A potential pick for secretary of state dismissed human rights abuses in Russia during a heated exchange with a Yahoo anchor Wednesday.
“When you talk about human rights abusers in China much can be said about Russia as well in that regard,” said Yahoo’s finance anchor Bianna Golodryga.
“Oh, baloney! Where do you come from? How can you say that?” asked GOP California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.
Golodryga responded by explaining that she came to the U.S. as a political refugee from the former Soviet Union.
“Oh, well then that’s good, then the audience knows that you are biased,” Rohrabacher replied.
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Rohrabacher continued to object to Golodryga’s attempts to compare China’s human rights abuses to Russia.
“I said they are both human rights abusers. How am I wrong?” Golodryga asked. “Russia isn’t accused of murdering journalists?”
“Ah, OK, look, I’ll let the public decide with that last comment where you are coming from. The bottom line is what’s good for America is to prioritize,” Rohrabacher said.
Rohrabacher’s comments are the equivalent of telling a North Korean defector that their criticisms of Kim Jong-un’s regime are irrelevant because they are from North Korea, making them “biased.”
Russian assassinations of journalists and independent critics are well documented by human rights organizations and media.
Rohrabacher continued to emphasize that Russia is a strong country with which the U.S. should be friends to ensure peace and stability in the world.
“Russia is no longer the Soviet Union,” Rohrabacher said. “There’s a bunch of people here who want to treat it like it’s still the Soviet Union and get in the Cold War … It’s better to cooperate with them to actually take on real enemies,” which Rohrabacher believes to be radical Islam and China.
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