Trump blames bad relations on Congress
WASHINGTON — President Trump blamed Congress on Thursday for the United States’ poor relationship with Russia, a day after he signed sanctions legislation that he said is flawed and unconstitutional.
In a Twitter message, Trump said: “Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low. You can thank Congress, the same people that can’t even give us HCare!”
The new law, which also includes sanctions on Iran and North Korea, limits Trump’s ability to change restrictions on Russia and is a reflection of bipartisan concern that Trump would ease punishments for the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea and meddling in the 2016 presidential election. In blaming Congress for the poor relations, Trump omits assigning responsibility to Russia President Vladimir Putin for his role in Crimea, for violating a landmark arms control treaty with the deployment of a new cruise missile, and for interference in elections in the United States and Europe.
Several congressional committees and a special counsel are investigating whether there was any coordination between the Kremlin and Trump’s campaign advisers to influence the 2016 election to benefit Trump. The president has called the investigations a “witch hunt.”
Russia had preemptively responded to the new sanctions by seizing two U.S. diplomatic properties in Russia and ordering the U.S. to remove 755 members of its embassy staff stationed there. Trump has not publicly commented on the Kremlin’s response and did not invite the news media to cover the bill-signing event as he has for other laws. Trump called the law “significantly flawed” Wednesday and said it included “a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions.”
Trump has said he wants to improve the United States’ relationship with Russia. He is not the first U.S. president to bristle at Congress for interfering with the ability to set foreign policy.
On Wednesday, Russia Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev declared the “end to hope for the improvement of our relations” and mocked Trump as having been forced to sign the sanctions into law.
“The Trump administration has demonstrated total impotence, handing over executive functions to Congress in the most humiliating way possible,” Medvedev wrote on Facebook.