All this casts the White House’s objections to the sanctions bill in the worst possible light. Maybe President Trump isn’t looking for a way to be soft on Putin, but it looks that way. The president’s preposterous suggestion that the two countries set up a joint “Cyber Security unit” to guard against election manipulation—“so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded”—makes it look even worse.

And what would does the White House think it can accomplish with the authority to loosen sanctions, anyway? Does anybody think Putin’s government is anywhere near ready to engage in good-faith negotiations in response to economic sanctions? Surely not even this president believes he can he can get Russia to consider respecting Ukraine’s borders, for example, or to cease from meddling in the elections of democratic adversaries.

You don’t need to think that Trump and his campaign aides colluded with Russia to throw the election to believe that Russian government officials tried to manipulate it.