Now Playing Putin: Don't blame me for Democrats' election loss
Russian President Vladimir Putin followed up a warm
letter to Donald Trump with a more terse message for U.S. Democrats
Friday: Don't blame me for your November drubbing.
President-elect Trump on Friday released the Dec. 15
note from Putin, who Democrats blame for tilting the election Trump won
against Hillary Clinton, and called it a "very nice letter."
In it, Putin wished Trump "warmest Christmas"
greetings and expressed hope that Trump would "bring our level of
collaboration on the international scene to a qualitatively new level."
In addition to praising the tone of the letter from
Putin, Trump said, "His thoughts are so correct. I hope both sides are
able to live up to these thoughts, and we do not have to travel an
alternate path."
But Putin, in a year-ending address from Moscow
Friday, had a different message for Democrats as he offered his analysis
of the American political scene.
“Democrats are losing on every front and looking for
people to blame everywhere," he said. "They need to learn to lose with
dignity.
“The Democratic Party lost not only the presidential
elections, but elections in the Senate and Congress. .…Is that also my
work?” he said.
He went on to ridicule Democrats for never-say-die
efforts to overturn the Nov. 8 presidential election, first by calling
for recounts, then trying to get electors to flip.
"The fact that the current ruling party called
Democratic has blatantly forgotten the original definition of its name
is evident if one takes into consideration unscrupulous use of
administrative resource and appeals to electors not to concede to
voters’ choice," Putin said, according to the Russian news agency Tass. THE WEEK IN PICTURES
The former KGB officer even invoked President Ronald
Reagan, the staunch anti-communist who worked with Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev to end the Cold War in the 1980s.
"I think Reagan would have been glad to see
representatives of his party winning everywhere," the president said.
"And he would have been happy for the newly elected president [Donald
Trump], who was sensitive enough to feel the moods of the society and
worked exactly within that paradigm, going to the end, though nobody but
you and I believed that he would win."
"Outstanding figures in American history from the
ranks of the Democratic Party would likely be turning in their graves.
[Franklin D.] Roosevelt certainly would be."
Supporters of defeated Democratic standard-bearer
Hillary Clinton have cited alleged Russian “hacking” of the election for
her surprising loss on Nov. 8.
Putin moved back his news conference a day to attend
the funeral of his ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, who was
assassinated at an Ankara art gallery in a brazen public shooting by a
Turkish policeman shouting slogans about the war in Syria.
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