There's growing bipartisan unrest among the rank and file over just how much of the White House popular vote loser Donald Trump has ceded over to Vladimir Putin, but so far Republican leadership shows no concern. To the contrary, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, aka the "investigator," is launching a special investigation to protect Trump from further scrutiny by trying to shut down leaks showing just how cozy Trump and Putin might be. As for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he sees no reason to safeguard the country from Trump.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has signaled that he will not support bipartisan legislation announced yesterday that would prevent President Donald Trump from rolling back sanctions on Russia.
"I don’t think that’s necessary at this point," McConnell told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Wednesday evening. He did add that he would "certainly encourage" Trump to leave sanctions in place.
That bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the House and Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio, along with Democratic Sens. Ben Cardin and Claire McCaskill, plan to introduce the companion Senate bill, which apparently will go nowhere thanks to McConnell's opposition. It would put into law existing executive orders that impose sanctions on Russia and would force the president to wait 120 days before making changes to sanctions.
McConnell, like Chaffetz, also doesn't believe that there needs to be any special outside investigation into the growing allegations of Trump's campaign or administration communications with Russia. He says the existing Senate Intelligence Committee can handle it. "You have a select committee when you think you can’t handle it with the existing structure," he says. That would be an existing and highly partisan structure that can delay and delay and bury any findings under a "classified" stamp.
McConnell, in fact, thinks everything with Trump is just great. "I like what he's doing," he says. "I like the attack on over-regulation. I like the Cabinet appointments." In other words, just keep giving all those big gifts to the polluters and the banksters, and Trump can do whatever he likes.