President Biden is practicing “appeasement” of Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of Wednesday’s scheduled summit between the two leaders in Switzerland, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News Tuesday night.
“The liberals believe that we’re the problem, not Russia,” Graham told “Hannity”. “That if we were just more reasonable, if we work with them and we gave them the ability to build the [Nord Stream 2] pipeline, if we got back in the new START treaty … everything would be just fine.”
Biden will meet with Putin off the back of a pair of ransomware cyberattacks against fuel supplier Colonial Pipeline and meat processing company JBS. The White House has said both attacks were carried out by Russia-based or Russia-linked hacking groups.
“I hope President Biden will tell Putin that [if] there’s another cyberattack on American business interests, we’re going to come after your infrastructure,” Graham said. “We need to go on the offense. We’ve lost deterrence when it comes to the Biden administration, and we’ve lost respect. Our allies no longer respect us. Our enemies are not deterred by the president and his administration.
“He needs to tell Putin, ‘If there’s another cyberattack in America coming from Russian soil, you’re going to pay a price,'” the senator repeated.
Wednesday’s summit will be the first between Putin and an American president since the Russian leader met with then-President Donald Trump in Helsinki, Finland in July 2018. Trump was criticized following the meeting for expressing doubt about the US intelligence community’s conclusion that Russian officials interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
Unlike at that summit, Biden and Putin will not hold a joint news conference following Wednesday’s meeting, which Graham suggested showed weakness on Biden’s part.
“I didn’t think Trump did a particularly good job in Finland, but at least he did it …,” Graham told host Sean Hannity. “Biden’s feeding a narrative that he’s not able to stand toe-to-toe with Putin.”
Graham’s assessment was backed by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who told the same program: “The fact that you’re not prepared to stand six or eight feet from your adversary and tell the world what it is you talked about, the things you care about and why you care about them, shows enormous weakness.”
“Whether it’s [North Korean dictator] Chairman Kim [Jong Il] or the [Iranian] Ayatollah, or [Chinese President] Xi Jinping, they’re watching this too,” Pompeo added. “When they smell weakness, when they can sniff it, the deterrence model that America’s successful defense depends upon will walk away. These folks will drive a truck through it.
“So if you’re not prepared to simply stand on a podium and respond to questions from the press that might be asked of you that might be hard, or might be tricky while your adversary’s standing a few feet away from you, that’s an enormous sign of weakness.”
