Executive Session
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, Trump derangement syndrome has officially come to the Senate. The hatred for the President is so intense that partisans would rather risk war than give diplomacy a chance. Does anybody remember that Ronald Reagan sat down with Gorbachev and that we lessened the nuclear tensions? We need to still have those openings.
Nobody is excusing Russia's meddling in our elections. Absolutely we should protect the integrity of our elections. But simply bringing the hatred of the President to the Senate floor in order to say ``We are done with diplomacy. We are going to add more and more sanctions''--you know what. I would rather that we still have open channels of discussion with the Russians. At the height of the Cold War, Kennedy had a direct line to Khrushchev, and it may have prevented the end of the world.
Should we be so crazy about partisanship that we now say ``We don't want to talk to the Russians. We are not going to have relations with the Russians''? We should stand firm and say ``Stay the hell out of our elections,'' but we should not stick our head in the ground and say we are not going to talk to them.
I would like to see the Russians leave Ukraine. I think we could do it through diplomacy. We are not going to have it if we don't talk to them.
I would like to see the Russians help more with North Korea, with denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We are not going to have it if we just simply heap more sanctions on and say that we are not going to talk to the Russians and that anybody who talks to the Russians is committing treason.
For goodness' sake, we have the former head of the CIA, John Brennan, gallivanting across TV--now being paid for his opinion--to call the President treasonous. This has to stop. This is crazy hatred of the President. Crazy partisanship is driving this.
For goodness' sake, we don't excuse Russia's behavior in our election, but we don't have to have war. We can still have engagement. We have engaged Russia throughout 70 years, while also acknowledging the imperfections of their system, the parts of their system we vehemently disagree with--the lack of freedom, the lack of human rights. Yet we had open channels of negotiation, open channels of communication.
I could not object more strongly to this.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source