Joshua Roberts / Reuters
Just hours before Donald Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in Finland, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse launched a brutal attack on the Russian president, calling him a crook, a liar, and a murderer. Sasse, one of the more frequent critics of the president within the GOP, wrote a string of savage tweets late Sunday night criticizing Putin and saying Trump should not reward him with the bilateral summit. In the thread, Sasse accused Putin of assassinating adversaries, overseeing the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and describes him as “a KGB thug who jails political opponents.” He went on: “I don’t think President Trump should be dignifying Putin with this meeting. When Reagan met with Gorbachev, he did so from a position of strength & moral clarity about the evil empire that the Soviet Union was, and w/ a clear purpose to end the Soviet Union’s threat to the U.S.. President Trump should have only one message for Putin tomorrow: Quit messing with America.”