A: "We'll be looking at that. Yeah, we'll be looking."
To Trump, "We'll be looking at that" is his go-to, throwaway answer when he's asked about something he hasn't thought about, as the Washington Post cataloged this month. He does this a lot.
But recognising Crimea as Russian territory is not something that basically anybody inside the American foreign policy mainstream is "looking at". And were Trump to actually consider it, you can bet it would make Russia very happy indeed.
A little history: Back in March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, an autonomous republic of Ukraine. After the ouster of the Ukrainian president, Russian troops moved in and held an unauthorised referendum in which Crimeans voted to rejoin Russia, of which it had previously been a part.
It was the first time that one European nation has seized territory from another since the end of World War II. As such, US and European allies roundly rejected the annexation. Since then, Vice-President Biden has declared it an "illegal" occupation.
"The United States stands firmly with the people of Ukraine in the face of continued - and I emphasise continued - aggression from Russia and Russian-backed separatists," Biden said in November.
So the official position of the US Government is that the Russian annexation of Crimea is illegal and dangerous. Trump, though, left open the possibility today of simply recognising Crimea as a Russian territory and even perhaps lifting related sanctions.
And not only that, but a top Trump foreign policy adviser has previously said, in an interview with Bloomberg, that Russian business interests have expressed excitement to him about the prospect of a President Trump easing sanctions:
"A globe-trotting American investment banker who's built a career on deals with Russia and its state-run gas company, Carter Page says his business has suffered directly from the US economic sanctions imposed after Russia's escalating involvement in the Ukraine. When Donald Trump named him last week as one of his foreign-policy advisers, Page says his email inbox filled up with positive notes from Russian contacts. 'So many people who I know and have worked with have been so adversely affected by the sanctions policy,' Page said in a two-hour interview last week. 'There's a lot of excitement in terms of the possibilities for creating a better situation.' "
As I've said, Democrats may be a bit ahead of the intelligence community in their level of confidence that Russia is actively working to elect Trump as president, but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence lending credence to that idea.
And if Trump wants to shake off that allegation, comments like today's won't help.
