Eli Lake, Columnist

Time's Up: Trump Can't Have It Both Ways on Russia

It will be damning if the president continues to equivocate about Russia's role in the death of a former spy.

March 14, 2018 at 8:41 PM UTC

Corrected

March 14, 2018 at 10:22 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

A man is known by the company he keeps.
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For the first 14 months of the Donald Trump administration, a fair analysis of its handling of Russia had to include some important caveats. Yes, the president sounds like an oafish sycophant on the topic of President Vladimir Putin. But look at his cabinet. Look at his government's actual policies.

From arming Ukraine to appointing hawkish generals like James Mattis, John Kelly and H.R. McMaster, a case could be made that Trump's soft rhetoric on Russia was not reflected in his government's tough measures against this adversary. After all, U.S. forces killed Russian mercenaries that attacked a U.S. base in Syria. Watch what the government does, not what the president says. (And as for those allegations of Russian support for the Trump campaign, the president has good reasons to distrust the retired intelligence chiefs who keep impugning him. A few of them endorsed his opponent.)