GOP congressional leaders have generally accepted the intelligence community’s findings, and they sought Sunday to deflect attention from Trump’s stance toward Russia by emphasizing that his professed goal of improving the United States’ ability to work with Moscow is in line with the approach taken by his predecessors.
“It’s not unusual for a new president to want to get along with Russia,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on “Face the Nation.” But he added: “My suspicion is that his hopes will be dashed pretty quickly. Russia is a big adversary and they demonstrated it by trying to mess around in our elections.”
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he understands why Trump would “want to be buddies” with Putin, saying it was no different from President Obama and former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
But Nunes, a member of Trump’s transition team, said on “Fox News Sunday” that he has “cautioned this administration to be careful with Putin, because I think he is a bad actor. It is true we’d like to be friends with Russia, but I’m just not sure it’s possible.”
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