On this weekend’s broadcast of the syndicated “McLaughlin Group” program, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan decried Turkey’s action of shooting down a Russian fighter jet over its airspace and warned against the United States being drawn into an armed conflict with Russia if Turkey were to exercise Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
“This is a little more serious than a lot of words here,” Buchanan said. “What the Turks did was stupid and dangerous — shooting down a Russian plane … It wasn’t anything accidental. The plane was over this little slice of Turkey for 17 seconds or something. It was deliberate. It was an ambush of that plane. Let me say this, [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan he is an unstable guy in my judgment and we cannot allow Erdoğan, who is a member of NATO, to drag this country into a shooting confrontation with Russia.”
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