The president of the United States has attacked me. He has attacked our NATO allies at times. He’s attacked the whole cast of “Hamilton” and Meryl Streep. The only person he seems unwilling to want to criticize in any way is Vladimir Putin. We need a president who has the guts to stand up to Vladimir Putin. And we’re just not seeing that out of this president. Advisors told him before he picked up the phone explicitly, in all caps, “do not congratulate” Vladimir Putin. What did the president do? I had a call with President Putin and congratulated him on the victory, his electoral victory. Russia intervened in our presidential election. It was a historically close election and the Russians intervened through social media by pretending to be Americans. And among them, they decided that race was a really good issue to be used to divide Americans. President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion there’s little price to [pay] here. This is serious business. All of the intelligence chiefs agree Russia intervened. There should be no doubt that Russia perceived that its past efforts as successful. So what’s stopping us? The president is stopping us because the president of the United States cannot even accept the fact that the Russians intervened on his behalf. I said it very simply. I think it could very well have been Russia. But I think it could well have been other countries. Probably there was meddling from other countries and maybe other individuals. He views it as a threat to the legitimacy of his presidency. And it’s leaving our country exposed. The United States announced sanctions on Thursday against 19 Russian individuals. These sanctions are a good step in the right direction. But they also don’t go nearly far enough. The Kremlin said these sanctions were expected. They aren’t that big of a deal. The federal government is largely sitting on its hands because this president views any mention of Russia as a threat. These things are undeniable. And we need to confront them because they haven’t stopped. We need to protect ourselves and we need to deter the Russians from any further involvement in our affairs. This isn’t a Democrat versus Republican issue. Sadly, this is a Donald Trump versus all the rest of us issue.