CHUCK TODD: Mueller Indictment Contradicts McDonough’s Claim That Obama’s Warning to Putin Was ‘Impactful.’

Todd asked McDonough about Sen. Mark Warner’s (D., Va.) comment last July, acknowledging the Obama administration “choked” in its handling of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

“It became very clear to us what the Russians’ intentions were, so we took a series of pain-staking steps, including the president directly confronting President Putin, us going to Congress to press them to work with us to make sure that the states were doing everything they could to protect the sanctity of every American’s vote,” McDonough said.

He said he believes the discussion between Obama and Putin was “very impactful,” adding that some of the things they feared Russia would do, it didn’t do.

Todd then played a clip of Obama from December 2016, recalling his direct conversation with Putin in September 2016 at the Group of 20 meeting in Hangzhou, China.

“I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn’t happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out… and in fact we did not see further tampering of the election process,” Obama said.

Todd pushed back against this claim and said that based on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s recent indictment of the Internet Research Agency, Obama’s claim is “not true.”

If Putin took Obama seriously after his promise of “more flexibility,” it would be shocking. If Putin had taken Obama seriously prior to that it would be more shocking still.