Putin Influence Quotes

When the Obama administration announced its 'reset' of relations with Russia in 2009, Americans never expected that it would include making Vladimir Putin the de facto U.S. ambassador to Syria in 2013.

Not much happens in Russian Federation without Vladimir Putin.

In Donald Trump, you have somebody who praises Vladimir Putin all the time. America should really wonder about a President Trump, who had a campaign manager with ties to Putin, pro- Putin elements in the Ukraine, who had to be fired for that reason. They should wonder - when Donald Trump is sitting down with Vladimir Putin, is it going to be America's bottom line or is it going to be Donald Trump's bottom line that he's going to be worried about with all of his business dealings?

The handover of power to [Dmitry] Medvedev was rather painless, everybody thought that the waves would calm automatically. By now, it's quite clear that [Vladimir] Putin doesn't want to relinquish the levers of power.

The Intelligence Community Assessment concluded first that President Putin directed and influenced a campaign to erode the faith and confidence of the American people in our presidential election process. Second, that he did so to demean Secretary Clinton, and third, that he sought to advantage Mr. Trump.

I say we should praise Donald Trump for existing and for winning, because it has woken people up. For many years, I have been trying to say to Europeans, and especially to Americans, that Vladimir Putin is a problem for the world. And they have swatted me away. "It's your problem, we have our democracy." Suddenly, because of Trump, they are learning about separation of powers, independence of the judiciary and that Ronald Reagan was right when he said, «Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction».

Actually, I think we all understand just fine why Donald Trump is president: because he ran a racist, boorish, epically mendacious campaign and Republicans all decided to go along with it. And even that wouldn’t have been enough if Trump hadn’t gotten some additional help from his pals James Comey and Vladimir Putin.

If our country got along with Russia, that would be a great thing. When Putin goes out and tells everybody - and you talk about a relationship, but he says Donald Trump is going to win and Donald Trump is a genius, and then I have people saying you should disavow. I said, I'm going to disavow that?

When Mitt Romney talked about Putin expanding his sphere of influence, Obama mocked and said, 'The Cold War has been over 20 years, nothing to be worried about'... We keep making that mistake with Putin.

Silencing the U.S. State Department, putting a friend of Vladimir Putin's in charge at the U.S. State Department, who stands by quietly while the State Department gets hollowed out, gets gutted, that's a dream for the Russian government, right? That's a dream for Putin.

President Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of Putin.