President Donald Trump's "bromance" with Russian President Vladimir Putin is clouding his judgment, Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., told CNN on Tuesday.
Connolly's comments came during a segment centered around the Trump administration's recent approval of the commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, a move that could escalate a conflict between government forces and pro-Russian separatists that has claimed more than 10,000 lives since 2014, and the imposed sanctions on five Russians under the Magnitsky Act.
Host Jim Sciutto asked Connolly how one reconciles the recent moves with Trump's own reluctance to criticize Russia or Putin in his public comments.
"I think that the machinery of the United States government, the defense machinery, the foreign policy machinery has never wavered in understanding that Russia is an adversary and a threat to western values and our own democratic system," Connolly said.
"[But] I think the president has a lot of trouble getting that in his head because of his own personal conflicts and his own personal needs and relationships with Russians, Russian oligarchs who financed part of his enterprise and his inexplicable admiration, bromance, for Vladimir Putin," Connolly added.
"So I think in some ways we're doing this despite the president."