Republican Sen. John Kennedy says he wanted to hear President Donald Trump address Russia sanctions in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night.
“I wish he’d talked about sanctions on the Russians and explained to us why he is not immediately imposing the sanctions, because I think (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin has acted for the past five years like a thug,” the Louisianan said on CNN’s “New Day” Wednesday morning.
Late Monday, the Treasury Department released a report listing prominent Russian business and political figures, some of whom are already subject to American sanctions, but stopped short of imposing new punishments. The list was released shortly before a deadline for widely anticipated sanctions against Russia as mandated by Congress — a reaction to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US elections.
Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, on Wednesday criticized Trump for not mentioning Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.
“Russia is a major security threat to the United States of America,” Cardin told “New Day.” “It’s very likely they’ll be involved in our 2018 elections.”
“We saw over the last weekend that they were involved with the Czech elections,” he added. “You can go election after election, Mr. Putin is meddling in other countries, in their democratic system, and the President, when he’s talking about the state of the union, he needs to talk about Russia.”