Rep. Hurd: ‘The Sanctions Against Russia Are an Important Tool’

RUSH EXCERPT:
HURD: "It is very clear that the Russian intelligence services were involved in the hacking of the democratic national committee and the democratic campaign congressional committee and that Russia is our adversary. They are not our allies. Another thing I learned when I was in the CIA, be nice to nice guys and tough with tough guys. The sanctions against Russia are an important tool, not only because of this most recent hacking, what the intelligence community refers to as griz si step, but because of their previous activity, going into Ukraine, going into crimea, the Russians going into Syria. The reason they're in Syria is not to prop up bashar Al Assad. They're there in order to have an air base to project power into the mediterranean. What are their plans and intentions with Estonia? They want to see the back of nato broken. We need to have all the tools at our fingertips to deal with Russia. I think another tool we should be using and what we should be talking about is how do we sell energy to eastern Europe. The Russian economy is more tied to the price of a barrel of oil. We have a lot of energy here. Our eastern European allies want to buy it from us and not from Russia. These are whe