Severe economic sanctions should have been put in place. Freeze assets. What we are describing isn't much less, if anything less, than an act of war and we threw out some diplomats and closed a retreat center.

Wasn't there evidence that Russia was doing similar things in the French elections? If so, seems it would not have been hard to get much of Western Europe on board with some really harsh economic sanctions.

Yes, Trump is a complete failure on this, no doubt. But if all this is true, Obama needed and should have done a lot more a lot more quickly. I get that he didn't want to been seen and influencing the election, but politics should have been the last thing on his mind. If we had been physically attacked in the summer of 2016 or earlier would he have waited to respond until after the election? What if Russia bombed us because they thought that would help Trump win? This should have been no different.

Moreover, it was kept quiet and then only somewhat released before the election. That undermines the entire process because now, going forward people will always wonder if the Russians (or someone else) are hacking the election and our leaders know about it but are not really doing anything.