“Well, I’m very proud of the fact that the president Joe Biden is in Europe saying we’re back,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’re back for climate. We’re back for an open society.

“Now let’s just make a contrast,” she said. “The president, the former president of the United States, for whatever reason, whether the Russians had personal, political or financial leverage over him, kowtowed, catered to Putin in a way that was humiliating to the United States of America.”

“But he is head of an important state in terms of the issues you raise. The president should meet with him, and I think he’s going to meet a very different president than one who was at the mercy of Putin.”

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended the Trump admin from the charge of being soft on Russia telling Chris Wallace:

“Well, Chris, you said it yourself, they didn’t complete the pipeline. We had imposed real sanctions on the ships that were doing the construction, the insurers that were underwriting. We made clear that that pipeline was not going to be completed.

“It would not have been completed had we had four more years, I’m very, very confident of that.

“And with respect to human rights, I — we take a backseat to no one. I heard Secretary Blinken talk about the work they’re doing to try and convince the Europeans to stand alongside us on human rights violations in China and the work that they’ve done defending human rights against Russian abuses. We were tough there too, Chris. 

“I’m proud of the work we did there. It was good work. It was serious work and it made a difference.”