Pelosi: Trump’s Inaction on Russia Is a ‘Dereliction of Duty’

Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) accused President Donald Trump of a “dereliction of duty” for not acting on intelligence reports that Russia put bounties on American troops in Afghanistan payable to Taliban fighters.

Host Nicolle Wallace said, “Madam Speaker, I suppose it was predictable that a story of Vladimir Putin trying to harm the United States and Donald Trump doing zip, zilch, nada about it even though he was briefed about it would be called a hoax, but it’s still jarring and shocking when you’ve got grieving family members. What is your hope? What do you hope to learn, what do you plan to ask at your briefing tomorrow?”

Pelosi said, “First of all, as a longtime intelligence person, I am a generation intelligence community, our first responsibility of intelligence from the start is force protection, when we’re going to send our troops into harm’s way or whether we’re initiating hostilities or they’re going to other harm’s way, we have to make sure we’re doing everything to protect, force protection, force protection. We say of our men and women on the battlefield. We leave no one behind. When they come home, we leave no veteran behind. All the more reason to protect them right from the start.”

She continued, “In light of that, to see this possible threat, this bounty on our soldiers be treated so lightly, without investigation and the rest, is so inappropriate. It is dereliction of duty. The president is the commander-in-chief. The president of the United States is supposed to have judgment about how to make decisions about the security of our country. In order to have judgment, you have to have knowledge. For him to ignore the facts in a presidential daily briefing as a matter of habit, is dereliction of duty. And the third point I would make is there’s enough reason for us to believe that this dereliction of duty cannot just be the course of action we take. We must institute sanctions against Russia, and we must do it right away.”

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