WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate said this week that incumbent senator Chuck Schumer has not protected New Yorkers.
And during an interview with 7 News, Joe Pinion expressed doubt about U.S. aid to Ukraine.
The seat Schumer now holds in the senate is up for election this November.
Pinion is a businessman and hosted a show on the Newsmax television network. In a state that is heavily Democratic, any Republican running for statewide office is considered a long shot.
Pinion disagrees, and says he will build an “uncommon coalition” of voters from the left and right who are unhappy with Schumer.
“He (Schumer) is the most powerful man in the United States Senate, yet we have not had the outcomes New Yorkers deserve,” Pinion said.
He particularly faults Schumer for the rising tide of violent crime.
“People like Chuck Schumer were supposed to know better, had been around long enough to know it would be dangerous, said nothing, did nothing, and people died, including law enforcement.”
Pinion said his top three priorities are public safety, education and “deep, embedded poverty.”
During the interview, Pinion assailed what he called an “open sesame” border policy, and linked it to fentanyl deaths in the United States.
On Ukraine, he said “I think it’s a crime against humanity when we have babies who are dying because we don’t have formula and Similac, and we’re spending $40 billion to protect another nation’s border.”
“We are writing blank checks to a country, to engage in a conflict we do not understand.”
(7 News can find no reported instances, so far, of babies dying because of the formula shortage.)
“We got here because we wanted to pretend that Russia was not just a gas station masquerading as a country,” he said.
“Now we have our own president, in concert with Chuck Schumer, who stands up and says we’re getting out of the oil business, and did not believe that Vladimir Putin was going to want to expand his gas station empire.”
“That’s just the brass tacks of what happened here.”
Pinion said Schumer should have pushed for “harsh, pre-emptive sanctions” in the senate before war broke out.
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