Newsweek - Dennis Kucinich Doubts Russia. Will That Help Him Become Ohio Governor?

In order to try to match the corporate financial contributions of Republicans, will some Democrats start to push Russian friendly policies in order to attract Russian online support? As we saw with Trump, Russian support is off the books and not subject to campaign finance regulations.

http://www.newsweek.com/dennis-kucinich-ohio-governor-trump-russia-865067

Ohio political analysts have long considered Kucinich an outspoken progressive, one cut from the same cloth as Senator Bernie Sanders. (Our Revolution, a progressive group aligned with Sanders, has endorsed Kucinich for governor.) So those analysts find it puzzling that since leaving office, Kucinich has become a Fox News contributor and has made statements that mirror what President Donald Trump and his allies say, especially about Russia.

Though his skepticism about Russian meddling is unusual for a Democrat, Kucinich has long promoted dialogue between that country and the U.S. “I don’t believe that Russia is currently a threat to U.S. security,” the then-congressman said at a forum on U.S.-Russia relations in 2008, months after dropping his presidential bid. In 2009, he started the Congressional Russia Caucus, and the following year, he spoke at the World Russia Forum, an annual event hosted by Russia House, a company based in Washington, D.C. and Moscow.

After leaving office, in 2014, he condemned the U.S. sanctions on Russia for its interference in Ukraine. “We need to stop playing Cold War games,” he told a Russian state-operated news agency. Then following the 2016 election, after the Barack Obama administration said Russia meddled, he posted on Facebook, “Enough of the BS about #Russia stealing the election. This is CIA & State Dept propaganda trying to legitimatize their increased hostilities towards Russia.”

After Trump took office, Kucinich continued giving interviews that seemed in line with what the president—whose inauguration speech Kucinich praised—was saying. In one interview, he said Obama should have fired then-FBI Director James Comey for Comey’s disclosure about new evidence in the completed investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, and called it “astonishing” that Comey was still leading the bureau and its Russia probe. (Trump fired Comey a month later.) In the same interview, he said the Russia issue “is hurting the Democratic party,” and that “the Democrats are losing valuable time trying to blame the 2016 election results on Moscow.”