"The key difference from Obama was (Trump’s) unwillingness to take the meddling issue head on," said Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
As we’ve noted in
previous fact-checks, the Obama administration took actions before and after Election Day. Prior to the election, the Obama administration publicly named the Russian government as the culprit, confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin in person, and worked to secure U.S. election infrastructure — all while intelligence agencies investigated the issue.
But the Obama administration’s most significant retaliatory measure against Russia came after Trump’s electoral win.
On Dec. 29, 2016, Obama
ordered 35 Russian diplomats and suspected intelligence agents to leave the United States, and he also imposed narrow sanctions on some Russian individuals and organizations.
Trump, on the other hand, has
cast doubt on Russia’s election meddling and repeated Putin’s denials of his government’s involvement.
"The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to undermine the credibility of the FBI and intelligence agencies in their investigation and assessment of the threat to the integrity of U.S. elections by Russian operatives," said Yoshiko Herrera, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
While some experts noted that Trump signed a law calling for new sanctions against Russia in response to its interference with the election, they added that the legislation was hardly the product of Trump’s hardline advocacy. Congress largely passed the bill — with veto-proof majorities — in response to Trump’s downplaying of the meddling question and his seeming interest in lifting sanctions against Russia, Sestanovich said.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...nald-trump-been-much-tougher-russia-barack-o/
