Media's awful Trump-praises-Putin narrative even more mangled after VP debate

This is one of those stories where I'm honestly not sure if the problem is that the reporters are too dumb to know what's going on, or if they're just so determined to help Hillary that they'll lie about this shamelessly. I'm sort of leaning toward dumb, but either one is plausible. You've heard this many times, I'm sure: Trump loves Vladimir Putin! Trump praises Putin! Trump thinks Putin is a wonderful man and a great leader! None of this accurately describes Trump's statements or his actual thinking. There's a thing call respecting your opponent and being able to recognize his strengths. It's not the same thing as liking him. There's also a thing called gamesmanship, which means that if you have deal with someone, you don't publicly trash the person in advance of the encounter. You might not see that as a likely Trump strength because you keep hearing how "bombastic" he is, but there's a difference between someone you just want to defeat (Hillary) and someone you're going to have to do business with whether you like it or not, and that's what Putin represents.