GOP Rep. Gallagher to MSNBC: 'Failure' of Current Russia, Energy Policies Are the Issue, Not People Who Left Office a Year Ago

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) responded to host Andrea Mitchell shifting a discussion on the situation in Ukraine to statements by former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by arguing that the statements of private citizens who haven’t been in office for over a year aren’t causing the crisis in Ukraine, and that we should focus on things like the “failure” of our current approach and our “totally counterproductive and misguided” energy policy.

Gallagher called for the U.S. to provide more weapons to the Ukrainians and argued that “Putin wants a quick and painless victory. We need to turn this into a long, costly quagmire, something akin to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which was initially a brilliant conventional move, and then turned into an utter disaster that expedited the fall of the Soviet Union. Similarly, with a little bit of creativity and some bipartisan urgency, I think we can still turn this into a long-term, embarrassing fiasco for Putin.”

Mitchell then said, “Well, speaking of things — fiascos for Putin, what about fiascos for people here at home? The Republican Party is so divided now, with president — former President Trump and Mike Pompeo praising Putin for being, savvy, smart, a genius. That’s now playing on Russian television as propaganda for them.”

Gallagher responded, “Well, I really don’t think anything that’s being said on the golf course at Mar-a-Lago has any connection to the current crisis. I mean, Trump’s been out of office for a year now. I think we really need to be focusing on whether our approach — and I say our, I mean, it’s not — it’s the White House working with Congress, whether it’s working. My contention, my argument, is that it’s not. We need to learn from that failure and not get distracted by anything else, and work in a bipartisan manner to fix that failure.”

He continued that while there are disagreements on foreign policy in both parties, there is an agreement among the GOP “that our energy policy is totally counterproductive and misguided right now. I think the decision to allow Nord Stream 2 to go forward was disastrous. I think we need to be investing in domestic, American energy production, and over the long term, that gives us an opportunity to wean our European friends off of their reliance on Russian gas and Russian oil.”

He added that there have been presidents of both parties who have underestimated Putin and the current situation should be a learning experience.

Mitchell responded that Trump is “the most popular Republican in the party and still calling the shots in a lot of primaries around the country. So, his voice is heard in Moscow.”

Gallagher cut in to respond, “But he’s not the current president of the United States.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett