While at White House today, Russian Minister Sergey Lavrov mocks the firing of James Comey

| 1:08 pm EDT May 10, 2017
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In a sequence of events whose optics leaved much to be desired, Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last night to try to derail the Russia scandal, just hours before hosting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited the White House. Lavrov didn’t help the optics when he was asked by a reporter about Comey’s firing, and used it as an opportunity for sarcastic mocking.

Lavrov appeared before U.S. reporters with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. After their statement they tried to leave without taking questions. But NBC’s Andrea Mitchell nonetheless shouted a question: “Does the Comey firing cast a shadow over your talks, gentlemen?” Tillerson waved her off. But Lavrov fired back in a sarcastic voice with, “Was he fired? You’re kidding! You’re kidding!” He then rolled his eyes and left the room with Tillerson.

The exchange is likely to leave a number of observers with a further cemented view that Donald Trump is merely a puppet of the Russian government, and that he fired James Comey because the Russians wanted the Russia investigation to go away. However, with members of Congress in both parties now actively pushing back against the firing, Trump may have taken things too far – and Lavrov mocking the situation certainly didn’t help.

Watch the video of Sergey Lavrov openly mocking the firing of James Comey on live television:

If the above video won’t play, click here to watch it.