Clovis Expressed Staunchly Pro-Russian Views A Year Before Campaign
By JOSH MARSHALL, SAM THIELMAN and CAMERON JOSEPH Published NOVEMBER 17, 2017 3:14 PM
Sam Clovis, an academic and one-time rightwing talk radio host, was an early supporter of presidential candidate Donald Trump, switching his allegiance from Rick Perry to Trump in August 2015. He has also become a key part of the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 campaign because of his key role assembling an early group of foreign policy advisors and overseeing them as they made contacts with Russian nationals. But a campaign video from more than a year before Trump announced his candidacy suggests Clovis had strongly pro-Russian views on the crisis in Ukraine well before Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015.
The video, posted on March 17th, 2014, came one day after a Russian-sponsored referendum designed to legitimize the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. The actual annexation took place one day later. Clovis was then a candidate for the Senate seat now held by Sen. Joni Ernst and the video was posted to his campaign site. He said his knowledge of Ukraine and Russia stemmed from his time in the US Air Force.
(The video was posted to Twitter on November 2nd by USAToday reporter Steve Reilly and picked up by TPM Investigations Desk reporter Tierney Sneed.)
Clovis’s short campaign video espouses the view of Russian nationalists that Ukraine is a historical part of Russia and that it is natural and expected that Russians will again wish to reincorporate Ukraine into the Russian state.
“Ukraine has been an independent nation for only 23 years.” Despite Ukraine’s desire to remain independent, continiues Clovis, “that doesn’t appear to be the case today because it appears that Russia, placing forces on the ground in Ukraine, will help assist them in moving back into the Russian empire. You must remember that Russia, the nation that we know, the historical Russia, actually originated in Ukraine. This is important for us to remmeber because Russians will want to expand back again into those old boundaries, the old empire.”
more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/clovis-expressed-staunchly-pro-russian-views-a-year-before-campaign
= new reply since forum marked as read
I wish we had a competent president who could denounce them and put them in their place. Their leader is a James Bond villain who is out for world domination. 
