The Daily Fuckup

President Donald Trump on March 26, 2018, ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats from the United States and directed the closure of Russia’s consulate in Seattle, delivering what was, by the administration’s own standards, one of its most forceful Russia-related actions to that point. The White House presented the move as a response to Moscow’s malign behavior and as a measure meant to protect American national security, pairing the expulsions with additional steps aimed at Russian intelligence operations. In practical terms, the action signaled that Washington was willing to impose a visible cost on Russian conduct rather than confining itself to warnings and statements. It also gave the administration a chance to appear firm at a moment when it had often seemed hesitant, inconsistent, or unwilling to settle into a clear line on Russia. Even so, the decision did not arrive in a political vacuum, and the circumstances around it made the announcement read as much as a correction as a declaration of principle.

That context matters because the immediate backdrop was the nerve-agent attack in the United Kingdom that targeted Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal, an episode that jolted allied governments and hardened the broader Western mood toward Moscow. British officials and their partners treated the attack as a serious breach that demanded a collective response, and many European governments moved ahead with expulsions and other diplomatic gestures before Washington did. As the weeks passed, the gap between the American response and the allied response became harder to ignore. The United States, which often likes to cast itself as the lead actor in transatlantic security matters, looked oddly late to its own moment. By the time Trump finally acted, the issue was no longer whether the world would respond to Russia, but whether Washington would look as though it had needed to be pushed into following everyone else. The timing made the move look important, but it also made it look overdue.

The White House tried to frame the expulsions as part of a broader and more sustained effort to confront Russian hostility, not as a one-off answer to a single incident. That framing was designed to suggest seriousness and continuity, but Trump’s own record complicated the message. Throughout much of his presidency, he had sent mixed signals on Moscow, at times sounding tough and at other times appearing reluctant to criticize Russian actions in any sustained way. Those contradictions had become part of the political backdrop to every Russia decision his administration made. Allies, lawmakers, and critics frequently struggled to determine whether the president regarded Russia as a strategic adversary, a diplomatic nuisance, or some combination of the two. Against that history, the March 26 move looked less like the culmination of a deliberate doctrine than a response that had become unavoidable. The administration could claim that it was acting on principle, but the sequence of events suggested it was also reacting to growing pressure from allies, public scrutiny, and the diplomatic embarrassment of being seen as behind the curve.

The decision therefore carried two truths at once. On one hand, the expulsions and consulate closure were concrete, expensive, and publicly visible steps that imposed a real penalty on Russian diplomatic and intelligence activity. On the other hand, they underscored how long Washington had waited before settling on that response and how much external pressure had accumulated by the time it came. Trump could point to the move as evidence that his administration was willing to take Russia seriously, and that argument was not empty. Yet the larger story was that the White House seemed to arrive at firmness only after allies had already made inaction look embarrassing. The action was stronger than much of what had come before, but it was also reactive in a way that blunted the force of the message. Instead of presenting a new strategic posture from Washington, it looked like the administration finally syncing itself to a position that others had already adopted. That is not the same thing as leadership, even if it still counts as a change in behavior.

Seen in that light, the March 26 announcement was both a significant escalation and a revealing illustration of the administration’s broader pattern on Russia. It marked a moment when Trump finally did something that matched the gravity of the situation, but it also exposed how rarely his White House had been willing to lead on the issue before outside events made delay impossible. The number of diplomats expelled and the closure of the Seattle consulate gave the move heft, and the language around the announcement was more direct than many observers had come to expect from this administration. But the episode’s deeper significance lay in what it said about timing. Washington did not get ahead of the allied response; it arrived after the response was already well underway. The administration did not set the tone; it caught up to one that had been set elsewhere. That is why the move, while genuinely consequential, still carried the awkward feel of a government being dragged into the obvious. Trump may have finally opted for a sharp Russia action, but the long delay ensured that the real story was not only what he did, but how reluctantly and how late he seemed to do it.