BY ALEXANDER BOLTON
02/05/17 05:13 PM EST
Ohio Gov. John Kasich joined other Republicans in scolding President Donald Trump Sunday for suggesting that the United States was guilty along with Russia for human rights abuses.
“America has been a beacon of light and freedom. There is no equivalence with the brutal regime of Vladimir Putin,” he wrote on Twitter.
Kasich, one of Trump’s rivals during the Republican presidential primary, joined Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), another former White House aspirant, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in breaking with Trump Sunday over Putin.
Trump told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly in an interview airing Sunday that he respects Putin, despite Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea, a territory that belonged to Ukraine, and its support for Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have killed thousands of civilians.
“I do respect him. Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get along with them,” Trump said.
When O’Reilly objected by calling Putin “a killer,” Trump said the United States has its own dirty laundry.
“We have a lot of killers,” he said. “You think our country is so innocent?”
Rubio disputed the characterization, tweeting, “When has a Democratic political activists been poisoned by the GOP, or vice versa? We are not the same as #Putin.”
McConnell said, “I don’t think there is any equivalency between the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does.”
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More at:
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/317999-kasich-no-equivalence-with-putins-brutal-regime
