> Your guy is.

I'm not defending Trump. His campaign strategy was to say somewhat ludicrous things and then when challenged, double down on them, thus amplifying the PR impact. To be quite clear, for every person who socially shared an article slamming one of Trump's ridiculous statements, perhaps 90% of their friends agreed, but the message also reached the 10% who approved of Trump's approach, or saw in it evidence he was not part of the establishment.

While I abhor Trump's approach of appealing to the worst parts of human nature (bigotry, fear, etc.) to rally support, it's sadly a very common technique used by politicians. HRC at one point in her career called for a "physical barrier" between the southern US and Mexico, and focused her talking points on "criminal aliens". Yes, HRC was playing to fear and bigotry when she said those things, just as Trump was when he called for a wall and described immigrants as "rapists". Trump brought a new level of crassness to something that had existed before but was spoken about in tones of moderation even though the intended audience read between the lines and found (and was animated by) the bigotry.

> you don't expect anyone to believe that Trump and Obama share the same position with regard to Russia

This is not the point of my comment. What I meant was that no president really has the power to dramatically shift US policy toward Russia, there are too many interest groups involved. The two main factions, those who are willing to accommodate Russia's adolescent mischief (led by strong man Putin taking the country for an authoritarian joy ride), and those who wish to send a signal that it will not be tolerated.

We've had 8 years of the former, during which time Putin has had quite a joy ride. Trump is inclined to let it continue, while HRC would likely have tried to put a stop to it one way or another. It's not clear Obama would do anything different than Trump in terms of policy. The revelations about alleged Russian meddling date back to July 2016, and according to the article you linked, it was known about for years prior. Yet Obama declined to impose sanctions, preferring instead some sort of back-channel communication (if any response at all).

Obama's decision to impose sanctions two weeks before the end of his term was likely a nod to the prevailing Democratic Party view, which Obama had not attempted to shape during the campaign. He had to be loyal to his party, and likely did the least consequential thing he could, sent a few people home and imposed sanctions that would be awkward for Trump to remove, etc.

So if you ignore Trump's rhetoric (as I think it is wise to ignore most of what politicians say, and instead focus on what they do), he is staying the course 100% with Obama's policy. Let's wait until there is actual policy change before concluding that he feels differently. We've seen him do a 180 on so many other campaign promises since taking office, why should Russia be any different?

> dramatic events such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine

US policy on this matter was set by president Obama and the congress at the time. The relevant before picture and after picture (in terms of US policy) have nothing to do with Trump unless he actually drives a policy change. There was a minority (including McCain, HRC, etc.) who harshly criticized Obama's inaction. This minority has become very vocal of late, and has attracted many HRC partisans to the chorus, but there is not really evidence that a majority of congress holds this view. Notably, the members of the GOP who are most vehement are the ones whose own opportunism calculus dictates that vocally calling out Trump on the issue suits their own personal objectives.

From a game theoretic perspective, I think the hawks may be right, though I personally hope we find a more peaceful, trade-driven equilibrium. I've worked with various Ukrainian and Russian software engineers before, and they are all nice, reasonable people who do not deserve to have the US launching missiles at them.