By 2011, the Nixon family had to cut relations with the Center for the National Interest. Simes had grown too close with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Write Politico at the time:
* “To the Republican stalwarts, family members, and former political aides who sit on the Foundation board, however, the Center and – particularly — its longtime president,
Dimitri Simes, had become nothing less than an embarrassment to the Nixon family name. Simes, an imposing eminence of Russia policy, was – in their view — offering apologies for Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin and even attacking their party’s presidential candidate, John McCain, for his denunciations of Russia’s invasion of Georgia.”
)
