On Wednesday, President Trump signed a new sanctions bill targeting Russia. Russia has reacted with unrestrained fury. Indeed, fury is an understatement.
In a Facebook post specifically referencing Trump, the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (No. 2 only to Putin), warned that Congress sees Trump as “an incompetent player” who must be “liquidated”.
Yes, you read that right.
While Medvedev is suggesting that Congress will liquidate Trump for opposing their efforts to sanction Russia, this also reeks of a Russian warning to Trump specifically. The rest of Medvedev’s post was equally aggressive. He suggested that Trump has shown “complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner, transferring executive powers to Congress” and that this is the “beginning of full-fledged trade war” and “the end of our hopes of improving relations with the new administration.”
Let’s be clear, this a very cold, very traditional Russian threat. And if it comes from Medvedev, it comes from Putin.
Medvedev continued his criticism on Twitter, saying in a series of tweets that, “The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way.”
He added, “The US establishment fully outwitted Trump.The President is not happy about the sanctions, yet he could not but sign the bill” and, “We will steadily continue our work on developing the economy, relying mostly on ourselves. We have learned to do this.”
As John Schindler warned earlier this week, it seems increasingly likely that the Russians have abandoned Trump. Their first priority was sanctions relief and now they’ve got the opposite.