BYRON YORK: Trump and Obama: Who’s really tougher on Russia?

In a text exchange, I asked one GOP lawmaker: If you believe Trump has been tougher on Russia, what is the best evidence? He quickly came back with a list. The U.S. is, he said:

Bombing Syria, Russia’s main client, and generally unleashing the U.S. military in Syria, including against Russians when necessary.
Arming Ukraine.
Browbeating NATO allies to increase defense spending.
Adding low-yield nukes to our arsenal.
Starting research and development on an INF noncompliant missile.
Shutting Russia’s San Francisco consulate.

To clarify some of the less-obvious references, on the “arming Ukraine” front, the lawmaker noted the Trump administration’s decision to supply Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank missiles. (The Washington Post called Trump’s decision “a worthy application of the ‘peace through strength’ principle'” that will help Russian President Vladimir Putin understand that “his aggressions … will be resisted.”) The “low-yield nukes” reference is to developing a new generation of (relatively) small nuclear weapons that, the New York Times noted, “advocates say are needed to match Russian advances.” The “INF non-compliant missile” refers to U.S. work on a new missile that does not comply with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and is “a direct response to Russia’s deployment in recent years of its own treaty-busting missile,” according to Time magazine. (Time added that, “The Obama administration worked unsuccessfully to persuade the Kremlin to stand down the program.”)

The items on the list were all solid, hard-edged measures designed specifically to push back against Russian aggression.

So why do so many believe Obama was tougher on Russia? It wasn’t that Obama took a harder line against Russian adventurism. Just the opposite. “Under President Obama, Vladimir Putin hardly had reason to fear that anyone would push back on anything,” John Bolton, the U.N. ambassador under George W. Bush, noted recently.

But some journalists cite the measures the lame-duck Obama took in December 2016 in retaliation for Russian attempts to influence the presidential election as a case-closed argument that Obama was tougher. “Thirty-five diplomats were expelled,” explained CNN’s Tom Foreman. “They imposed sanctions on Russian businesses and agencies that were involved, and they closed two Russian compounds here in the United States. … You can certainly say Barack Obama could have been tougher, but any evidence that Donald Trump has been tougher than him, no, there is none. The statement is simply false.”

Yes, Obama’s December 2016 actions were actual punitive measures. But it’s hard to compare them to the lawmaker’s list of Trump actions — including, for example, U.S. forces killing at least 100 Russian mercenaries in Syria recently — and say Obama was the president who was harder on Russia.

The problem could be that some Trump critics appear to think of Russia only in terms of countering online election interference. They don’t seem to think that real, physical-world actions, like blowing up Russian mercenaries and building new missiles and bombs, constitute a tough policy toward Russia.

When you understand that Democrats will tolerate anything from Russians so long as it isn’t a direct threat to their power, you’ll understand why.