Trump’s congrats

Whenever an autocrat or a dictator “wins” an election, it’s always a diplomatic challenge for more democratic countries to figure out how to respond. In order for nations to have open channels of communication, there has to be some basic acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the nations’ leaders. It’s not a simple issue.

Recall that in 2012 there was a tremendous amount of hand-wringing over whether President Barack Obama should congratulate Vladimir Putin on his election “victory,” especially after a campaign in which Putin had been especially belligerent toward the U.S. The New York Times reported that “the Obama administration fiercely debated how to respond to the Russian election, with some officials favoring a strong condemnation of the results.” In the end, “the White House ultimately settled on a tempered statement, not directly congratulating Mr. Putin but saying ‘the United States looks forward to working with the president-elect.'” The statement didn’t mention Putin by name and the president waited five days before making the call.

Considering what has happened since Putin’s last campaign, his election to a fourth term has had everyone wondering what President Trump would do. After all, since 2012 there has been the annexation of Crimea and that little matter of election interference in Europe and the U.S., so the stakes appear quite a bit higher now. There is also that recent unpleasantness in the U.K. where people were poisoned with Russian nerve gas and the likely perpetrators aren’t even really trying to hide it.

There can be little doubt that this Russian election was, to use Trump’s term, rigged. Putin “won” with 77 percent of the vote, which is simply not believable, especially given video evidence of ballot box stuffing. Most importantly, Putin banned his most popular opponent from the race, a tactic Trump almost certainly wishes he could impose. Remember, Trump told the whole country in the final debate of the 2016 campaign:

She shouldn’t be allowed to run. It’s crooked — she’s — she’s guilty of a very, very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run. And just in that respect, I say it’s rigged, Chris, she should never have been allowed to run for the presidency based on what she did with emails and so many other things.

Since Trump simply cannot utter a negative word about Putin, most observers were anxious to hear what kind of verbal gymnastics the Trump administration would come up with to finesse this issue. It seemed unlikely that Trump would straight-up offer congratulations, since that would inevitably raise suspicions of his motives at a time when Robert Mueller’s investigation is exploding in different directions.