Aug 20, 2020 - Politics & Policy

Hillary Clinton rips GOP senators: They seem like they've had a "lobotomy"

Hillary Clinton criticized her former Republican colleagues for their responses to the explosive findings in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on 2016 Russian interference, accusing them of giving up "their principles, their values, their backbone" to follow President Trump.

Why it matters: The fifth and final volume of the committee's report released this week went further than the Mueller report in showing the extent of Russia's connections to members of the Trump campaign. But the reactions to the findings were starkly divided along partisan lines, with Republicans claiming that the report puts an end to any claims of Trump campaign "collusion" with Russia in 2016.

What she's saying: "I don't understand what has happened to the people that I served with, I worked with, I traveled with, who literally seem to have had like a lobotomy or something," Clinton said on MSNBC, moments before the start of Night 4 of the Democratic National Convention.

  • "You have the intelligence officials of even the Trump administration sounding the warnings, and you have a lot of good legislation that's come out of the House under Nancy Pelosi that goes to the Senate and is basically buried by Mitch McConnell."
  • "They have just given up their principles, their values, their backbone to following Trump, regardless of where he leads."
  • "I give credit to people like Mitt Romney who stand up and speak out, but I wish there had been more Margaret Chase Smith, who was the first Republican senator to speak out against [Joseph McCarthy]."
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