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Notes -
I find it odd that you've internalized the narrative that Trump was friendly with Russia, which is largely aesthetic from his left.
Trump's policies were worse for Russia than Biden, pre war.
My understanding of Trump is that he wanted to cut some of the deep state / unaccountable intelligence - paramilitary operations / foreign interference etc out of US politics. I think that would have been a good thing for Russia.
He obviously failed at that, even if he was genuinely intending to do so.
I don't know whether he felt friendly to Russia or not, but he strikes me as somebody with respect for strongmen, despite their decidedly anti-democratic tendencies, as they are people (Putin, Assad, Netanyahu...) that have effectively kept their own countries mostly stable for decades.
Trump's opposition did make the argument that Russia was influencing him.
The Western media seems to operate under the belief that the democratic process is such a fragile thing that a country as weak as Russia operated by a 'madman' like Putin can willy-nilly 'hack' it in order to get people like Trump elected, or Russian-friendly governments.
Additionally, they claim that the whole world should operate under the same extremely fragile democratic process, and the only way to tell whether or not the extremely fragile democratic process is operating as intended is that a leader that support their policies get elected.
Obviously no one ever questions the influence of that same Western media in shaping the opinions of voters in these 'real democracies', where social media workers who support at 99% one party take orders from intelligence agencies.
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