Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of the May 21 ABC-TV News program “This Week with George Stephanopoulis.”
Here is a key excerpt about Russian President Vladimir Putin:
SEN. BEN SASSE (R), NEBRASKA: Good morning.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You just heard General McMaster right there and his reaction to that meeting with the Russians where the president was apparently freelancing when he talked about James Comey and said the pressure was off after he fired them.
Was it appropriate for the president to be talking to the Russians about that?
SASSE: Well, I mean let’s be clear, obviously, we don’t have aligned interests with Russia. Russia is — Putin in particular is an enemy of free speech, religion, press, assembly. He’s the enemy of many of the things that are at the beating heart of America.
So we need to be clear that we don’t have aligned interests with Russia.
And yet, there’s a lot in that last segment that’s pretty encouraging to the American people, I think. General McMaster is a special guy. The president should be applauded for having him in place.
And I think he said clearly in that interview — I heard most of your segment — he said the biggest problem between U.S. and Russian relations is Russian behavior. That’s a pretty good thing to have the administration acknowledging.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes, I actually agree with that. But if you listen to the whole interview, it also sounded like the president didn’t even confront Russia on the election interference.
This was his first meeting with a high level Russian official. The president disparaged the person investigating Russia, didn’t apparently confront them on their own interference.
SASSE: Yes, no, clearly, we need to know a lot more about what happened in 2016. Russia has bad motives toward the U.S., past, present and future. We need to know more about 2016 and the American people should applaud the appointment of Bob Mueller this week as special counsel.
I also think we need to be looking to the future, because what comes next in 2018 and 2020 is more aggressive Russian behavior, augmented by new kinds of technology that are going to make the erosion of American public trust even easier for Russia to advance.
So obviously, we, the American people, all across the political spectrum and in both the legislative and the executive branches need to be confronting the challenge that we face from Russia going forward, as well as see the investigation play out about last cycle.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You’re a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It’s been a remarkable 10 days of news coming out of the White House ever since the president fired James Comey. We’ve learned reports that the president asked Comey for a loyalty pledge back in January, that in February, he told Comey he hopes that he’ll close the Flynn investigation. The firing of Comey saying that Russia was on his mind. And then he tells the Russians, the pressure is off the next day.
When you put that all together, when you see that pattern, what does it tell you?
SASSE: Yes, I mean there’s obviously a lot that’s troubling about that. There’s also a lot that we don’t know yet. And I want to underscore how good it is for America that Bob Mueller has this position. This is a decorated Marine through to U.S. attorney to head of the criminal division to, you know, bipartisan applauded head of the FBI for 12 years. Lots of good stuff for the American people to put hope in about the fact that Bob Mueller is going to conduct that investigation.
But frankly, we all need to be looking forward to the task of trying to rebuild trust in a lot of these institutions. The FBI doesn’t take loyalty pledges to an individual. The FBI is a special institution that is supposed to be defending the American “Constitution” by letting investigative paths go where they lead. And, obviously, when you’re an agent at the Bureau, all the way up to the director of the Bureau, you don’t take a loyalty pledge. That’s a specific agency that has a really hard job. And we need the American people to know that they can trust the FBI in the future.
And so everybody needs to be taking it upon themselves to say what am I doing now to advance the ability of the American people to trust in the institutions of our government, like the Bureau, in the future?
