Author and senior MSNBC political analyst Mark Halperin said, barring the dark cloud of the Russia investigation and “collusion allegations,” a case could be made that President Donald Trump’s administration has “been tougher” on Russia than those of his predecessors, during an interview Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

The cloud of Russia-collusion allegations has hung over Trump’s presidency ever since reports surfaced that the Russians meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and favored Trump over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. When reports surfaced over the past several days that the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., met in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer claiming to have dirt on Clinton during the campaign, media pundits and politicians pounced on the information.

Despite the ongoing Russia-collusion firestorm in the media, Halperin said he believes Trump has been “tougher” on Russia and President Vladimir Putin than previous administrations have been.

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“If none of the Russian investigation or collusion allegations existed, and you just said, ‘OK, six to seven months in, what has the policy been like?’ You’d say, you could make the case — particularly related to the Poland trip — that they have been tougher or at least not less tough than other Republicans might have been, or certainly tougher, at least moderately tougher than the previous administration,” he said.

Halperin pointed to the speech Trump delivered in Warsaw, Poland, on Thursday in which he offered a strong defense of Western civilization and its values. In particular, the president issued several stern warnings to Russia.

“To meet new forms of aggression, including propaganda, financial crimes, and cyberwarfare, we must adapt our alliance to compete effectively in new ways and on all new battlefields,” Trump said in Warsaw. “We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and Iran — and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.”

While at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday, Trump held his first high-stakes and in-person meeting as president with Putin. Following the meeting, Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson both said that Trump pressed his Russian counterpart repeatedly about the 2016 election interference.

“I don’t think you could make the case that [Trump] has been some super-hawkish president related to Russia. But again, he’s not giving away the store, and that does run counter to the narrative of suspicion about his intentions toward Russia,” Halperin said.

Although the Trump administration has expressed some wariness about a batch of additional proposed sanctions against Russia, Halperin argued that Trump’s stance on dealing with Russia was tougher than former President Barack Obama’s.

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“The previous president, for a variety of reasons, was not nearly as aggressive as he could have been and as many would have wanted him to have been, both in real-time and in retrospect, about dealing with Russia,” he said.

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Ingraham agreed, noting the repeated attempts of previous presidents to warm U.S.-Russian relations.

“I think when you look back on this last eight years, we had failed attempt after failed attempt to reset a relationship with Russia. [George W.] Bush tried it in a little ranch visit … and then we had the reset with Hillary and [Russian Ambassador Sergei] Lavrov, which was a big flop, and [former Secretary of State John] Kerry was there all the time,” she said.

“They made very little progress,” Ingraham added. “But again, the cloud of Russia hangs over, so everything they do is going to be looked at through a different lens. And some of this is self-inflicted, no doubt, including this deal with Don Trump Jr.” (go to page 2 to continue reading)[lz_pagination]