"He’s been very nice to me the times I’ve met him. I’ve been nice to him. He’s a competitor. You know, somebody was saying, “Is he an enemy?” No, he’s not my enemy. “Is he a friend?” No, I don’t know him well enough. But the couple of times that I’ve gotten to meet him, we got along very well. You saw that.

I hope we get along well. I think we get along well. But ultimately, he’s a competitor. He’s representing Russia. I’m representing the United States. So in a sense, we’re competitors. Not a question of friend or enemy. He’s not my enemy. And hopefully, someday, maybe he’ll be a friend. It could happen. But I — I just don’t know him very well. I’ve met him a couple of times."

In the same press conference, Trump also said “I hope that we’re going to be able to get along with Russia,” “maybe we’ll get along with the group that we’re protecting against” (a reference to NATO and Russia), “I hope that we’ll be able to get along” (referring to himself and Putin), and “I hope we get along well with Iraq.” He also said about China, “China is going to be, I think, very successfully, ultimately, taken care of. I have a great respect for their President, as you know — President Xi [Jinping]. I spent two days there. It was among the most magical two days I’ve ever lived.” In other words, the US and China can have a successful relationship because Xi showed him a good time.

No one would deny that personal relationships between leaders can be important in foreign relations. But Trump seems to have a view that those relations are almost entirely about personal chemistry, and the primary determinant of how the US relates to allies, adversaries and every nation in between comes down only to whether he is able to “get along” with the leader in question. It’s a view of foreign policy in which things such as national interests, domestic and global realities, and political circumstances don’t matter. All that’s important is whether, say, the US and Russia could discover to their pleasant surprise that they both like Hüsker Dü and can’t stand cilantro.