Though the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act suffered from some important flaws, its central purpose was sound: The proposal was created to impose sanctions and other economic penalties against Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia and its trading partners. It cleared Capitol Hill with relative ease, and two days later, Donald Trump signed it into law, despite the Republican president’s record of weakness toward Moscow.
Late Friday — a time politicians frequently use to release information they hope will go unnoticed — the American president halted implementation of the law he had signed almost exactly one month earlier. The Associated Press reported:
President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order that puts on hold a sweeping new sanctions package targeting the Russian economy, telling Congress the pause was in the national interest.
Trump personally signed the legislation just last month and his move came just two days before a deadline set in the law itself for its implementation.
In a written statement, the Republican said he had decided to block implementation of the law because, according to the White House, it’s in “the national interests of the United States.”
Trump made no effort to explain why, exactly, it was in the United States’ interest to waive sanctions on Russia.
The condemnations from Democrats were immediate. “Trump just gave Putin the best birthday gift he’ll get this year,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “By giving the Russian economy life support, Trump’s deal with the devil keeps getting dirtier. There’s nothing America First about Trump caving to Putin and exempting Russia from U.S. sanctions.”
The New York Democrat added, “Americans need relief from skyrocketing prices. Instead, Trump is aiding and abetting a dictator who has helped Iran target U.S. troops in the Middle East.”
The backlash, however, wasn’t limited to the president’s critics. On the contrary, several prominent congressional Republicans, as well as former Vice President Mike Pence, slammed the move and publicly urged Trump to reconsider.
Predictably, he ignored the calls. In fact, on Sunday afternoon, the American president published a defense of his policy to his social media platform, insisting that he was “in the process of negotiating Peace,” and that he believed implementing U.S. law and penalizing Russia would likely drive Putin’s government “away from the bargaining table.”
The same statement slammed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and former U.S. President Joe Biden, but it included no comparable criticism of Putin, whom the missive didn’t refer to at all.
At face value, Trump’s written rationale is difficult to take seriously. Indeed, to an almost cartoonish degree, he’s been showering Putin with unearned gifts for quite a while — offering sanctions relief for Russian diesel fuel, echoing Kremlin talking points, pumping billions of dollars into the Russian economy, peddling false accusations against Ukraine, ignoring existing U.S. laws that ban Russian oil imports, looking the other way on Russia aiding Iran during the ongoing U.S. war, delivering diplomatic victories for Moscow, etc. — and getting nothing in return except more deadly attacks.
The benefits Trump is delivering to his Russian counterpart, in other words, have not advanced the peace process in any way.
But if Trump’s stated reason doesn’t make sense, what’s the actual reason for his humiliating weakness toward Putin? The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait recently ran through some of the possible explanations, ranging from Putin running a successful flattery campaign to the Republicans’ general sympathies for authoritarian dictatorships to potential corruption.
Let’s also not forget that as recently as 2020, former Republican Sen. Dan Coats, who served as Trump’s director of national intelligence during his first term, conceded in an interview with Bob Woodward that he spent much of his tenure as DNI wondering whether Putin had something on Trump — a concern that intensified over time — that somehow compromised the American president.
“How else to explain the president’s behavior? Coats could see no other explanation,” Woodward wrote.
Looking ahead, a possible Democratic majority in Congress could launch a meaningful investigation into alleged Russian influence campaigns and Putin’s influence in Washington. But in the meantime, The Wall Street Journal reported that Putin is proposing some kind of summit between Russia, China and the United States, which would apparently decide Ukraine’s future.
Ukrainian officials, under Putin’s proposed plan, would not be welcome at the discussion about their own country’s future.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
The post Trump’s latest pro-Putin move prompts bipartisan backlash and awkward questions appeared first on MS NOW.
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