Oren Dorell

USA TODAY

President Trump said Thursday his hope to reset U.S. relations with Russia may have been dashed by “false reporting” by the news media about alleged connections between his staff and Russian officials, which makes such a deal politically impossible.

“It would be great if we could get along with Russia,” Trump said at his news conference. “But it’s possible I won’t be able to get along with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.”

The reason: “The false reporting by the media, by you people, false, horrible fake reporting, makes it much harder to make a deal with Russia.”

Trump spoke as the FBI investigates contacts between his staff and Russian officials during the presidential campaign and post-election transition period.

Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign late Monday over conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about U.S. sanctions on the same December day that President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia and expelled 35 Russian diplomats over alleged Russian interference in the election to help Trump. Putin said the next day he would not retaliate with his own sanctions against the U.S.

Tensions with Russia go beyond its alleged election cyberattacks. On Tuesday, the State Department said Russia violated a 1987 arms control treaty by testing a medium-range cruise missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. On Wednesday, a Russian spy ship was spotted 30 miles from a U.S. Navy submarine base in Connecticut. And on Thursday, the U.S. military released images of Russian planes buzzing a U.S. ship in the Black Sea last week, CNN reported.

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Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who met with NATO allies in Brussels, said Thursday that the U.S. military will not collaborate with the Russian military against Islamic State terrorists in Syria, at least for now. Trump and Putin had discussed the possibility of such a collaboration in a phone call after Trump took office.

Trump painted a picture of Putin “sitting behind his desk and he’s saying, 'You know, I see what’s going on in the United States. I follow it closely. It’s going to be impossible for President Trump to ever get along with Russia because of all the pressure he’s got with this fake story.'”

Trump said, “That’s a shame, because if we could get along with Russia it would be a positive thing.”

Trump: 'I Had Nothing To Do With Russia'

Trump also downplayed his financial ties to Russia. “I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don’t have any deals in Russia,” he said.

While that statement may be accurate now, over the past three decades, he and his representatives have made many business trips to Russia, engaged in multiple deals there and entered into financial transactions with many wealthy Russians involving Trump properties in the United States and elsewhere around the world.

In 2008, Trump's son, Donald Trump, Jr., told the Russian daily Kommersant: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York.”

"We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia," Trump, Jr. said.

Donald Trump's ties to Russia go back 30 years

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