Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and a potential nominee to lead the State Department, dismissed as “baloney” the claim that Russia violates human rights and said the reporter who leveled the charge was biased due to her Eastern European heritage.
“If it’s right for us to join in and cooperate and have a better relationship with Russia, in order to defeat radical Islam and to pull China back a bit, well that’s a good thing,” Rohrabacher said Wednesday on Yahoo News Now. “Russia is no longer the Soviet Union.”
Rohrabacher criticized China due to its aggressive actions in the South China Sea and because “they are the world’s worst human rights abuser,” he said. “Chinese dictators are not our friends.”
But when the reporter, Bianna Golodryga, suggested that Russia also has a history of human rights, the interview turned tense. “Oh, baloney,” Rohrabacher replied. “Where do you come from?”
Golodryga explained she came to the United States “as a political refugee” from Moldova, a former member of the Soviet Union. “Oh, well that’s good, then the audience knows you’re biased,” Rohrabacher said.
“I’m biased because I’m an American citizen who was born in a foreign country?” she replied.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You just said that Russia and China are the same and I’m sorry, they’re not.”
Golodryga asked Rohrabacher to explain how it’s incorrect that Russia doesn’t violate human rights. “Russia isn’t accused of murdering journalists?” she asked.
Rohrabacher reiterated that Golodryga is biased. “I’ll let the public decide, with that last comment, where you’re coming from,” the California Republican said. “To take the belligerent stand now against Russia, treating them as if they’re the Soviet Union — which you obviously do — is going to lead to more conflict and make us less safe because we’ve got radical Islamicists and we’ve got Chinese who are making all kinds of overtures and actually offensive operations against us in the South China Sea and elsewhere.”
President-elect Trump also famously demurred when asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime killing journalists. “Our country does plenty of killing, also,” Trump said during the campaign.
Some of his allies hoped that Trump’s position on Russia would change once he took office, however. “I hope that when Donald Trump begins to receive intelligence briefings of the nature that I’ve been reviewing for a year and a half now in the Intelligence Committee that he might have a slightly different perspective on Vladimir Putin, because Vladimir Putin is not a friend of the United States,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said at the Republican National Convention.
