There’s a very interesting report about the inner workings in the Trump White House over Russia at NBC News. On the one hand, it definitely paints Trump as unwilling to offend Putin and wanting to work with him.
But on the other hand, something Putin said really pissed him off:
Behind the scenes… Trump has recently taken a sharper tone on Putin, administration officials said, but the shift seems more a reaction to the Russian leader challenging the president’s strength than a new belief that he’s an adversary. Putin’s claim earlier this month that Russia has new nuclear-capable weapons that could hit the U.S., a threat he underscored with video simulating an attack, “really got under the president’s skin,” one official said.
Two officials said Trump told Putin during a phone call after Putin’s re-election last week: “If you want to have an arms race we can do that, but I’ll win.”
Afterward the president gave no hint of tensions when he told reporters the two leaders had “a very good call” and that he plans to meet with Putin soon to discuss curtailing an arms race.
And apparently, the nuke comments irked him so much he decided to impose the sanctions on Russia that Congress had passed and he had signed months ago:
A now familiar back-and-forth also played out behind the scenes over Trump’s decision two weeks ago to levy new sanctions against Russia in response to Moscow’s 2016 election meddling and costly worldwide cyberattack last year.
One official involved in the discussions said Trump pushed back on the sanctions proposals by saying Russia’s meddling didn’t affect the election, but began to relent after Putin’s boast about nuclear weapons.
Now, this shows what impulse he has – he really gets pissed off when Putin brags about being able to militarily strike America. It’s probably a good thing to have a commander-in-chief who reacts in this way, and the report at least makes it sound like he’s pretty measured about it – or at least his aides are forcing him to be so.