This is one of those things it would take a long post to summarize but the 2016 Trump/Hillary stuff is just the surface level. It is still somewhat accurate to say Republicans support Russia simply because they do whatever it takes to be the opposite of libs.
But that is obviously surface level. Deep down liberal democracy is the face of neoliberalism through the democratic party. Neoliberalism in the 21st century is about expansion e.g expanding NATO, wars in the ME, conflicts with China(delusional hopes of balkanization).
That neoliberalism sometimes has to go straight up against older traditional right wing values. It is why the US despite having just as much of an vicious right wing as other fascist countries needs to be aggressive towards other right wing fascist countries. So eventually right wing socially conservative Russia remains just as big an enemy as soviet Russia.
Traditional right wingers, or maybe grifters towards that group find it very easy to exploit this by asking why should you, an American right wing fascist support liberal woke Washington instead of socially conservative Russia. These grifters may have “genuine” right wing ideological conflicts in their head. But they are powerless to oppose neoliberal foreign policy.
Trump was not actually pro-Russian in any meaningful way, as we see today the whole 8 years period where the US armed and trained Ukraine with no internal opposition from Republicans/right wingers.
Indeed we go back to the beginning, right wingers are using Russia as a political tool against the Democrats. They can easily exploit this to find a common ground against the Democrats. But they do not and can not stop American neoliberals from expanding aggressively, in other words, from continuing to impose US imperialism. It is the easiest way to oppose the Democrats and they’d do it for free.
In the end, the Republican grift works for Russia because mostly-“white” orthodox christian Russia is a much easier pill to swallow than right wing medieval Islamic theocracies. It doesn’t work for third world non-christian nations.
