The Slatest

Trump Praises “Very Smart” Putin for Sanctions Restraint

President-elect Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, where he was taking meetings on Dec. 21.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday for declining to publicly retaliate against sanctions levied at his government by the Obama administration.

Writing that sentence made my face hurt, but here is the president-elect’s tweet, which he subsequently pinned to the top of his page:

Here is a list of journalists murdered in Russia since 2000.

Here is the cybersecurity analysis that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Friday accurately described Russia’s cyberattack intrusion into our election for the apparent purposes of helping Donald Trump’s election.

Here is a report on the Dutch prosecutorial inquiry that found that Russia had supplied separatists in Ukraine, which Russia had invaded, with the missile system that shot down a passenger plane in 2014, killing all 298 on board.

President Barack Obama announced on Thursday sweeping sanctions against Russia for its role in hacking the Democratic National Committee for the apparent purposes of influencing the election for Trump. The president-elect said he would look at the intelligence community’s evidence that this is what happened, but that he feels “it’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.”

Whether or not Trump’s latest note of praise for Putin means he will undo the sanctions once he enters office is unclear. If he does, he will face political pushback from his own Republican caucus, with Republican congressional leadership and prominent senators having said Obama’s actions didn’t go far enough.

Obama issued economic sanctions against Russian intelligence agencies, individual Russian intelligence officials, and others. He also closed two consulates and expelled 35 diplomats he described as intelligence agents.

The Russian consulate in San Francisco responded on Friday by lamenting the fact that these officials had to leave the country on such short notice and by saying one of them was a professional cook.

Donald Trump takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2017.