The Republican Senate has apparently rediscovered a bit of its spine.
In the wake of President Trump’s bizarre Monday press conference with Vladimir Putin, many Americans fretted that Trump’s unwillingness to publicly criticize Putin would make the Russian strongman more confident in continuing his destabilizing activities in the United States and elsewhere. And while no one can know how Putin will respond, the Senate is beginning to stand up to the president.
During the press conference, the president said that Putin had made an “incredible offer” in which Russia would allow Americans to interrogate the 12 officials charged with hacking the DNC and other related crimes, in return for letting the Kremlin interview Americans it has accused of crimes. Those Americans include former ambassador Mike McFaul and financier Bill Browder, who has worked tirelessly to get the U.S. and other countries to sanction Russia.
The Senate on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution calling on the Trump administration to refuse Putin’s suggestion that the two countries swap citizen extraditions, issuing a strong rebuke to the “incredible offer.” The resolution, which written by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, passed 98-0, one day after White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the White House was still considering the idea.
“He said it was an interesting idea,” Sanders said Wednesday. “He didn’t commit to anything. He wants to work with his team and determine if there’s any validity that would be helpful to the process.”
Sanders changed her tune Thursday as the Senate prepared to vote on the issue: “It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it,” she said in a statement. “Hopefully President Putin will have the 12 identified Russians come to the United States to prove their innocence or guilt.” The new statement marked the latest White House walk-back in a week full of them: Trump’s dodgy revisions of his press conference statements (“I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t’”), his reassertion of his trust in the U.S. intelligence community, his grumpy insistence that “There has never been a president as tough on Russia as I have been.”
It’s difficult to overstate how nonsensical it was for the White House even to consider such a deal, which would involve letting Kremlin mooks question a former U.S. diplomat in connection with trumped-up tax fraud charges against a critic of the Putin regime. “Let this resolution be a warning to the administration that Congress will not allow this to happen,” Schumer said on the Senate floor before the vote. “I call on President Trump to say once and for all… that the lopsided, disgraceful trade he called an ‘incredible offer’ is off the table.” The Senate’s resolution was non-binding, but it was clearly enough to twist a concession out of the White House.
But the most important message the resolution sent was not directed at the White House at all, but at Putin himself. Nearly a year ago, Congress passed tough new sanctions on Russia with a veto-proof majority; the latest resolution signals they remain ready to respond to any moves Putin makes in bad faith. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday that the Senate would additionally consider another round of economic sanctions.
These threats matter to Putin. Many on the left who have come to view the Russian despot as a supervillain ever since (they maintain) his interference tilted the 2016 election to Trump seem to believe Putin did so out of pure malicious spite; that he derives some cackling pleasure from seeing U.S. institutions destabilized and an agent of chaos elevated to the American presidency. But for Putin, that destabilization and chaos was always a means to an end: the end of the Western isolation of Russia following its years of bad behavior and aggressive action toward its neighbors. Putin practically said as much to Fox News’s Chris Wallace Monday, when Wallace asked whether he saw the summit as a turning point:
“I think you will see for yourself that this effort [to isolate Russia] failed, and they were never bound to succeed,” Putin said. “I mean, take a look at the scale, the sheer size of it, the importance of it in terms of international security and the economy, its contribution to the global energy market. It’s too big to be sanctioned and isolated.”
President Trump may not be interested in making Vladimir Putin toe the line. But so far, senators are working to show Putin that they, at least, have still got an eye on him.
