In 2012, President Barack Obama called Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin to "to congratulate him on his recent victory," just as President Donald Trump and other world leaders did following Putin's re-election this year.
Trump congratulated Putin on Tuesday, over the objections of his national security advisers, for winning what international election monitors called an "overtly controlled" election, according to CNN.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., slammed the president for "congratulating dictators on winning sham elections," in a Tweet.
In 2012, the White House released a statement in the late afternoon on a Friday stating that "President Obama called Russian President-elect and Prime Minister Putin to congratulate him on his recent victory in the Russian Presidential election," according to Foreign Policy.
Putin's election in 2012 sparked similar criticisms from international election authorities, one observer noted that the race had "no real competition," and that "the ultimate winner of the election was never in doubt," according to The New York Times.
However, The Washington Post notes that even Trump's own advisers warned against congratulating Putin at this time, following the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the U.K. and the ongoing investigation into Russian election interference and connections to the Trump campaign.
In his briefing materials that day, Trump's advisers had included a note stating: "DO NOT CONGRATULATE."
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