WASHINGTON, February 16. /TASS/. The anti-Russian campaign, currently waged by the US media, may send a wrong signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump told reporters at a news conference in the White House.

"Probably Putin assumes that he’s not going to be able to make a deal with me because it’s politically not popular for me to make a deal," he said, adding that he was unsure whether he would manage to reach an agreement with Russia.

He also lashed at the anti-Russian reports in the US media, saying that they may make the Russian authorities think that Washington is "back to the old games" and "there’s no way Trump can ever do a deal with us."

"I want to just tell you, the false reporting by the media, by you people, the false, horrible, fake reporting makes it much harder to make a deal with Russia," he went on.

"If I was just brutal on Russia right now, just brutal, people would say, you would say, "Oh, isn’t that wonderful." But I know you well enough. Then you would say, "Oh, he was too tough; he shouldn’t have done that," the US president said, adding that his political opponent Hillary Clinton has also tried to re-set ties with Russia, but failed.

"They all tried. But I’m different than those people," Trump said.

"It would be much easier for me to be tough on Russia, but then we’re not going to make a deal," he said. "I don’t know that we’re going to make a deal. I don’t know. We might. We might not."

However, he added that he wanted "to do the right thing for the American people." "And to be honest, secondarily, I want to do the right thing for the world," Trump said.

"They’re a very powerful nuclear country and so are we. If we have a good relationship with Russia, believe me, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing," he said.

The US president also dismissed a suggestion that Putin was testing him. "No, I don’t think so," he replied.

Trump said he wanted to "get along" with Russia, but did nothing for Moscow so far, unlike his political rival Hillary Clinton.

"I didn’t do anything for Russia. I’ve done nothing for Russia," Trump said. "If we could get along with Russia, that’s a positive thing. We have a very talented man, Rex Tillerson, who’s going to be meeting with them shortly."

He added that "Hillary Clinton gave them 20% of our uranium." "Hillary Clinton did a reset, remember? With the stupid plastic button that made us all look like a bunch of jerks," the US leader said.