A Quote by Margaret Warner
Tillerson, at ExxonMobil, brokered multibillion-dollar deals with Russia, meeting with Putin multiple times. In 2013, he received the Order of Friendship award from Putin himself. But Tillerson today said he'd support continuing sanctions against Russia for now. He also implied his intimate knowledge of Russia meant he understood its strategy, and could anticipate its moves, to America's benefit.
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People take the lazy way out, and do not regard Putin and the Kremlin as the real enemy. They create a long but erroneous chain in their heads. Putin is the leader of Russia. Putin does X, therefore Russia is doing X, and Russia is our enemy. And so, we introduce sanctions, for example, against Russia.
What deal is [Maxine Waters] talking about? [Rex] Tillerson's done a lot of deals. [Donald] Trump's done a lot of deals, but she's got a deal in mind that Tillerson negotiated with [Vladimir] Putin. Putin is there, or Tillerson's there to lift the sanctions.
There you see Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson closing a deal with [Vladimir] Putin in 2011. Two years later, he received one of Russia's highest civilian honors, the Order of Friendship.
I think there are a lot of Americans who are very scared, scared that [Vladimir] Putin manipulated us, worried about Rex Tillerson, the winner of Russia's order of friendship as the secretary of state.
Russia went into Syria basically to support President Bashar al-Assad. And the Western allies have said Russia's really done very little against ISIS. For his part, Putin said Russia's open to stronger cooperation, and he supports Frances's effort to build a strong anti-terror coalition.
Vladimir Putin hates America, he wants to hurt us. Suddenly Vladimir Putin is a good guy, Russia is okay, no it's not. Russia is evil, Russia is our enemy.
Russians want to drill in the Arctic. Rex Tillerson has negotiated a multibillion-dollar deal with Exxon to do that drilling. They can't get the equipment, the supplies and all that they need until the sanctions are lifted. They want Donald Trump; not only will he support lifting those sanctions, he also will turn a blind eye to the expansion that Putin is trying to do. He does not care about them having invade Crimea and does not care whether or not this egotistical maniac, Vladimir Putin, is attempting to reunite the whole Soviet Union.
US opposition to Russia and China has entailed sanctions against Russia, and Russia in turn has made counter-sanctions against Europe. So Europe is essentially sacrificing its opportunities for trade and investment in order to remain part of NATO. It is also agreeing to bomb Syria and the Near East, creating a wave of refugees that it doesn't know what to do with.
We've got oligarchs. There are certain people that benefit in the Russian sphere if you will. The oligarchs who basically feed Putin, they've got to be hurt without hurting the people. The people are hurting bad enough in Russia, and they're very skeptical of what's going on and all of the corruption goes on in Russia. Russia is not our ally. Russia is not our friend. And to treat Putin as an ally and a friend is wrong.
[Rex] Tillerson is there to get these sanctions [against Russia] lifted. I believe it. Just watch him!
I don`t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She [Hillary Clinton] is saying Russia, Russia, Russia. Maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia. But it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people.
I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. [Hillary Clinton] is saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don't - maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?
Donald Trump can say hey, did she [Hillary Clinton] short-circuit when she reset the relationship with Vladimir Putin and now Russia is, according to "The New York Times" article today, Russia is in control in Syria?
Vladimir Putin doesn't really gain anything economically from annexation of Crimea. It's more a gain of power. It's a gain of what he can say to his home population about what he's accomplished as president. And so it's really much more an individual gain for Putin politically than for Russia as a state, because over the long term, Russia is not going to particularly benefit from this.
The mission is to demonstrate that Russia is not Putin, that we're ready for cooperation, and that there are a lot of people in Russia who want the U.S.-Russia relations to be improved and that we don't view the United States as our enemy.
We know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin, whether it's saying that NATO wouldn't come to the rescue of allies if they were invaded, talking about removing sanctions from Russian officials after they were imposed by the United States and Europe together, because of Russia's aggressiveness in Crimea and Ukraine, his praise for Putin which is I think quite remarkable.
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