When I visited some Russian government friends in Washington last month, I told them to start fighting back. I was disgusted at how they were being raked through the mud by Democrats for partisan political purposes, and by Deep State bureaucrats anxious to prove to President Trump that he still needs them and their Swamp. And with very few signs of scandal or spookery, (other than one military ship off our coast, and an apparently legitimate bust of FSB agents caught doing what they do), they've been made the easy, cheap boogeyman in the left's 'narrative' in its bid to explain why it lost the election. Yet to look at things objectively, these people have done nothing but sent out every signal possible that they want to be our friends and shown remarkable restraint in the face of being the punching bag in incredibly nasty partisan warfare. Pretty much all the embassy's been 'caught' doing is their State Department-sanctioned jobs.

I have no idea if they've followed my advice but I'm glad to see they've started swinging back.

The Washington Post reports that in an April Fool's joke, the Russian embassy snuck in some goofball proposed phone messages on a publicly posted video for the bozos who must pester them nonstop:

For April Fools' Day, the Russian Foreign Ministry put out an “official joke” — a video of a proposed voice-mail message for its embassy answering machines. In the clip, recorded in Russian and English, an automated recording tells callers to press 1 for “a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponent.” You can press 2 “to use the services of Russian hackers,” or 3 "to request election interference." (The English portion of the recording begins about 26 seconds into the video.)

It's curiously reminiscent of the Twitter number Russia's UK embassy did on then-outgoing President Obama, who threw out a bunch of their fry cooks and low level diplomats as 'spies.' Remember this? Wonder if it was the same jokester?

Yes, I suppose there will be people who for various reasons, neither deep state nor embittered partisan, argue with this. But it's important to not paint the Russians as monsters. They aren't. Relations with them have been mismanaged by leftist leaders in the West since the fall of the Berlin Wall. There needs to be an effort to understand them.

It's kind of reassuring to see the Russkis still good for a laugh.