A Democratic senator flagged a moment between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that made his "stomach turn."
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Armed Services Committee, joined Anderson Cooper on CNN on Friday night following the conclusion of a Trump-Putin summit that many observers felt amounted to a giant "nothing burger."
Blumenthal shared that view.
"Senator, I mean, I've asked this question to a lot of people, but you have seen a lot of these kinds of summits. Did anything come out of this in your mind?" asked Cooper.
"Nothing came out of this summit. It was a nothing burger. It was a shrug of the shoulders," Blumenthal replied.
But Blumenthal said one moment stood out to him.
"But I will tell you, Anderson, my stomach turned when I heard the president of the United States characterize Vladimir Putin as his fabulously good friend," he said. "Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. He has directed soldiers to kill women and children and bury them in mass graves. He's kidnapped children as we speak. The reality on the ground is that people are bleeding and dying all around Ukraine because Putin is continuing to bomb them. And at the front, he's continuing to pummel the brave Ukrainian soldiers who are defending the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the town of Pokrovsk."
Blumenthal said the reason there's no ceasefire and no deal is that Putin didn't want one.
"He doesn't want peace. The only way to convince him to stop this diplomatic rope-a-dope, playing the president and delaying any kind of ceasefire, is through strength."
He called for arming Ukraine with the interceptors for their Patriot systems — and giving them more of them — as well as more missiles, long-range artillery, and "scorching sanctions."
Blumenthal and Cooper threw Trump's words back at him.
"It seems like, if there were going to be some consequences or 'severe consequences,' he could have said something to that effect to Vladimir Putin face-to-face," said Cooper.
Blumenthal agreed.
"You’re absolutely right. He could have said face-to-face, 'There will be severe consequences.' We’ll never know — at least for now, in the short term — whether there was any kind of threat, veiled or otherwise," he lamented.
He said he hopes the world's reaction to the "optics triumph for Vladimir Putin will enrage Donald Trump, or at least annoy him enough that he will support more sales of the military."
He also called for "crippling" Putin's economy by placing sanctions against China, India, and Brazil to push them to stop buying Russian oil and gas.
"The way to stop fueling that war machine is through bone-crushing sanctions," he said, touting his bill that would do just that, and has the support of 85 senators.
Watch the clip below or at this link.