What Does Russia Have on This Man?

by Adam Kinzinger

Let me tell you what happened this weekend — and I want you to sit with it, because the Republican Party’s silence on this is one of the most disqualifying things I have witnessed in my lifetime.

Trump had imposed an oil blockade on Cuba. Hard line. “Cuba is an extraordinary threat.” The whole thing. Then this weekend, a Russian government-owned oil tanker called the Anatoly Kolodkin — a vessel that is sanctioned by the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom — sailed toward Cuba carrying roughly 730,000 barrels of oil. And Trump waved it through.

“If a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem, whether it’s Russia or not,” he told reporters on Air Force One. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Russia had “raised the issue in advance during contacts with American counterparts.” Meaning Trump and Putin’s people talked about it. And Trump said yes.

He dismissed the idea that helping Russia break his own blockade was any kind of problem. “He loses one boatload of oil, that’s all it is,” Trump said of Putin.

One boatload. Okay.

Now let me tell you the other thing that’s been happening, the thing Trump has nothing to say about.

Since the war began on February 28, Russia has been providing Iran with real-time targeting intelligence — the locations of American warships, aircraft, and military assets across the Middle East. U.S. officials confirmed this to the Washington Post on March 6. One official described it as “a pretty comprehensive effort.” Iran’s attacks have since struck American radar and command-and-control assets with a precision that analysts say reflects outside intelligence assistance. Six U.S. troops were killed in an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait. An American E-3 Sentry surveillance aircraft was badly damaged at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Images of the wreckage circulated online.

When Trump was asked about Russia providing targeting intelligence to Iran — intelligence that is getting American service members killed — he called it “an easy problem compared to what we’re doing here” and added that it was “a stupid question.”

Russia is feeding Iran the coordinates of our forces. American personnel are dying and being injured as a result. And the President of the United States thinks the question is stupid.

This is the same president who, when Russia was providing targeting help that got Americans hurt, waved a Russian oil tanker through an American blockade. The Kremlin was “pleased,” Peskov said. Of course they were.

I am not given to conspiracy theories. I don’t know what happened in that Moscow hotel room. I don’t know what’s in those financial records. But I know what I see. And what I see is a president who will bomb Iran, Venezuela, Yemen — who will pick fights with Canada and Denmark and Australia — but who will not say one hard word about Vladimir Putin under any circumstances. Not when Russia helps Iran target our troops. Not when Russia undermines our own foreign policy in our own hemisphere. Not one word.

And here’s the question I keep waiting for a single Republican congressman to ask: Why?

Not in a Fox News greenroom. Not off the record. On the floor of the House or the Senate, on the record, in public: Why is this president constitutionally incapable of confronting Russia about anything?

The silence from the GOP is its own answer, and it is not a flattering one. These are men and women who spent years talking about American strength, about not appeasing adversaries, about the deep state and deep corruption. And they sit there, mute, while Russia helps kill American soldiers and our president thanks them for it with oil deliveries to Cuba.

Someone should ask the question. Loudly. With their name attached to it.

Because the rest of us already know there’s a question that needs answering.