Thursday on MSNBC, while reporting on a phone-in White House background briefing with officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department about President Barack Obama’s newly announced sanctions on Russia for hacking during the 2016 American presidential election, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell said the Obama administration is taking steps to “box in” President-elect Donald Trump so the sanctions are not easily reversible. Mitchell said, “The White House did a background briefing with officials from DHS and the State Department. Basically, they are saying that they know that President-elect Trump has signaled as recently as Wednesday saying that he thinks that we should move on past what has happened. But he said that the president’s approach is that of one president at a time and that President Obama feels that he needs to exercise his duties until January 20. So these actions are pretty stiff. I mean PNGing, declaring persona non grata, 35 Russian embassy employees. Saying that they were basally spies. Kicking them out. Saying that they have to leave by noon on Sunday. That’s leaving them 72 hours to get out of the country. That is clearly and always going to be reciprocated. We have to accept our own diplomats are going to be kicked out.” So the Obama administration sounds like they're stating that the Russian sanctions are nothing to do with Russia, and these sanctions were simply meant to make relations with Russia horrible when he enters the Oval Office. The other day Obama called President Trump to reaffirm a peaceful transition, but putting sanctions on Russia to box in Trump sounds like no peace is involved with this transition of Presidential power in America. The main thing with these Russian sanctions from the Obama administration today, is that they were passed by executive order...So all President Trump has to do is place an exectutive order to repeal these Russian sanctions. So it basically sounds like all the Obama team is simply trying to do is create paper work for President Trump, is what this is starting to look like with these Russian sanctions. So did the Obama administration create the lie that Russia hacked our election for President Trump, in order to simply just create a pile of executive orders that Trump will have to look at? Good luck Obama because in the next few weeks Putin and Trump will likely have a meeting at the White House.
