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