Mediaboss Marketing

By Win McNamee/Getty Images.

Executing an idiosyncratic about-face, the White House suggested Sunday that the president would be willing to accept new legislation limiting his authority to lift sanctions on Russia, following a cross-party revolt over Donald Trumps concerning reluctance to chastise Vladimir Putin for meddling in the 2016 election. Currently, the decision to lift sanctions leveled by the executive branch reside solely within the White House, and presidents from both parties have typically resisted Congress weighing in on such matters, as it curbs their ability to conduct foreign policy. The West Wing had previously resisted the sanctions bill, working behind the scenes to weaken its strictures on Trumps power.

Despite the presidents attempts to scuttle the bill, which concerns Russia, North Korea, and Iran, it is expected to pass Congress on Tuesday. As a result, sanctions will become much harder to lift, even after the circumstances that sparked them have changed. To overturn sanctions related to the Ukraine, for example, Trump would have to prove that the catalyzing conditions have been reversed. To lift sanctions over Russian cyberattacks, he would need to provide evidence that Russia had tried to reduce such transgressions. Congress would then have at least 30 days to vote on any changes he sought.

It is not just Trump who is unhappy with the bill. Europe has significant reservations, and Brussels is reportedly preparing to retaliate if Washington pushes ahead with sweeping new sanctions on Russia that hit European companies. According to a note prepared for a commission meeting on Wednesday, seen by the Financial Times, Brussels should stand ready to act within days if the U.S. measures were adopted without E.U. concerns being taken into account.

Skidding over the fact that strong, cross-party support for the bill means that a presidential veto would encounter strong resistance in Congress, newly promoted White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders framed Trumps acceptance of the widely disputed legislation as consensual. The administration is supportive of being tough on Russia, particularly in putting these sanctions in place, she said on ABCs This Week. The original piece of legislation was poorly written, but we were able to work with the House and Senate, and the administration is happy with the ability to do that and make those changes that were necessary, and we support where the legislation is now.

Her explanation, already reedy, was inconveniently undercut by the president himself, who was overcome by an outbreak of Twitter-fueled petulance. As the phony Russian With Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians! he posted Sunday. Its very sad that Republicans, even some that were carries over the line on my back, do very little to protect their president.

Newly appointed White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, eager to prove his worth, threw himself into the administrations undulant line of cross-communication with gusto. Speaking on CNNs State of the Union, he casually contradicted Sanders by saying that, actually, the president had not decided whether to sign the measure. Youve got to ask President Trump that, he said. Its my second or third day on the job. My guess is that hes going to make that decision shortly. Later, he added: He hasnt made the decision yet to sign that bill one way or another.

Scaramucci also addressed The Washington Posts report that the president has been exploring the possibility of pardoning himself, and his associates, in light of the ongoing, parallel investigations into Russian collusion with his campaign. (The report was neatly supplemented by Trump himself, who, in a boorish demonstration of the scope of his powers, announced via Twitter that all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon.) Im in the Oval Office with the president last week; were talking about that, Scaramucci said, this time on Fox. He brought that up. He said, but he doesn't have to be pardoned. Theres nobody around him that has to be pardoned. He was just making the statement about the power of pardons.

He rounded off his weekend by clumsily confirming the fears that are driving this bill through: that Trump is not taking the Russia threat seriously. If the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those e-mails, you would never have seen it, you would have never had any evidence of them, he quoted the president as saying, noting that, despite U.S. intelligence agencies confirming that Russia state hackers broke into Clinton-linked e-mail accounts, Trumps still not convinced that they interfered in the election. Maybe they did it, maybe they didnt do it, Scaramucci said, enigmatically.

Whether or not allegations of Russian collusion are fake news, the sanctions issue is quite real. Scaramuccis precede a week in which Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trumps former campaign chairman Paul Manafort are all set to be grilled by congressional investigators about their meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, which was ostensibly about sanctions, but actually took place in the hope of scoring damaging information about Hillary Clinton. (The committee will presumably be interested in whether the confluence of the two, otherwise unrelated, topics suggested a potential quid pro quo.) The question of U.S. sanctions on Russia also cropped up during Trumps second, undisclosed meeting with Putin at the G20 in Germany, where the two reportedly exchanged pleasantries before turning to the issue of adoptionsshorthand for the restrictions Moscow placed on American adoptions of Russian children in retaliation for U.S. sanctions in the Magnitsky Act. Those and other sanctions have been a sharp point of contention between the two countries for years, particularly after President Obama tightened the screws in response to Moscows annexation of Crimea and intervention in Eastern Ukraine. Before he left office, Obama also expelled 35 Russian diplomats and confiscated two Russian compounds in the U.S. as punishment for intervention in the election.

In the Trump administration, the barbed issue of Russian sanctions has taken on a strange, symbolic weight, alluding not so much to the governments willingness to inflict punishment, but its hesitancy to. This bill will be the first time that Congress, dominated by Trumps own party, have turned on him in a major matter, and can be seen as a measure of the toll Russia has had on his presidency so far. It is also the first time that Democrats and Republicans have joined together in such a public way since Trump took office. Such collaboration should be a troubling sign for a president who has demanded complete loyalty. The G.O.P. may have circled the wagons to defend Trump, but they are not so far gone that they wont curb his powers if they are forced to take sides against Putin. Even partisanship has its limits.

Follow this link:
Trump's Hold on the Republican Party Begins to Break - Vanity Fair