The White House has perfected its mastery of gaming the news cycle. This is the real story, buried under all the clamor about classified memos and alleged FBI corruption. I wish we could trust Congress to hold Trump accountable for failing to perform executive duties, i.e. enforcing these sanctions, but nah. Not a chance. Trump is compromised.
Their excuse: Trump didn't want to approve the sanctions in the first place, this is just a cleverish way to never have them actually see the day. If he had vetoed it they could have easily overridden the veto. Honestly now I don't even know what options Congress has. I was under the assumption that the bill had protections limiting Trumps ability, but apparently that isn't the case“Today, we have informed Congress that this legislation and its implementation are deterring Russian defense sales. Since the enactment of the . . . legislation, we estimate that foreign governments have abandoned planned or announced purchases of several billion dollars in Russian defense acquisitions.”
As ridiculous as that is, knowing Russian money, that list is probably fairly accurate of who should be sanctioned. Russia is a kleptocracy through and through
Yeah, I saw the "official statement". Where I come from, institutions don't get to make estimations without citations and studies, and spending $'s. That's not how anything in government works anymore, of course. I'm somehow still surprised by each new piece of evidence that comes out reinforcing how beholden Trump is to Russia. But not as surprised at how quickly America is plummeting into a tribal wrestling match. In summary: It took less than 14 months for a political party to decide that an arm of the executive branch (which is controlled by the same party) is a bigger threat than a foreign government that meddled in our last election and continues to attempt manipulation of American public opinion. All because of the FBI's links to the investigation of a president that is supposedly innocent. I hate to sound alarmist, but it looks like either the GOP loses several major organs, or we will continue our slide into tyranny. Edit: To somewhat avoid sounding like I'm part of a tribe, I should say that the democrats have plenty of problems on their side of the aisle. Please, keep investigating Hillary, probe the FBI, etc., but for godsakes, don't rely on memos authored by pudge-faced fingerpuppets like Devin Nunes. Establish a second special council, if need be.