CLEVELAND — Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., suggested Thursday that “connections and contracts from the past” have turned Donald Trump into a “pro-Russia” Republican nominee for president.
“I actually really, just to be quite blunt, have wondered why Donald Trump and his team have been seemingly so pro-Russia,” Kinzinger said during a discussion in Cleveland. “I hope that people are looking up connections and contracts and things from the past or whatever, doing due diligence.”
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Paul Manafort, senior adviser to the Trump campaign, has provided political advice to pro-Putin politicians in Ukraine. One of the generals he vetted for vice president appears regularly on Russia Today, a Kremlin-sponsored media outlet. Russia Today regularly praises Trump, and Russian President Vladimir Putin complimented him during the GOP primary season.
That background, as well as Trump’s favorable comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin, have lingered on the periphery of the 2016 presidential debate, but they took center stage Thursday morning after Trump revealed that he’s not sure the United States should honor its obligation to defend NATO allies from foreign invasion. “I don’t want to tell you what I’d do because I don’t want Putin to know what I’d do,” he told the New York Times.
Trump implied that NATO members who don’t spend enough money on defense or reimburse the United States don’t deserve the protection of the alliance. “We have many NATO members that aren’t paying their bills,” he said. “Have they fulfilled their obligations to us? If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.”
Kinzinger, who admitted that he feels “tremendous pressure” to endorse Trump, said that the interview provided new cause for hesitation. “It’s utterly disastrous,” the House Foreign Affairs Committee member said. “I have friends who serve in parliament in places like Estonia that every day worry about Russia deciding this is the time to re-annex and take them back, and comments like this are not only ill-informed but dangerous.”
As the conversation about Trump’s attitude toward Russia continued, Kinzinger abandoned the reference to “contracts” and instead focused on the apparent affinity between Trump and Putin.
“I think part of the problem is Donald Trump believes in strongmen, and, look, Vladimir Putin is a strongman,” Kinzinger said. “He’s tough, he says tough things — he rides a horse with his shirt off, for Heaven sakes, you know, and gallivants on the beach and whatever. He’s a tough guy and I think that attracts Donald Trump to him. I hope that’s the extent of it.”
