White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday cryptically hinted at action against Russia, saying, “just last week there was an incident that will be reported in the coming days in another way that this president was tough on Russia.”
Sanders was responding to questions from a reporter regarding election interference by Russia and what President Donald Trump has done about it.
“Just last week the department of homeland security met with a number of relevant stakeholders, they’re discussing this process and going through and looking every single day at the best ways forward. Everybody wants to blame this on the Trump administration, let’s not forget this happened under the Obama administration,” she said when asked what Trump was specifically doing about the fact Russia interfered and has every intention of doing it again.
When the reporter followed up by saying the meddling happened over a year ago and asked again what the president would to about it, Sanders said the administration had spent a lot of time working on cybersecurity to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
“President Donald Trump and the administration have made it clear that interference in our elections will have consequences and we are going to continue to impose consequences in response to Russian cyberattacks. Just last week we called out Russia by name. It was one of the first times that you have seen something like that take place and we are going to continue doing things like that,” she added.
But, the reporter said, Trump had criticized Obama, the FBI, but not Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“He’s been tougher on Russia in the first year than Obama was in eight years combined,” she said. “He’s imposed sanctions, he’s taken away properties, he’s rebuilt our military. … Just last week there was an incident that will be reported in the coming days in another way that this president was tough on Russia.”