Congress is preparing to move forward with sanctions targeting Russia after Donald Trump’s attempt to broker a Ukraine peace deal crumbled.
The president turned on Vladimir Putin this week as his efforts to get the Russian president to the table failed. He called Putin’s talk “meaningless” and slammed him for spewing “bulls**t.”
After holding off for months as the president took the lead, Senator John Thune said on Wednesday that he hopes the Senate can get its sanctions bill on the floor before senators head out for August recess.
“We’re working with the administration, with the House to try and get it in a form where it’s ready,” Thune said. “Whether that happens in the next couple of weeks is a bit of an open question, but I’m hopeful that it can.”
It comes months after Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal introduced bipartisan legislation to impose sanctions over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.
The legislation had more than 80 supporters in the Senate, but the GOP-controlled Congress spent months deferring to the White House as the president tried to bring about a deal despite the bill having the votes to pass.
Trump took aim at Putin this week as Russia continues to pound Ukraine despite a series of calls and meetings since the president took office, including a phone call between the president and Putin last week.
Speaking during his Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the president said he was “very strongly” looking at the sanctions bill.
“We get a lot of bulls**t thrown at us by Putin, [if] you want to know the truth,” Trump said. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson also signaled he was prepared to move forward with the Russian sanctions bill, telling reporters that Putin has shown an “unwillingness to be reasonable” and it was time to “send him a message.”
The bill would not only impose sanctions against Russia but would also target those doing business with it.
“The real focus of the bill is to hit the customers of Putin,” Graham said on Wednesday. “China and India buy 70 percent of Russian oil and gas and other petroleum products, so I’ve always believed the way this war ends is when China goes to Putin says, ‘enough already, you’re hurting us now.’”
The South Carolina senator said the bill would give the president a waiver so he has leverage. He indicated it had 85 co-sponsors and was pushing 90, an overwhelming showing of support in the deeply divided chamber.
Republican senators have praised Trump, saying this week that the U.S. would send Ukraine more weapons after shipments were paused by the Pentagon.
Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he did not know who ordered the freeze on weapons to Ukraine. Later that day, CNN was the first to report from sources that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before authorizing it.
While the move to sanction Russia with the president’s backing is picking up steam in the GOP, they were less enthusiastic about looking into why the weapons pause took place or how the president was not informed.
“I’m glad they’re back on, but we’ll get to the bottom of that later,” Graham told reporters Wednesday.
Thune sidestepped a question about whether he still had confidence in Hegseth when asked about the weapons pause on Capitol Hill.
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