And President Trump invited them to his wedding. Are you saying that’s why he made the comment about Putin?
I won’t put words in the Presidents deflected answer.
It would be hard for me to believe that Trump will be soft on Putin given all of the staunch Putin critics he's put into high administration positions. And they've been open and direct about what they think. He would never permit them to make such strong, very public statements on Putin and Russia if he wasn't on-board with them himself. Both his VP, Mike Pence, and UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, laid it out multiple times in strong, clear language. So it's not as if their remarks were "slip-ups", or anything of the sort. I suspect Trump is a pretty good chess player himself and is playing the "good-cop, bad-cop" strategy with Putin.