[REPORTER] Do you have a relationship with Vladimir Putin?
A conversational relationship?
[TRUMP] I do have a relationship.
[TRUMP] I have no relationship with Putin.
[TRUMP] I spoke indirectly and directly with president Putin, who could not have been nicer.
[STEPHANOPOULOS] You have never spoken to him on the phone?
[TRUMP] I have never spoken to him on the phone, no.
President Trump's critics love to paint him as a big softie on Russia
who's caught up in a strange and unprecedented friendship with its president, Vladimir Putin.
[SCHUMER] What could possibly cause president Trump to put the interests of Russia over those of the United States?
But if you listen to Trump tell the story, he's been tougher on Moscow than any president before him.
[TRUMP] There’s been no President, ever, as tough as I have been on Russia.
So who’s right?
Well, actually, there's a grain of truth to both arguments. A little grain.
Trump really does have an unusually cozy relationship with Putin,
he’s repeatedly denied Russian meddling in the 2016 election,
and he’s dragged his feet on congressionally-required sanctions against Moscow post Skripal poisoning.
But on the other hand, Trump is starting a new nuclear arms race with Russia,
kicked tons of Russian diplomats out of the US to punish it for attacking US allies,
and is arming Ukraine with cutting-edge weapons that Russia hates.
And making things even more complicated, sometimes it’s hard to tell how much Trump is actually steering his own Russia policy.
So yeah — it’s a little confusing.
Are the US and Russia still enemies, are they becoming friends,
or are they morphing into something more like … frenemies? Let’s take a closer look...
It’s no secret that Trump is a big admirer of Putin.
And his warm feelings for Putin have been documented on TV as far back at 2013:
Trump has said on many occasions that he met with Putin during the Miss Universe Pageant that he held in Moscow in 2013,
and said that Putin “could not have been nicer” to him.
[TRUMP] I went to Russia with the Miss Universe Pageant,
he contacted me.
And was so nice.
And in the year since that meeting, Trump has spoken glowingly over and over again
about the Russian strong man.
On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump praised Putin’s tough autocratic ruling tactics...
[TRUMP] Now I mean the man has great control over a country. Now it’s a very different system.
I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly in that system he’s been a leader.
Far more than our president has been a leader.
When Trump entered office, he repeatedly denied that Russia interfered in the 2016 election,
contradicting the conclusions of his own intelligence agencies.
That shocking pattern came to a head at the Helsinki summit in July 2018,
when Trump decided to boldly side with Putin’s government over his own on the question of whether Russia was behind the 2016 cyberattacks.
[TRUMP] My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me, and some others and they said,
“they think it’s Russia.”
I have President Putin he just said, “It’s not Russia.”
I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be.
Republicans were furious, people slammed it as treason, and Trump walked the comments back ….
That is, until he walked back his walk back just days later,
calling claims about Russian interference a “hoax.”
Trump has also done favors for Russia by questioning the US’s commitment to NATO,
the post- World War II military alliance that plays a key role in countering Russian threats against Europe.
Trump’s unusual affection for Putin and his pushback against NATO made Congress worried that Trump
might try to lift Obama-era sanctions against Russia.
So in 2017 both parties banded together and passed a law that basically handcuffed Trump,
limiting his legal ability to lift old sanctions and forcing him to impose new ones in the coming year.
Trump made a huge fuss about the bill, but signed it,
knowing that his veto would be overridden by his own party.
Later on, Trump showed his opposition to the law by missing deadlines for implementing new sanctions,
and then imposing some strikingly soft penalties against oligarchs in Russia.
In other words, he procrastinated and then did the bare minimum that was asked of him by Congress.
The public has taken note of all this: polls show that most Americans believe Trump isn’t tough enough on Russia.
For example a PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist Poll found 64 percent of U.S. adults believe Trump is not tough enough on Russia.
But Trump’s Russia policy isn’t just about being pals with Putin — he’s also shown that he can be hard on Moscow.
Take, for instance, the fact that Trump delivered a set of powerful javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine this spring.
The move gave Russia’s opponent in a war a huge military asset,
and it was a more aggressive gesture of support for Ukraine than the Obama administration ever offered.
In February the Trump administration unveiled a Nuclear Posture Review that focuses intensely on the US’s rivalry with Russia,
and calls for the development of low-yield nuclear weapons that analysts say could escalate a new kind of arms race with Moscow.
And this year the Trump administration has also greenlighted the development of a ground-launched, intermediate-range cruise missile
in response to Russia’s deployment of a similar weapon.
The US’s weapons, if deployed, would violate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty —
a sign that the Trump administration is willing to violate precedent to get more confrontational with Russia on nukes.
Trump’s track record on countering Russia isn’t just about military power.
After the UK accused Russia of poisoning Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal, in the UK earlier this year,
Trump expelled 60 Russian intelligence officers from the US and closed the Russian Consulate in Seattle —
an action that was coordinated with the US’s European partners but was actually far more severe than their own expulsions.
And despite Trump’s initial reluctance to accept and follow through on the congressionally-mandated sanctions,
his actual track record on sanctions is not all that controversial.
While lawmakers first thought he might try to fight sanctions on Russia over its meddling in Ukraine, Trump actually expanded them.
On top of all this, Trump has been pressuring Europe to cancel a Nordstream-2,
a gas pipeline project between northern Europe and Russia that Putin considers an absolutely crucial enterprise,
both economically and strategically.
The reason?
Trump wants to sell US gas to the Europeans — and that means pushing Russia out of the way.
So if all this seems like a confusing mess, well, that’s because it is.
One way to look at this is that while Trump spends a lot of time talking about how he wants to warm ties with Russia
and is reluctant to assign blame to Putin for its misdeeds,
his actual actions are a lot tougher. His rhetoric is pro-Russia, his policy is far more traditional.
That in part reflects the difference between Trump and his top advisers and the national security establishment.
While Trump is eager to turn a new leaf with Russia, and pursues that agenda in speeches, soundbites and tweets,
the people around him consistently persuade him that it’s just better to stick with the status quo or act more hawkishly.
For example, despite the fact that Trump has hesitated to blame Russia for the 2016 cyberattacks,
his former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley never has.
While Trump originally refused to back Article 5 of NATO —
the principle that an attack on one member is an attack against all members —
his advisers eventually convinced him to.
And Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton recently advised him to withdraw from a nuclear arms treaty with Russia,
prompting Trump to make this statement:
[TRUMP] Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years.
I don’t know why president Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out.
We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement.
And go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to.
We’re the ones who have stayed in the agreement and have honored the agreement.
And Russia has not unfortunately so we’re going to terminate the agreement, we’re going to pull out.
This has escalated tensions with Moscow to new highs.
So while we know Trump is easily persuaded by Putin when they hang out one-on-one,
he’s also swayed by his own advisers who don’t trust Putin in the slightest.
Ultimately, Trump’s mixed-bag Russia policy reflects a lack of discipline and focus —
something that’s evident in lots of the administration’s efforts on both domestic and foreign policy.
So why does all this matter?
Well, the public looks to Trump’s Russia policy to gauge if he’s trying to return favors to Putin for tipping the 2016 election in his direction.
Or they think a super pro-Russian policy might suggests that Putin could have compromising materials on Trump that he’s blackmailing him with.
In 2018, we’re still talking about the pee tape.
But Trump’s Russia policy looks more messy than it does compromised.
At the end of the day, his Russia policy isn’t as blatantly pro-Russia as many of his critics allege.
It also isn’t as tough as he likes to brag about.
The Trump administration is ultimately a lot closer to the status quo than most people would like to admit.
Well YouTube, that’s it for this week’s Russia Desk.
Thank you so much for watching.
Be sure to share this video if you liked it.
And what do you think of the Trump administration’s policy towards Russia?
Let us know in the comments. We’ll see you soon.