With Five Weeks To Go, Obama Finally Gets Tough With Russia

In an “exit interview” with National Public Radio, Barack Obama engaged in some belated finger-wagging at Russia. 

He all but blamed Russian hacking for Hillary Clinton’s defeat: “There's no doubt that it contributed to an atmosphere in which the only focus for weeks at a time, months at a time were Hillary's emails, the Clinton Foundation, political gossip surrounding the DNC,” Obama said. 

“There is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections, we need to take action—and we will, at a time and place of our own choosing … Mr. Putin is well aware of my feelings about this, because I spoke to him directly about it,” he added. However, with five weeks left in office, he admitted that any punitive action would be up to the Trump administration. 

This sounds a lot like, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime … that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” Assad wasn’t impressed, either. 

Mr. President, you had eight years to get tough with Russia. Yelling “Yeah, you better walk away!” at Putin’s back only demeans American foreign policy further.