On Saturday, Trump wrote on Twitter that having a better relationship with Russia was a "good thing."

US Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said three US presidents had tried and failed to be friends with Putin.

"I'm just not sure it's possible," Nunes said on the "Fox News Sunday" program. "I've cautioned his administration to be careful with Putin, as he remains a bad actor."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed it was not unusual for a new president to want to get along with the Russians. He added on CBS, however, that the Russians remained a "big adversary, and they demonstrated it by trying to mess around in our election."

Obama, who himself tried to "reset" relations with Russia after he took office in 2009, told NBC he did not think he had underestimated the Russian president.

"But I think that I underestimated the degree to which, in this new information age, it is possible for misinformation for cyber hacking and so forth to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating," he said in an interview with "Meet the Press" broadcast on Sunday.