A senator from each party criticized the notion -- heavily promoted by the right-wing media -- that President Obama's foreign policy somehow impelled Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in late February, conservative media have suggested that the move was the result of the “weakness” of Obama's responses to events in Syria and Libya and suggests that he's lost “moral authority.” Conservatives offered no such argument about Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia, which occurred during the Bush administration.

David Gregory highlighted this argument on the March 16 edition of NBC's Meet The Press, pointing out that Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer had criticized President Obama's actions toward Russia as “fruitless accommodationism.” Gregory then asked his bipartisan panel if Obama's foreign policy “invite[s]” Russian President Vladimir Putin “to take the action he's taken ... when the president doesn't follow through in Syria.”

Both Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin (IL) and Republican Sen. Jeff Flake (AZ), newly returned from Ukraine, pushed back on Krauthammer's criticism. Durbin said that “Mr. Krauthammer has a short memory,” highlighting the similarities between the current crisis and Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia by asking, “What does Mr. Krauthammer say of the Bush administration in those days?” Flake agreed, saying that while he has been critical of President Obama in the past, “I don't think anything the president did or said lended itself to what Putin did here.”