changed about the relationship in the sense of "hurting us one one hundredth with respect to Russia", as if we started doing Putin's bidding in any meaningful way. There's the same high degree of unproductive antagonism between the US and Russia that is bad for issues that matter like avoiding nuclear war, the policy orientation and tension w/r/t them is not much different. And the irony is it's a popular view of f.p. experts who've served across previous administrations of both parties, from Reagan to Trump, that it would be productive to make sanctions more flexible and reestablish full diplomatic relations (go easier on them), which Trump hasn't done. But if it's proposed under his presidency, people would shit themselves with conspiracy theories, which is not meant in defense of Trump, but to describe how mangled the broad characterization and common understanding of the relations are at this point. Like with the hysterical bounty story, "Trump won't even say it's bad to put bounties on American troops!" when it's not even confirmed that that happened, and if it did it's something that would be dealt with in back channels.