Turkey’s new and bestest ally in US Government — Lindsey Graham?
by digby
Yesterday I posted about Trump’s weird meeting with Turkish President Erdogan, in which he invited a bunch of Republican Senators who have been critical of Turkey in recent days to the White House. He apparently thought he was “mediating” between his good, good pal Erdie and the Republicans who’ve had some qualms about all the violence and ethnic cleansing of American allies against ISIS.
He didn’t really need to mediate. These Republicans are all sniveling cowards who will do exactly as they’re told.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) blocked a resolution on Wednesday that would have formally recognized the Ottoman Empire’s genocide against the Armenian people.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) asked for consent to pass the resolution that would have provided “official recognition and remembrance” of the Armenian genocide.
“The United States foreign policy must reflect an honest accounting of human rights abuses, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide. We cannot turn our backs on the Armenian victims of genocide,” he said.
Menendez noted that he listened to President Trump’s press conference Wednesday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Turkish president scolded a House-passed resolution recognizing the genocide and instead promised to “establish a history commission.”
Graham objected to passing the resolution in the Senate, saying senators shouldn’t “sugarcoat history or try to rewrite it.”
Under the Senate’s rules, any one senator can ask for consent to pass a bill or resolution, but any one senator can block it.
Graham’s objection came hours after he took part in a White House meeting with Trump, Erdoğan and a group of GOP senators.
“I just met with President Erdoğan and President Trump about the problems we face in Syria by the military incursion by Turkey. I do hope that Turkey and Armenia can come together and deal with this problem,” he added on the Senate floor.
Graham added that he was objecting “not because of the past but because of the future.”
He was talking about his own future.
Has there ever been anyone to display their cravenness and desperation so publicly so often?
By the way, the Senators sat there like a bunch of potted plants as Trump and the Turkish leader treated them like lackeys:
During a meeting in the Oval Office Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pulled out an iPad to show a small group of Republican senators and President Donald Trump a propaganda video casting the Kurds in a negative light, according to a GOP source familiar with the situation.
The source called the video, which was first reported by Axios, “surreal” and “straight propaganda.”
Trump later went out and said that Erdogan has a very good relationship with the Kurds. You know, the people they are currently ethnic cleansing and calling terrorists.
If he weren’t currently being impeached this probably would have been a bigger story. As it is, the president of the United States shamelessly sucking up to authoritarian dictators is just another day in the Trump administration.
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