Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., called Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a “smartass” and a “bully” on Monday, after he and six other Republican lawmakers met with top Russian officials in Moscow in last week.
“He’s a bully. He impressed me as the sort of guy who started out in the world as a smartass and worked his way up,” Kennedy told CNN.
Kennedy said he traveled to Russia over the July 4 holiday to deliver a message to the Kremlin — “stop screwing with American elections.”
[Byron York: What really happened when GOP senators visited Moscow]
“He’s a bully. He impressed me as the sort of guy who started out in the world as a smartass and worked his way up,” Sen. John Kennedy says of the Russian Foreign Minister.
Kennedy says he told him and other Russian leaders to “stop screwing with American elections” pic.twitter.com/wWLBgYWU4Q
— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) July 9, 2018
He told CNN he warned the Russians that if they meddle in America’s elections, Congress will enforce even more sanctions against the country. Yet he said he doesn’t know whether the next elections will be free of Russian interference. Russia has maintained it did not meddle in the 2016 elections, despite the U.S. intelligence community determining otherwise.
“It got testy at times,” Kennedy said. “We didn’t hit it off very well at all.”
Kennedy said the only way to “contain” the Russian government is to remain “very, very firm.”
“Dealing with Putin is like hand-feeding a shark. You can do it, but you have to do it very, very carefully,” he said.
