Russian President Vladimir Putin defended President Trump after the House voted to impeach him over his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian leaders.
On Wednesday night, the House voted on two articles of impeachment. Both passed with support from only Democratic members in the majority and one independent. Republicans were joined by soon-to-be-former Democratic New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew and Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson on both articles and Maine Rep. Jared Golden on the obstruction of justice article.
Putin, 67, called out the partisan divide in the impeachment vote on Thursday, saying, “The party that lost the [2016] election, the Democratic Party, is trying to achieve results by other means.”
The Russian leader claimed Trump’s impeachment over the Ukraine call was baseless, as was the outrage over the findings in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Mueller found that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, but that the Trump campaign did not conspire with the Kremlin in the process. Putin has downplayed Russia’s meddling in U.S. elections.
He called the impeachment effort “far-fetched” and noted that Republicans in the Senate would quickly kill any effort to remove Trump.
“Regarding the continuation of our dialogue till the end of Trump’s presidency, you make it sound as if it’s already coming to an end,” Putin noted. “I actually really doubt that it is ending, it still has to go through Senate where, as far as I know, the Republicans hold the majority, so it’s unlikely they will want to remove the representative of their party for some made-up reasons.”
Trump’s relationship with Putin has been widely criticized since the early days of his 2016 campaign. Many believed he was too friendly with the Russian president, which fueled the Mueller investigation’s interest in his campaign’s ties to the 2016 election meddling.
The president has made overtures to Putin, including offering to go to a Victory Day parade in Russia to celebrate the Allied victory over the Nazis. Putin also claimed he did not want any phone calls between him and Trump to be released in the wake of Trump’s scandal with Ukraine.
