Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) was on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning and had a very pointed and clear message for anyone trying to intimate that the U.S. is as bad as Russia — which, if the snippets released of Bill O’Reilly’s traditional post-Super Bowl interview with the sitting president are what they seem, President Trump said such a thing.

Watch what Senator Sasse had to say about that:

.@SenSasse to @GStephanopoulos: "There is no moral equivalency" between US and Putin's "murderous thugs" https://t.co/vcuMWFV7C3 #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/Dttk5nQc1E

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) February 5, 2017

The senator was precise in ticking off many of the ways the U.S. is morally different on fundamentals than Putin’s regime.

“Let’s be clear, has the U.S. ever made any mistakes? Of course. Is the U.S. at all like Putin’s regime? Not at all.

The U.S. affirms freedom of speech. Putin is no friend of freedom of speech.

Putin is an enemy of the freedom of religion. The U.S. celebrates the freedom of religion.

Putin is an enemy of the free press. The U.S. celebrates free of the press.

Putin is an enemy of political dissent. The U.S. celebrates political dissent and the right of people to argue free from violence about places where ideas are at conflict.

There is no moral equivalency between the United States of America, the greatest freedom loving country in the history of the world, and the murderous thugs who are in defense of Putin’s cronyism. There’s no moral equivalency there.”

Exactly. We needn’t say more.