On Friday, a more nuanced template emerged when Trump appeared on Morning Joe and was pushed by host Joe Scarborough to reconcile Putin’s praise for Trump with Putin’s other deeds.

“Well, also he’s a person that kills journalists and political opponents and invades countries,” said Scarborough. “That would be a concern, would it not?”

Trump replied by taking a shot at President Obama. “He’s return running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” he said.

When Scarborough pushed again, arguing that Putin “kills journalist that don’t agree with him,” Trump didn’t budge.

“Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe,” Trump said. “You know, there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on and a lot of stupidity.”

This remark in particular was also quickly seized upon by Republican leaders.

Important distinction: thug Putin kills journalists and opponents; our presidents kill terrorists and enemy combatants. — Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) December 18, 2015

While Trump ultimately said the killing of journalists does matter, what might be seen or portrayed as a flippant coddling of or cozying up to Putin actually falls within Trump’s foreign policy views, which he showcased this week at the Republican debate in Las Vegas. As my colleague David Graham noted during our liveblog, one of Trump’s feats for the evening was to offer yet another “impassioned lament about the negative effects of American intervention in the Middle East.”

However inelegantly, what Trump was ultimately saying about Putin is that if the United States were held to Russia’s standards, America would fold under the weight of its drone strikes and military action.

Speaking about Ukraine later in the segment, Trump chastised other countries like Germany for not doing more to stop Russia while taking their oil and gas. (Apparently Germany’s increasingly unpopular sanctions don’t count.)

But Trump, on Morning Joe, also criticized the United States for “always being at the forefront of leading the charge,” which speaks to his non-interventionist bent. “I think other countries have to get involved with that, Joe,” he said. “You have the Ukraine and it affects other countries a hell of lot more than it does us.”

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