If Trump’s phone call to Putin was a mistake, what about Obama’s?

First reported by The Washington Post late Tuesday, and confirmed by Fox News, the NSC prepared a memo for the president’s post-election phone call with Putin, which warned him not to congratulate Putin on his election victory. It appears Trump did not follow that guidance.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the Skripal poisoning, about which Trump signed a letter – along with his counterparts in Britain, Germany and France – blaming Russian Federation did not come up during the phone call with Putin.

Republican Senator John McCain even described President Putin as a dictator in one of his tweet, “An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections”. “This shows that Trump continues to believe that he can make a “deal” with Putin and is unconstrained by his advisers who have been arguing for restraint and caution”.

Yermakov – the head of the ministry’s non-proliferation and arms control department – alternated between tough talk and quips and said in response to a question from a British official: “I am ashamed for you”. It said President Trump was considering options to hold Moscow responsible while responding to its “malign activities”, the report added.

Her comments were notably tougher on Russian Federation than those coming from the White House.

It, however, did not clarify whether the options included the step of expelling Russian diplomats, something the United Kingdom has already done and many other European Union countries are considering to. “This is not the action of a regime that is being successfully deterred”. At the same time, he engendered a fair amount of scorn, with opposition leaders claiming his administration was rife with corruption and deals that help fatten the bank accounts of Putin and his supporters, while those who dared oppose him often found themselves facing long prison terms, or worse.

That would have been a politically prudent thing, given Trump’s agreement with Britain and France that Russian Federation was behind the recent assassination attempt on a former spy there.

While the president has conceded Russian Federation was responsible for hacking into Democrats’ email accounts, he refuses to point the finger of blame at Putin.

The phone call also came just days after the United States imposed sanctions against 19 Russian nationals and five entities over Russian interference in the U.S. elections. The Trump administration seems to have been dragging its feet on slapping additional punitive sanctions on Moscow to the annoyance of Congress, while Putin and Trump have been mostly avoiding personal public attacks on each other.

And finally, it’s not a Trump-Russia story without a Simpsons reference.

“Special attention was given to considering the issue of a possible bilateral summit”, the Kremlin statement said.

In other words, the U.S. Constitution requires the president to share power with Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I think that such large-scale civic participation, your responsibility, the consolidation are very important, especially nowadays, amid complicated internal and external challenges we face”, Putin said.

However, former president Barack Obama also wished Putin well after the Russian election on March 4, 2012. Many others, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, sent congratulatory telegrams.

Obama called Putin five days after the vote, “to congratulate him on his recent victory”, according to an official readout of the call.

Senior White House officials have previously opposed a bilateral meeting with the Russian president.

Robert Mueller is now heading up a Special Counsel that is investigating the role the Kremlin may have played in President Trump’s election campaign and his subsequent victory.

Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying about his involvement with Russian Federation.

A former deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates, who had his own Russian connections along with a now-indicted former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has pleaded guilty to lying about Russian-related matters.