Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Wednesday again expressed hope that someone would "take out" Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Graham continues to maintain that Putin needs to be neutralized despite widespread criticism he received after initially saying he hoped the Russian leader would be assassinated.
"I hope he’ll be taken out, one way or another," Graham said when he was asked by a CNN reporter whether he still stood by his earlier calls for Putin to be assassinated. "I don't care how they take him out. I don't care if we send him to the Hague and try him, I just want him to go."
Graham first said he hoped Putin would be assassinated on March 3 during a television interview and via a tweet days after Russia invaded Ukraine.
"Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Col. Stauffenberg in the Russian military?" Graham tweeted.
"The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country — and the world — a great service.”
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., voiced his displeasure with Graham's tweet during an interview on Newsmax.
"I think that's a bridge too far," Marshall said on Friday's "Spicer & Co.''
"I was visiting with some Army leadership today, and they didn't bring it up. But I just asked myself, Does that help us do our job, help them do their job, or does it hurt them?"
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also criticized Graham's remarks.
"This is an exceptionally bad idea. Use massive economic sanctions; Boycott Russian oil & gas; and provide military aid so the Ukrainians can defend themselves," Cruz tweeted March 4. "But we should not be calling for the assassination of heads of state."
The White House sought to distance itself from Graham's earlier call for Putin's assassination.
"That is not the position of the United States government and certainly not a statement you'd hear come from the mouth of anybody in this administration," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said March 4.
"We are not advocating for killing the leader of a foreign country or regime change. That is not the policy of the United States."
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