Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, the sole contender for short-listed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for vice president with experience in military combat, said he believes intelligence indicating that Russia put rewards on the heads of US troops is “very credible”. – directly refuting President Donald Trump’s claim of “fake news”.
“It continues to take Vladimir Putin’s word above his own intelligence community,” he told ABC News political director Rick Klein on the “Powerhouse Politics” podcast on Wednesday. “I just don’t know why he continues to put our adversary above our own people.”
Duckworth sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee and cited the briefing for senators, adding that the move “would be consistent with the way our adversaries act.”
Trump, in an interview with Axios, said he “never discussed” the matter in a phone call last week with the Russian president, and when asked why he did not raise it, he said: “That was a phone call to discuss other stuff and frankly that’s a problem that a lot of people said was fake news. “
Duckworth, a former lieutenant colonel in the US Army, urges the Army Department to conduct an investigation into whether any of the deaths or injuries of US troops in the past two years in Afghanistan were “rewards related.”
Before entering politics, Duckworth was deployed to Iraq in 2004, losing both legs and the use of his right arm when the Blackhawk helicopter he was piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Her urgency on the subject comes from her own years of service, but in the midst of her former vice president’s search for her own running mate, her authority has placed her on a list of disputed women to be vice president.
If she were to serve as Biden’s second-in-command, Duckworth, a veteran of the Iraq war and recipient of the Purple Heart, would likely lean on her background. But the senator did not reveal when the last time she spoke to Biden or her position in the ongoing process.
“I am not free to say whether I have spoken to him,” he said, adding that his “paths intersect” at events. “I am willing to do whatever it takes to serve my nation … Some girls fall in love with a band’s drummer, I fall in love with the line of ‘you need to serve your country.'”
Before Biden makes a decision, which he said he plans to choose for next week, he is expected to meet with the contenders at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, a final step in the process that has been complicated by the coronavirus. But Duckworth said he is confident that the Biden team “will do everything possible to safeguard the health and well-being of everyone involved.”
Duckworth is among an even smaller cohort of women who have a personal relationship with the Biden family, which developed in the years after Biden’s late son, Beau, was introduced at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
“It was incredibly stressful,” she said of speaking at the quadrennial meeting, before adding, “it made me feel so patriotic.”
Their relationship further evolved when she served in the Obama administration as an assistant secretary in the Department of Veterans Affairs, where she said that “she and Jill Biden and she crossed paths many, many times” because of her focus on issues. of veterans.
“Over the years, I have learned and met this military family and their dedication to our veterans and our troops on duty and I have been very, very proud to have known the Bidens all these years,” she continued.
With the elections less than 100 days away, Duckworth distorted the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying he “failed to address” the crisis, which she says has exacerbated problems within his hometown of Chicago. .
“We could be much better,” he said. “But I suppose this president has so marred our nation’s response to this pandemic, I suppose, ‘magical thinking,’ as he said, or ‘magically disappear,’ is not working.”
Amid the pandemic, Duckworth is balancing dual roles as a senator and a working mother with two daughters, a reality that has put more weight on some of his legislative priorities.
“I have always been a supporter of child care and universal prekindergarten, for example. And in the last four and a half months, five months, it showed me how desperately we need it in this country. I can fly helicopters, but I am not equipped to teach reading to a 5-year-old boy, “he said.
As the country debates when schools should reopen, Trump continues to urge students and teachers to return to classrooms, even as cases of the virus continue to rise in more than two dozen states.
For his part, Duckworth spoke to the very difficult-to-catch 22 parents across the country currently face.
“You don’t want to fail your kids. But then again, I don’t want COVID-19 to catch me either,” he said. “So this is very, very difficult for working families who can barely stand it.”
The junior senator is pushing for Congress to develop a child care plan and implement universal pre-K and more testing amid the outbreak. He also said he is prioritizing “significant” funding for schools in the upcoming coronavirus relief bill, along with guidelines for reopening.
When asked about another confrontation with the White House, Trump’s threats to send federal officials to Chicago, Duckworth said he is “happy to see that” if the officers work “in association” with the mayor and local police.
But Duckworth defiantly opposed the clashes in Portland, Oregon, between federal agents with tactical equipment and protesters, calling it “simply not acceptable” and suggested that the president is acting out of pure policy.
“They are seizing peaceful protesters from the streets, pushing them in unidentified vans and driving,” he said. “Something is wrong in Portland, with the president continuing to politicize all kinds of institutions, be it the police or federal agencies, for his own political gain.”
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