Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) slammed President Trump as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “puppet,” and warned that he would invite the strongman to the White House if the Senate doesn’t remove him from office.
“Revelation by former WH officials proves what we’ve known all along: Trump is #PutinsPuppet,” she tweeted. “Trump repeated Putin’s talking point that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the ‘16 election. Mark my words. If the Senate doesn’t remove him, Trump will invite Putin to the WH next yr.”
Waters appeared to be referring to a recent article by The Washington Post reporting that Trump believed Putin’s argument that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 election.
“He would say: ‘This is ridiculous. Everyone knows I won the election. The greatest election in the world. The Russians didn’t do anything. The Ukrainians tried to do something,’” one former official told the Post.
Another former official said Trump believed Ukraine was the actual culprit behind the election meddling because “Putin told me.”
Officials who testified in the House’s impeachment investigation insisted that the idea that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 race is being propagated by Moscow to deflect blame over the meddling. The intelligence community has also confirmed that Russia engaged in a widespread campaign to interfere in the election, both by a social media-driven disinformation campaigns and hacking of election systems and Democratic Party organs.
Waters was one of the first members of Congress to call for Trump’s impeachment, and has been one of the president’s most vocal critics since he took office in 2017.