Washington, Europe Brief News – US senator Lindsey Graham has attracted widespread condemnation after he suggested Vladimir Putin should be assassinated.
Graham first made the suggestion in an appearance on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show on Thursday evening, and he then repeated the idea in a tweet that quickly went viral.
“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out,” Graham said on Twitter. “You would be doing your country – and the world – a great service.”
Brutus refers to one of the assassins of the Roman emperor Julius Caesar, and Stauffenberg was a German army officer who was executed for attempting to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944.
Graham added in a separate tweet: “The only people who can fix this are the Russian people. Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate.”
Harsh Criticism
Despite immediate criticism of Graham’s comments from left and right in the US, he doubled down on the idea in a Friday morning interview with Fox & Friends. “I’m hoping somebody in Russia will understand that he is destroying Russia, and you need to take this guy out by any means possible,” Graham said.
Russian officials also attacked Graham’s comments as “criminal” and demanded that the US government provide an explanation for his rhetoric.
“The degree of Russophobia and hatred in the United States towards Russia is off the scale,” the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, said in a Facebook post. “It is impossible to believe that a senator of a country that promotes its moral values as a ‘guiding star’ for all mankind could afford to call for terrorism as a way to achieve Washington’s goals in the international arena.”
American lawmakers of both parties responded to Graham’s comments with shock, dismay and outrage, pointing out the danger in demanding the assassination of a leader whose troops are currently engaged in shelling nuclear plants.
“I really wish our members of Congress would cool it and regulate their remarks as the administration works to avoid [a third world war],” the progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar said in a tweet. “As the world pays attention to how the US and [its] leaders are responding, Lindsey’s remarks and remarks made by some House members aren’t helpful.”
