The trump administration's relationship with Russian officials is without a doubt reckless. The assessment from the U.S. intelligence community that members of the Trump campaign were in collusion with Russian officials assumes that each side was familiar enough with the other to work within the same realm of deception. But as the first several months of the presidency have shown, there are limits with what the other will accept which could only have been tested by a reckless Trump administration.
Testing Russia whether Trump likes it or not
Leading up to the day of President Trump's sideline meeting with President Putin at the G-20 summit, it seems that the limits the Trump administration has reached with the Russians was no different from previous administration had already established. Years before there a Trump administration was even a forethought, there was a sense of normalcy established around a profound line that had been drawn in the sand between the U.S. and Russia. There was no indication that both the Kremlin and the White House could work together and for good reason.
President Trump is clearly on a learning curve where his administration is only now beginning to see those limits as they go along, finding themselves in the same situation as previous administrations have.
For instance, one could being with Trump going well past the point of no return when he launched cruise missiles strikes against the Syrian government who are allied with Russia. President Obama's initial decision to confront Syria was tempered in 2013 when the Russian government became the intermediary between the Assad regime and the U.S. For the time being, the threats of Russian aggression against the U.S. have been only threats.
Similar media control tactics between Russia and Trump White House
With the Trump White House working to normalize their relationship with Russia, the administration is beginning to learned about betrayal. But just to see the similarities between Putin's Kremlin and Trump's White House, analysis on how Donald Trump prefers to run his administration has said that he is heavily influenced by the way Vladimir Putin runs his.
One obvious example is with how Trump tries to control the media. Throughout his presidency -- so far -- he has tried to feed disinformation to the public and made attempts to prevent the media from holding him accountable.
Screwed over by Russian state media?
It is for this reason that his administration has on occasion, dumped the media. Examples of this are when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson dumped the press during his trip in Moscow where they allowed Russian state media to take over the narrative. The administration would do that again when Russian officials came to the White House where they allowed Russian state media service TASS to take the lead.
But the administration learned rather quickly that they could not trust the Russians as TASS published images they had taken in the Oval Office immediately after their meeting.
One CNN article titled: "White House furious after being trolled with Russia Oval Office photos" quoted a White House official who was furious that the images had been published, saying that they had been lied to, to which former national security adviser Susan Rice said "no kidding!" If CNN is correct is saying that White House staff was furious, then the Trump administration is learning the limits of its relationship too.