President Donald Trump didn't have "America's back" with his comments backing Russian President Vladimir Putin during their press conference Monday, and it's time for Republican leaders to "man up" and do something about it, former President Ronald Reagan's adviser and assistant press secretary Mark Weinberg said Tuesday.
"Simply put, I don't think the president had America's back, and that's the bottom line," Weinberg told CNN's "New Day," during an appearance alongside former President Bill Clinton's press secretary, Joe Lockhart."The president of the United States should always have the country's back, especially against an adversary like Russia."
Republican leaders, he said, must "man up," and "do to Trump what Trump didn't do to Putin and they should go to him and say 'knock it off. It's enough. This is not how you should be behaving.' [Senate Leader] Mitch Mcconnell and [House Speaker Paul] Ryan should be in a cab to the White House this morning,"
During his joint press conference alongside Putin on Monday, Trump said that during their private conversation earlier in the day in Helsinki, Finland,
Putin had been "extremely strong and powerful" in his denials about Russian meddling.
He also called special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's meddling a "disaster" and told the international media that "President Putin says it's not Russia; I don't see any reason why it would be," when asked whether he believed his own intelligence agencies over the Russian president.
Weinberg said Trump's actions are "worrisome" because nobody knows what will happen next.
"When he says, well, I believe the intelligence community but the Russians deny it and there's some kind of choice, he should always be on the side of the American intelligence community," said Weinberg. "That's a no brainer."
Lockhart had one even stronger word to say about Trump's actions: "Treason."
"I think we've moved past whether the president is a witting or an unwitting agent of the Russian government," he told CNN. "It doesn't matter now. Vladimir Putin for a decade has been trying to undermine NATO and undermine the European Union as is primary adversary, to expand his economic and political influence around the world, and to bring Russia back to Russia."
Trump played into those goals by going to Europe, said Lockhart, and he "did all of Vladimir Putin's bidding" by undermining the European Union and NATO before refusing to "standup for America."
"We have to get away from whether he knows what he's doing or not and focus on what he's doing," said Lockhart. "That is the very definition of treason. When you put someone else's interests, whether it's your own or another country's ahead of our nation, that is treasonous. That may sound like a radical statement, but it's simple and it's true."
Congressional Republicans must get serious, he added.
"This has to go beyond tweets," said Lockhart. "If this was any other president in any other time there would be a move towards at least censure for this kind of behavior. I don't expect that will happen, though."
Lockhart said he thinks the administration will go "underground" until another event changes the subject, but Weinberg said he thinks Trump should address the issue further.
"It may be too late," he said. "If I were advising him, I would say if you're willing to do this, sir, you should do a television interview and say I was misunderstood and here is why. I would try. But I don't think he will. The one thing about Donald Trump is you always know what he's thinking."
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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