Hurd knocks Trump: 'Not gonna try to make Vladimir Putin my BFF'

04 July 2023

Former three-term United States Representative and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Will Hurd of Texas jabbed at ex-President Donald Trump's infatuation with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a Fox News appearance on Monday evening.

Hurd — who from 2000-2009 served as a clandestine officer with the Central Intelligence Agency prior to getting elected to the House in 2014 — officially launched his White House bid on Thursday, June 22nd, joining an increasingly crowded coterie of contenders cajoling the GOP primary bloc to dump Trump.

"Hurd was first sworn into Congress in January 2015" and "he was one of only two Black Republicans in the House. By the time he left in January 2021, he was the only one," politics correspondent Maggie Astor of The New YorkTimesnoted in June.

The retired spy and cybersecurity expert "represented one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country — a vast, largely Hispanic stretch of South Texas that he won by 2.1 percentage points in 2014, 1.3 percentage points in 2016, and half a percentage point in 2018 — and his voting record reflected that," Astor continued. "Hurd supported legislation to end a government shutdown in 2019 and to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination. He also pushed for immigration reform, including protecting young people from deportation."

Hurd has been a vocal Trump critic since Trump entered the 2016 race. Astor recalled that Hurd demanded that Trump abandon his bid for the presidency following the leak of the Access Hollywood tape, condemned Trump for declaring that "there were very fine people on both sides" after the deadly 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and alleged in a New York Timeseditorial that Trump was "being manipulated by Putin" and "actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign."

Hurd, however, voted against impeaching Trump for attempting to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Astor additionally pointed out that Hurd "denounced many components of Mr. Trump's immigration policy — describing his proposed border wall as a 'third-century solution to a 21st-century problem,' calling the separation of migrant children from their parents 'unacceptable,' and saying that his ban on travelers from a list of majority-Muslim countries 'endangers the lives of thousands of American men and women in our military, diplomatic corps and intelligence services.'"

Hurd's remarks on Fox reflected his ripened distaste for Trump and his affinity for Russia's seventy-year-old dictator.

"Here's one of the big differences between me and some of the leading candidates including Donald Trump," Hurd began. "I'm not gonna create, I'm not gonna try to make Vladimir Putin my BFF. I'm gonna treat him like the war criminal that he is."

Hurd criticized President Joe Biden as well.

"What we've learned from Ukraine is we should have supported the Ukrainians before the Russians invaded. Just like in Taiwan, we should be giving Taiwan all the tools and equipment they need in order to defend themselves before the Chinese try to take it, try to take it by force. And why should every American care about this?" Hurd contemplated. "Because if the Chinese government gets access to seventy percent of the world's advanced manufacturing when it comes to semiconductors, that's gonna impact everything."

Watch the clip below or at this link.

The remainder of Hurd's profile in The New York Times is available here (subscription required).

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