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Speaking with Radio Sputnik, Russian lawmaker Alexei Pushkov commented on the pressure currently being mounted on United States President Donald Trump. According to Pushkov, Trump’s opponents want to tie his hands, especially in relations with Russia.
Political elites in Washington will try to do everything possible to neutralize President Trump, putting him in a situation in which he would not be able to act independently, according to senior member of the Russian parliament's upper house Alexey Pushkov.
© REUTERS/ KEVIN LAMARQUE
According to the lawmaker, in fact Trump is now being forced to continue the policy of his predecessor Barack Obama.
Pushkov pointed out that the recent resignation of General Michael Flynn from the post of the US presidential administration’s national security advisor should be considered in the very same context.
Flynn resigned on Monday after media reported based on illegal leaks of classified information that he had misled senior US officials about the extent of his talks with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak before Trump's inauguration.
"This was a very heavy blow to Trump. Three weeks after his inauguration, Trump now resembles a man who cannot withstand the pressure being mounted on him. His executive orders are suspended, his policy is in limbo. Certain forces behind the scenes in Washington are blocking Trump’s decisions. […] This is a blow to the presidential powers. He was forced to accept Flynn’s resignation," Pushkov said in an interview with Radio Sputnik.
The lawmaker contemplated that the pressure on President Donald Trump will persist.
"I think that they [the US establishment] will try to turn Trump into a copy of Barack Obama, in terms of foreign policy," Pushkov noted.
According to him, opponents are blocking Trump’s initiatives on a range of crucial matters, including US relations with NATO and cooperation with Russia against terrorism. They want Trump to embrace the same approach on those issues as the Obama administration had.
"It seems that political elites in Washington are doing everything to make Trump bound hand and foot. They want to put him in such conditions so he would be unable to act independently. This doesn’t mean he would be an exact copy of Obama, but his Republican opponents and the Democrats want him to preserve the main parameters of Obama’s foreign policy," Pushkov concluded.
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