Americans are 'downright ashamed' after Trump's latest 'betrayal': senator

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) didn’t mince words while launching into a forceful condemnation of President Donald Trump’s sudden shift on Ukraine in a CNN interview where he blasted the administration as a historic disgrace.

The criticism came Wednesday in response to remarks Trump made during the first cabinet meeting of his second term, where he ruled out offering U.S. security guarantees – or NATO membership – for Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“This is an effort to pressure Zelensky into giving up something for nothing,” Schiff said when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked how the California lawmaker interpreted the president’s latest message in the fluid situation.

“And I have to say this, on top of the resolution at the United Nations – where the United States sided with Russia, betrayed Ukraine – is one of the most shameful incidents in modern history,” Schiff told Blitzer. “I think millions and millions and millions of Americans watching this not only disagree with the president, but maybe for the first, time are just downright ashamed of the president because we have betrayed an ally.”

But Schiff was just getting his dressing down of Trump started.

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“We not only betrayed an ally, but we betrayed our principles,” he said of the Ukraine situation. “Are we to be nothing except transactional now? We have no commitment to democracy, no commitment to our allies. It’s all going to be about the money. That seems to be Donald Trump's orientation.”

He added: “But what a sad chapter of our history.”

Later in the interview, Schiff called Trump a “hostile U.S. president, who seems so beholden to Vladimir Putin." On the other hand, Zelensky, according to Schiff, “has been really Churchillian in his leadership through these three years of war.”

“Ukrainians have made just tremendous sacrifices and to be reduced to this by his most important ally, the United States, coming hat in hand with some kind of fig leaf offer of the mineral wealth of his country in exchange for little or nothing," Schiff concluded. "It is really just tawdry, but it is, you know, what this administration has reduced our allies to."

Watch the clip below or at this link: