President Barack Obama announced sanctions against Russia this past week for their alleged hacking during the campaign season, expelling 35 Russian diplomats and closing two Russian compounds in the United States.

Sen. John McCain yesterday ratcheted up the language still more with regard to Russia while visiting Ukraine.

‘When you attack a country, it’s an act of war,’ he said on Ukrainian TV after meeting with President Petro Poroshenko.

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‘And so we have to make sure that there is a price to pay so that we can perhaps persuade Russians to stop this kind of attack on our very fundamentals of democracy.’

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McCain has scheduled a hearing about foreign cyber threats, focusing on Russia, during which he will call the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA Director Mike Rogers to testify.

He also wants to create a committee to investigate the allegations that Russia was trying to help Trump win.

He called the sanctions against Russia ‘long overdue’ in a statement he released with Lindsay Graham.

McCain seems to be parroting the media line that this was an attack on the election itself.

No, there was no attack on the election. The actual vote, was not hacked, despite McCain’s assertion that this was an attack on ‘our very fundamentals of democracy’.

It’s curious that he finds the alleged hack of a non-governmental entity like the DNC an ‘act of war’, but apparently it wasn’t an ‘act of war’ when the Russians allegedly hacked into the White House and the State Department back in 2014. Or when the Chinese hacked the Office of Personal Management, an incredibly damaging breach.

It’s curious that there was no real response by either Obama or McCain until after the election, when the belief that the Russians hacked the DNC has been pushed since the leaks starting coming in the summer.

Would it have happened at all if Hillary Clinton was elected? Or is it only happening now because it attempts to cast a shadow on the election legitimacy of Donald Trump?