Similar to the way Putin took Obama’s petty sanctions, Trump is taking Obama’s garbage like a champ. He took to Twitter on Wednesday to call Obama out for his hypocrisy.
Trump on Wednesday morning went on the attack against Obama.
“Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks,” he tweeted. “Thought it was going to be a smooth transition – NOT!”
Later in the day, Trump spoke on the phone with Obama and turned down the temperature on the spat, telling reporters roughly six hours after his initial comments that the transition is going “very, very smoothly.”
Yet it’s clearly not lost on Trump or his team that the president is using his power in aggressive ways.
Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Thursday said Obama’s actions could hamper his successor, even as he praised the president’s team for being “very helpful” with the logistical aspects of the transition.
“Both the regulatory stuff, the executive orders that are on the way out … that [is] something that I believe, you know, makes it a little bit tougher in terms of the transition on the policy side,” Spicer told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt.
It’s unclear how many of Obama’s late actions Trump will able to reverse upon taking office.
Should Trump seek to scrap the sanctions on Russia next year, it could trigger a fight with congressional Republicans, who mostly praised the retaliatory steps Thursday even as they lambasted the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called the sanctions “overdue.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called it a “good initial step, however late in coming.”
Senior administration officials argued that any effort to roll back the sanctions would be “inadvisable” because they apply to Russian intelligence agencies working against America’s national interest.
“Hypothetically, you could reverse those sanctions,” one official told reporters. “But it wouldn’t make a lot of sense.”
The actions against Russia included booting 35 officials from the United States and closing down two compounds that were suspected of being used by Russian intelligence.
Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on claims of Russian election interference and has said the U.S. should try to “get along” with the country and seek to fight Islamic terrorists.
Yet his response to the sanctions Thursday was muted. While he called for the country to “move on” from the controversy in a statement, he also suggested he’s willing to hear out the intelligence officials who say Russia targeted the U.S.
The Obama Administration has been a political system run like a country club. The elite benefited from the misery and angst of the lower classes. Now that Trump is taking over, things will be different. Obama can put as many roadblocks as he likes in the way, but it sounds like Trump is ready.
Source: thehill.com
