White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the following with a totally straight face during Tuesday's briefing:
I think we've been very hard on Russia from the beginning. There have been Increased sanctions; we've increased energy exportation from this country; we've done things to put pressure on Russia, asking them to engage in a bigger and greater way on some of the common enemies that we face.
Just wow. It simply defies reason that anyone could even think to conjure up this behemoth of a lie on the fly, let alone allow it to pass their lips.
Americans of all stripes (with the exception of Trump's white supremacist and neo-Nazi base) have spent the past two years marveling at the extensive number of contacts Trump associates have had with Russian operatives on top of Trump's undying and glowing praise of Vladimir Putin. In fact, you may have heard (though Sanders hasn’t) that there’s an entire investigation into it.
"There have been sanctions,” Sanders says. No, there have not—precisely because the White House has blocked the sanctions Congress passed this summer from going into effect.
When Congress sent President Donald Trump a bill in July that slapped new sanctions on Russia, the president signed the legislation reluctantly while lambasting it as an example of congressional overreach.
The administration has since blown past an October 1 deadline to implement the sanctions. Lawmakers are now searching for answers as to whether the president is even planning to follow the law that they passed and he signed.
Hopefully, lawmakers haven't been searching for any answers at the White House.
The question was asked in response to comments from Trump's national security security adviser HR McMaster that appear to completely contradict the White House's spineless posture toward Russia.