One of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations. If Obama had publicly, unilaterally discussed how Russia was influencing the election, you would have been all over him for acting in a partisan fashion. Why don't you ask why McConnell wouldn't agree to support Obama in condemning Russia, or blame Trump for welcoming Russian influence?
MARTIN: This is from an interview this morning with CBS News. And, on Twitter yesterday, Mr. Trump wrote, quote, "the stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama administration, not the Trump administration. Why didn't they do something about it?" - unquote. So we thought this would be a good moment to fact-check that claim, so we asked our national security editor Phil Ewing to break this down.
Phil, thanks so much for coming.
PHIL EWING, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: The assumption in what President Trump is saying is that President Obama took no action after learning that the Russians were interfering in the election. Is that the case?
EWING: No, that's not quite correct. The Obama administration had a great deal of internal debate in real time in 2016 about how to respond - whether they should do so publicly or privately. Ultimately, President Obama did so privately with the Russian president Vladimir Putin. He took him aside at an international summit and said, please stop interfering in our election - to no effect.
And the Obama administration also tried to ask leaders in Congress of both parties to sign a statement condemning these foreign efforts. The Democratic leaders agreed to do so. The Republican speaker, Paul Ryan, apparently thought that he could get there, but the majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, did not agree to do that. And so, ultimately, there was no public statement until October of 2016, by which time, with the view of history, it may have been too late to do anything about it.
MARTIN: Did the Obama administration take any steps other than jawboning?
EWING: Ultimately, President Obama's administration did take some action against the Russians. So in December of 2016 and January of 2017, there were some punitive measures the United States imposed. The Russian "diplomats," quote-unquote, were ejected from the United States. Their facilities in the United States were closed that they used to spy from New York and Maryland. And there were economic measures that the United States has taken, both under Obama and Trump, in retaliation for this election interference.