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Two weeks before House Speaker Paul Ryan announced his retirement, he visited the Czech Republic. According to his web site, it was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the establishment of U.S.-Czech relations. But while he was there, he said several things that contradict the messages sent by the Trump administration. For example, here is part of his speech to the lower house of Congress:

“When Havel said ‘We shall not surrender freedom’, he surely knew that there were powers that would try and wrest it back and that would try and take us backwards. He knew that there were forces that would seek to remake the world in their own authoritarian image. “And as we gather to celebrate the ties of the last century, we are called to confront the challenges of the next century. The Czech people are no strangers to Russian influence, whether in the guise of oppression or whether in the guise of subversion. “Russia has violated its international norms with its aggression against our closest allies in eastern Europe. More furtively, it spreads disinformation and engages in cyberattacks. It meddles in elections throughout Europe as it did in the United States. Russia does not share our interests or our values; if anything it is seeking to undermine those values. We must see this for what it is.”

That sounds more like the kind of thing we heard from Barack Obama than Donald Trump.

During this trip, Ryan also repeatedly emphasized this country’s “rock-solid commitment to our NATO allies.”

While in Prague, Ryan met with the Czech prime minister and gave speeches in both chambers of the Czech Parliament. But he didn’t meet with President Miloš Zeman, a Putin ally.

Finally, Ryan spoke with lawmakers to urge the extradition of Russian hacker Yevgeniy Nikulin to the United States.

The Czechs arrested Yevgeniy Nikulin in Prague in cooperation with the FBI in October 2016. He is accused by U.S. prosecutors of penetrating computers at Silicon Valley firms in 2012 and they want him extradited to face trial.