Sen. Tammy Duckworth Wednesday slammed President Donald Trump's claims that he did now know about reports that Russia had paid a bounty for the deaths of U.S. soldiers as "ridiculous" and insisted that he "allowed the Taliban" to carry out Russia's orders.
"I'm just absolutely appalled that this is what's happening and that our president is missing in action," the Illinois Democrat said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
There are only three things that could have happened if Trump actually did not know about the intelligence coming out of Afghanistan, said Duckworth.
"One, they told him about it and he doesn't remember," she said. "Two, we know that it was in his presidential daily brief, and he doesn't know about it; it means that he didn't actually read his briefing, he didn't bother to do his homework. Or three, the people around him know that he is so incompetent and unlikely to do anything or they're afraid that he is someone who will compromise our intelligence sources that they didn't tell him."
None of those options, she added, are acceptable, and even now that he knows about the reports, "he still hasn't done anything. He hasn't spoken up. All he's done is deny and try to shift blame."
Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, said she's hearing from members of the military and veterans that they feel they are not being protected by Trump.
"I have a bunch of folks that I call my truth-tellers," she said. "These are my folks who generally vote Republican, who are still in the military, and I reach out to them and say, 'Hey, what is going on, what's your feeling here?' And they all say the same thing, that they cannot believe that the president would not be leading at this point. And they want to know, what do the Russians have on him? Why is it that he is so unwilling to confront Vladimir Putin?"
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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