How did a man who hoped Vladimir Putin would become his best friend end up presiding over the punitive shuttering of Russia’s San Francisco consulate? President Trump has gone from yukking it up with Kremlin operatives to forcing them to find out how fast one can rent a moving van without a U.S. driver’s license.

It turns out that even if Trump’s obsequious attitude toward the Russian president could be justified on diplomatic grounds, it’s no way to improve relations with a deeply cynical regime. Putin has repeatedly shown that he will respond to any perceived weakness by attempting to take advantage of it. And Trump has certainly managed to appear weak even when he is going through the motions of punishing Russian provocations.

The result is that U.S.-Russian relations have deteriorated markedly despite, and in some respects because of, Trump’s grotesque admiration for a man who has declared war on Ukrainian sovereignty and American democracy alike.

Signals that the administration might make undue concessions to Russia, for example, led Congress to pass a measure stepping up sanctions against the country and limiting the president’s ability to soften them. Facing a veto-proof mandate, Trump reluctantly signed it while grousing that it was “seriously flawed.” Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s sometime seat-warmer, took the opportunity to ridicule Trump for having “demonstrated complete impotence in the most humiliating manner.” As if to prove the point, Trump went on to impotently thank Putin for forcing a retaliatory two-thirds cut to American diplomatic staff in Russia, while insulting U.S. employees by saying he was “trying to cut down our payroll.”

Thursday’s State Department order to close the San Francisco consulate and two other facilities by Saturday was a more potent response. But the administration did not force staff reductions and hoped to “avoid further retaliatory actions by both sides and move forward to achieve the stated goal of both of our presidents: improved relations.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday blamed souring relations on the Obama administration, which in December closed two East Coast Russian compounds in response to Moscow’s election meddling.

A few months later, the Russians’ preferred candidate explored returning the facilities. That Trump has instead been compelled to close more diplomatic posts shows his Russia strategy isn’t even working on its own naive terms.

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