U.S. Sen. Rick Scott on Sunday denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “murderous thug” after Putin’s forces killed an American citizen in fighting near Kyiv.
Brent Renaud, a one-time correspondent for The New York Times and a filmmaker, was killed early Sunday. He was 51.
Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, Scott, a Florida Republican, ripped Putin as an “absolute murderous thug,” responsible for creating the conditions that led to Renaud’s death.
“It’s terrible,” said Scott when asked for his reaction, adding that his “heart goes out” to Renaud’s family.
“Putin is just an absolute murderous thug. We all have to wake up. This is a dangerous world. We have horrible people that want to harm innocent civilians, and take away democracy,” said Scott, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
He said that applied to Putin as well as to President Xi Jinping of China and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of Iran.
Scott also said he wished President Joe Biden was more committed to helping the Ukrainians. The senator wondered, for example, why Poland’s offer of supplying jet fighters to Ukraine was refused. Scott said he was “still furious” about the Polish aircraft, which should already be in Ukraine.
Turning back to Russia’s leader, Scott said, “I pray that Putin ends up in prison, along with everybody that’s helped him for a long time.”
“For everybody that’s lost their lives because of Putin’s murderous acts, my heart goes out to them and their family,” he continued.
“I just hope the world wakes up and says, ‘Why in the God’s green earth are we doing anything to help Russia? Why would we ever, ever do anything to help communist China?’ Because we know they want to destroy our way of life.”
“China wants to invade Taiwan. Are we putting ourselves in the position that all the sanctions that we’ve been able to do against Putin – and we still have more we should be doing – are we going to be able to do the same thing against communist China? Are we going to be dependent on them for pharmaceuticals or something?”
“So we’ve got to wake up as Americans and say we can’t just rely on American military to do everything,” Scott continued.
“We have got to do our part to make sure these economies – the Russian economy, the Chinese economy – are held accountable for what they have now, in the case of Russia, what they’ve done, and what China is threatening to do in Taiwan.”
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They are murderous thugs and so are we.
Not much said of Bidens mass killings after American soldiers were killed. Aid workers. Me so sorry.