Maxine Waters Quotes

Despite the intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in our presidential election, President Donald Trump and Republican leadership seem wholly uninterested in examining how and why Russia targeted us - and what we must do to prevent it from happening again.

I think that what is true is that the Russians intended to meddle, and they meddled. And it could be another country in the future.

Americans cannot afford to turn a blind eye to Russian interference in our democracy. We need to get to the facts and learn lessons to prevent future misconduct by foreign governments.

I think there was certainly contact between the Trump campaign and Russians, which is perfectly normal. All campaigns in the modern age have contact with representatives of foreign governments.

I think it's important for people to believe their elections are on the up and up and they aren't being tampered with by anyone, and in this particular instance there's a large body of evidence that at a minimum Russia tried to tamper with our election.

Russia may very well be front and center again in 2020 as they were in 2016 regarding interference in America's presidential election. But the Trump administration is seeking to use its power of diplomacy to bring other countries into the act as well.

I think it's safe to say that the Russians are extremely interested in anything that has to do with the U.S. political system. And it's not out of the realm of possibility that they are in many other systems.

Think about it: Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us.

We always say we have wishful thinking that the Unites States would be unbiased, respect the international law, doesn't interfere in other countries around the world, and of course to stop supporting terrorists in Syria.

I've repeatedly seen the anti-Russian card played during domestic political campaigns in the States. I think that it's a very short-sighted approach. It seems to me that it doesn't fully meet the level of responsibility that lies on the shoulders of the U.S. I think that all this should be more dignified, calm and more balanced.

I don't know who did the hacking [through president election 2016]. The article is based on a lie that the R.N.C. was hacked. So the entire premise of the article is false. The sources are unnamed. And the report was inconclusive.The point is, though, we need to find out more facts about this situation. Then we can make intelligent decisions later, and you and I can have more intelligent conversation about what to do about it.

We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election, and, believe me, they're not doing it to get me elected. They're doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump. Now, maybe because he has praised Putin, maybe because he says he agrees with a lot of what Putin wants to do, maybe because he wants to do business in Moscow, I don't know the reasons.

The day after the Republican convention ended, there was another political bomb that was dropped on the U.S. presidential election [2016] from Russia. The day after the Republican convention ended, right before the Democratic Convention began we got what U.S. intelligence agencies believed to be the next big Russian incursion into our election. We got the first WikiLeaks dump.

Since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, why are they complaining about the Russians hacking the election? I mean, Hillary wins the popular vote, what more can a hacker do than get you the majority of the popular vote? But yet they're running around complaining about the hackers and they're blaming the Russians for stealing the election.

America is a powerful country and it has earned the right that nobody from the outside can interfere with it or comment on it. We will work with any administration, with any president who will win the support of the American people, if of course they are ready to cooperate with Russia.

We have the Israelis coming to us for equipment. We can say we can't possibly get the Congress to support a program like this. And they say don't worry about the Congress. We will take care of the Congress. This is somebody from another country, but they can do it. They own, you know, the banks in this country. The newspapers. Just look at where the Jewish money is.

We are at this moment where what concerns me is that we're all so caught up in Donald Trump, James Comey, and David Kushner, and Mike Flynn, that it's in danger of overwhelming the real story, which is what the Russians did and tried to do. I contend that it was the most serious attack on our country since September 11, 2001. It was deliberate, it was sophisticated, it was conscious, and it was in some ways successful.

Unfortunately, when Trump meets with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador, he gives more fuel to the fire.So, I think he should stop meeting with the Russian leaders. They are not our friends. They are our adversaries.

Russian hackers interfered in our elections, and we like penalized a few of them. Whatever they're doing underground, we don't know. No, this is going to be a big issue. And I have to say the Barack Obama - the Donald Trump position is, A, mystifying, but, B, doomed. He has a nice little Vladimir Putin romance going on right now. I think we're going to get out the hankies, because this is going to turn into an ugly relationship within a year or two.

Russia and other countries have been hacking and attempting to attack American institutions for years, that Russia's attack on American elections has been going back for over 50 years. So this is nothing new. And the fact that this particular hack was perpetrated by Russian entities is something that no one is disputing.

Today, it is imperative to end this hysteria, to refute the rhetoric of the Cold War and to accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs. Like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.

I think an increasing number of Republicans are perplexed and actually nervous about Donald Trump and Russia, nervous in the sense that he is gratuitously giving Democrats the national security advantage, that they're standing up for the country.

I concern myself with Venezuela. However, some rightwing movements are transforming me into a pawn in the domestic politics of their countries, by making statements that are groundless.

It's a little hard to avoid putting both war and politics in, in that they both come into the activity, but on their own. My basic idea is to do a great love film set in the hell of 1942. At that moment, hell was Leningrad. Underneath all this, of course, is a film about dissension between the two most important countries in the world, the United States and the Soviet Union. I think it is a must at this point to talk about cooperation instead of the rancor and hatred and competition between nations.

The world has always been a dangerous place. Now it is dangerous in a different way, because the world order that we've known since the end of the Cold War has been radically transformed. All of the institutions that preserved peace and promoted global trade will be weaker - NATO, the EU, NAFTA - and US relationships with other countries will change, too.