Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today in respect to S.J. Res. 60, which, as I understand it, will be up for vote here fairly quickly. And I rise in opposition to S.J. Res. 60. S.J. Res. 60, in essence, says that we would not keep the commitment that we have made to sell or refurbish the F-16 jets to Turkiye. I am not here to tell you that Turkiye is the best partner that we have had. Indeed, as former chairman and now ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I deal and have to deal with them regularly on a lot of issues. They are an ally in NATO. NATO, as we all know, is the strongest political and military alliance that has ever been created on the planet, and Turkiye is a member of that alliance. To be honest with you--and I tell them this face-to-face--they are not acting like a partner; they are not acting like an ally, and there are a long list of complaints that we have in that regard. This actually started with defense missiles that they wanted to buy, and we offered them the Patriot missiles, as we do to all of our NATO allies, and, indeed, instead, they chose to purchase Russian S-400 missiles. At the same time, they had purchased, or were in the process of purchasing, four F-35 of ours--which everybody wants, understandably. But at the time that they bought the S-400s, I told them they can't have S-400s in the same country as F-35s. If they are going to do business with Russia, so be it, but there are consequences for that.…”