Congress may not be able to hide the nuclear football when Trump is at Mar-a-Lago, and they’ve failed to get Trump to sit still long enough to fill critical open roles in government, but they are working to Trump-proof Russian sanctions.
Senate leaders struck an agreement Monday to roll out additional sanctions on Russia and make it difficult for the President to lift them.
The Senate Foreign Relations and Banking Committee announced a deal that had the support of the committee's top Democrats and Republicans that's expected to attract wide bipartisan support.
Russia is under sanctions from the US for their interference on our election, and under international sanctions for their invasion of Ukraine. The idea that Donald Trump would attempt to pull those sanctions is so … on the nose? Obvious? Blatant? So over that even Russian officials didn’t even expect it.
First deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov said the Russian government's plans for 2017 are based on the expectations that sanctions are here to stay.
But Trump was working on a nice surprise.
Unknown to the public at the time, top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office, tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.
Of course, this is legislation, so the president who, amazingly, claims to have passed more legislation than any other, would have to sign it.
Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on foreign relations, expressed confidence Monday that Trump would sign off on it.
"I would be very, very surprised if the President vetoes this bill. Now he's surprised me on a lot of things. But we haven't passed a bill," he told reporters. "I find as we get to the finish line on these bills, every administration generally joins us...so I think we'll have the support of the administration. I'm confident about that."
But it wouldn’t be the first time Trump has surprised people on this issue.
“There was serious consideration by the White House to unilaterally rescind the sanctions,” said Dan Fried, a veteran State Department official who served as chief U.S. coordinator for sanctions policy until he retired in late February. He said in the first few weeks of the administration, he received several “panicky” calls from U.S. government officials who told him they had been directed to develop a sanctions-lifting package and imploring him, “Please, my God, can’t you stop this?”