As President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, reactions from lawmakers back in Washington, D.C., flooded in, including one Republican who said he wants the president nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize following the summit.
While Republicans largely praised Trump for an assertive posture and for his efforts working towards peace, Democrats accused the president of being too friendly with Putin.
"President Trump, I think, is just crystal clear that Putin's back is against the wall and I think he demonstrated that clearness with his very first action before saying a word with the fact that he flew B-2 bombers over [Putin's] head," said Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla. "That was not on accident, obviously. For him to fly a B-2 bomber over Vladimir Putin's head, it was a signal to him that when President Trump says, 'Hey there could be very serious consequences.'"
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However, while Mast expressed that he saw Trump challenging Putin, Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell described the summit as akin to "Trump toast[ing] Putin like he was giving him the lifetime achievement award."
"What a Kremlin kiss a-- our president is," Swalwell added.
Meanwhile, as the meeting was kicking off, Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., said, "The very fact that Putin will be on American soil is a huge win for him."
"First, he is legitimized and not a global pariah. Second, he would be subject to arrest in 123 countries due to his ICC arrest warrant. Here [sic] is walking free," Vindman lamented.
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"Trump invited a dictator onto U.S. soil just to get his s*** rocked," added the official X account for the Democratic Party.
But Republicans rallied around the president's handling of the summit, with Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., announcing Friday night after the summit concluded that he intends to draft a Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Trump.
Some Republicans took the opportunity Friday to slam the former Biden administration for failing to take the necessary action to halt the war in Ukraine.
"When Joe Biden became president he waved the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, he gave Putin and Russia a multi-billion dollar gift, and the reason that caused the war is because Putin had refrained from invading Ukraine because he didn't want to damage the natural gas pipelines that run through Ukraine," Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Friday in an interview on Fox News.
During the summit, while Putin was addressing reporters, he said that he believed the claim from Trump and Republicans that had Trump been president when the war began instead of Biden, it likely never would have started in the first place.
"The key to ending this war honorably and justly is to create an infrastructure of deterrence that Biden and Obama failed to do — which will prevent a third invasion," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said following Friday's summit.
The South Carolina senator added that following the summit, a meeting between Trump, Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be necessary. The senator argued that, with such a meeting, he would be "cautiously optimistic" that the war could end "well before Christmas."
"If that meeting fails to materialize, I think President Trump may have to go all in to punish those who buy cheap Russian oil and gas, propping up Putin’s war machine," Graham concluded.
