At a Senate committee this week, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) questioned President Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the decision to send an official U.S. delegation to the “Russian Davos,” an event to discuss economic development in Russia, particularly while Russia continues to bomb Ukraine and kill civilians.
Durbin added: “President Trump is bizarrely sending a delegation to a conference in Russia to discuss economic development.” Durbin referred to the event as “designed to prop up Putin’s war machine.”
While Russia bombs Ukraine and kills civilians, President Trump is bizarrelysending a delegation to a conference in Russia to discuss economic development.
I challenged Secretary Rubio today to explain why we would send any U.S. official to a such an event designed to prop up… pic.twitter.com/GDYx6bhqYU
— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) June 3, 2026
Rubio said, “I’m not aware of the delegation that went…I’m aware of the event, I know they were hosting one, but I don’t think it would have been a high level official.”
Durbin replied, “I’m not sure what level it is, but to think we had any official, including Steven Seagal, the actor, as one of the people representing the United States. Are you familiar with that?”
Rubio replied, “I’m familiar with who he is.”
Max Sedden, Financial Times Moscow Bureau Chief, reported on Monday that in addition to Seagal, Rodney Mims Cook, Jr., President Trump’s chief of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, also spoke at the event.
For the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine, the US is sending a sitting official (Rodney Mims Cook Jr, the Trump ballroom commissioner) to Putin’s flagship conference in St Petersburg?
Will Russian statesman Steven Seagal be there, you ask? Well, I have good news! pic.twitter.com/0NFJhDk0ZL
— max seddon (@maxseddon) June 1, 2026
The RT — a Russian state-sponsored news source — released the video below of Seagal, sitting next to Cook, discussing his opinion of Hollywood, and said “in the past five or six years, movies really went down,” because, according to Seagal, the movies have featured people who are “sexually liberated.”
[NOTE: According to IMDb, Seagal has not appeared in a Hollywood movie since 2019.]
‘Hollywood kind of fell down with all of these different groups that I disagreed with vehemently’ — Steven Seagal at SPIEF
‘I remember I got a notice even saying – every movie that you do, you should have people that are… sexually liberated in different ways’ pic.twitter.com/Y2XISfg4pq
— RT (@RT_com) June 4, 2026