WhatFinger


Trump is doing a poor job of being Putin's puppet

U.S. imposes massive new sanctions on Russia



U.S. imposes massive new sanctions on Russia Anyone who takes seriously the idea that Donald Trump is a toady for Vladimir Putin is paying too much attention to CNN and MSNBC headlines, and almost none to actual U.S. policy. Trump's opening up of U.S. domestic energy production alone has caused a major shift in global energy markets that has damaged Russia geopolitically like few other things ever could. But what's happened in the last 24 hours has really driven home how much the U.S. is ready to go to the mat to hold Russia accountable for its recent misdeeds. First, Nikki Haley absolutely eviscerated the Russians at the UN over the Skripal poisoning:


Now, just within the past hour, the U.S. has imposed major new sanctions on Russia for hacking and election meddling:
The Trump administration on Thursday issued for the first time sanctions against Russia for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections and for cyberattacks, targeting the Kremlin’s intelligence agencies and individuals indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for their role in election interference. In sanctioning five entities and 19 individuals, the U.S. Treasury also cited a cyberattack known as NotPetya and a nerve agent attack in the U.K. that left a former Russia spy and his daughter in critical condition earlier this month. The Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency, a.k.a. the Troll Factory, ?used fake social media accounts before and after the 2016 U.S. election to collect sensitive personal information on Americans, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. Shelby Holliday explains how the Russian schemes worked.? The action comes after the Trump administration has come under heavy criticism for its response to Russia’s election meddling amid a special Department of Justice counsel investigation into Moscow’s involvement in election interference and whether there was any collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, a charge Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied. “The administration is confronting and countering malign Russian cyber activity, including their attempted interference in U.S. elections, destructive cyber-attacks, and intrusions targeting critical infrastructure,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a statement. “These targeted sanctions are a part of a broader effort to address the ongoing nefarious attacks emanating from Russia.”

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Despite all the hyperventilating about "election interference," Russia poses a much bigger problem for the U.S. with its continued support of rogue regimes like North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. That is where U.S. interests are most threatened, not by fake links on Facebook. But the Russian poisoning of Mr. Skripal in the UK shows exactly how ruthless Putin is willing to be in undermining those he considers to be strategic rivals. The U.S. can and should make the Russians pay a heavy price for that. None of this will matter with respect to U.S. political narratives - not that this is the most important thing. If Trump does nothing, it's because he's Putin's lackey. If Trump does something, it's just because he's sensitive to the criticism. These are the things small-minded people talk about. In a real geopolitical sense, the Russians have to start suffering for the things they're doing, and the U.S. action today is a step in that direction. It will probably not be the last step that's necessary.


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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