California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said on Friday that he was informed by Trump's transition team that he is under consideration for the post of Secretary of State. Rohrabacher issued this statement:
I have been told that I am under consideration to join President Trump’s team as Secretary of State. While my present intention, of course, is to continue to fight for liberty and freedom as a member of the House of Representatives, as a strong supporter of President-Elect Trump’s vision for America, it would be a privilege and an honor to serve as his Secretary of State.
Rohrabacher invites you to take a poll on Breitbart News, “Who should be Donald Trump’s Secretary of State?” One may choose either Rohrabacher, Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani.
Recently Politico ran a story with Rohrabacher billed as “Putin’s favorite congressman."
Rohrabacher used to be a Reagan speechwriter and an avowed “Cold Warrior.” Back in the 1990’s there was a famous story about Rohrabacher arm wrestling Vladimir Putin in a bar. Putin at the time was only a lowly deputy mayor. Since then, both Rohrabacher and Putin have reinvented themselves as much bigger players and Rohrabacher’s subsequent transformation from Cold Warrior to Kremlin champion has puzzled his colleagues, to say the very least. According to Rohrabacher, Americans have wrongly antagonized Russia, rather than seeking common ground against greater threats from China and Islamic terrorism. This revised worldview has made him a darling of Russian state media. Rohrabacher makes no bones about siding against American leaders and on the side of the Russians:
" 'Stupidity hurts us all': US decision makers ignorant about Russia -- Congressman Rohrabacher," blared a headline in RT, the state-controlled news outlet.
“Rohrabacher, who comes from this Reaganite background, has totally been turned around,” Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a non-partisan think tank, said. “Rohrabacher has been on this soapbox for many years and it's considered outside the norm."
Last April, Rohrabacher traveled to Moscow on an official congressional trip with four other members of Congress and two staffers. Rohrabacher and his senior aide, Paul Behrends, met privately with Vladimir Yakunin, a Putin confidant whom the Treasury Department blacklisted in 2014 to punish Russia for invading Ukraine, according to an itinerary reviewed by POLITICO and confirmed by Rohrabacher.
Other members of the congressional party avoided Yakunin during the trip but Rohrabacher took it upon himself to speak with Yakunin about Sergei Magnitsky, who was a Russian lawyer murdered in jail and who was either a whistle blower on the Putin regime, alleging that Putin officials stole over $230Million; or, Magnitsky was a thief himself, depending upon whether you buy Vladimir Putin's version of the facts. Apparently Rohrabacher does, and this is what has led to him being lionized by Russian media and called "Putin's Top Congressional Ally," by one American media outlet, Politico.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Democratic Representatives derided Rohrabacher's stance on this issue.
“I felt listening to him like I was watching RT, Russian Television,” Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) said.
“There are really no doubts about the veracity of the case of Sergei Magnitsky,” David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said.
But Rohrabacher insisted. “This is a murky issue,” he said. “It is not cut and dry. And I know that over and over again it has been repeated that it is cut and dry and it is not."
Not surprisingly, Rohrabacher has not offered any hard evidence proving his assertion that the matter is not cut and dried.
“The Russians never give up if something is really bothering them and clearly Magnitsky is really bothering them and they don’t want added attention to it,” said William Pomeranz, deputy director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson Center. “We just don’t know yet the willingness of Republicans to oppose Trump’s Russia policy.”
Rohrabacher, for one, is clearly unwilling to oppose Trump's Russia policy. He endorses it. Putin's "top congressional ally" might end up being Secretary of State.