It's amazing how we see things that aren't there (Hillary and George Soros wearing the flensed faces of little children in nonexistent basements of pizza parlors) but never see what is right in plain view.
If Donald Trump is not an actual paid agent of Russia and the FSB, he is their willingly manipulated asset whose financial existence …
It's amazing how we see things that aren't there (Hillary and George Soros wearing the flensed faces of little children in nonexistent basements of pizza parlors) but never see what is right in plain view.
If Donald Trump is not an actual paid agent of Russia and the FSB, he is their willingly manipulated asset whose financial existence depended on a flow of laundered Russian money.
He attempted publicly to create support for moving the US out of NATO when in office, if not at the specific direction of the Vladimir Putin and the FSB, then in accord with their lead.
He has committed himself to ending the US involvement in NATO after he takes office again. He has praised the invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin and continues to do so.
Where is the mystery about who and what directs and controls him?
I think Putin is everything Trump wants to be: dangerous, fabulously wealthy through corruption and destroying his enemies, and willing to gain power by any means. Instead he's a fat and lazy man-baby who whines incessantly when he can't get what he wants.
It's not that we don't see it; it's that we have clear incentives to pretend or to convince ourselves we don't see it. Like how every damn Republican with any brains could see that Trump's call with Zelensky was far from "perfect". In fact they all knew exactly what Trump was doing and rationalized it at Trump's insistence.
Or how, once upon a time, almost every Republican, save for a handful of regressives eyeing a sleeper stock, like Jeff Sessions and Jim Jordan, saw Trump for exactly what he was - unfit for office. And despite the fact that he in no way turned out to be any better than people expected (and in most respects far worse), almost all of them ended up warming up to him anyway out of political necessity - or cowardice, depending on how gracious you want to be. The people who resigned from the administration on Jan 6th or 7th weren't getting their first glimpse of "bad Trump". They had been biting their tongue and pretending the whole time - maybe even fooling themselves much of the way.
It is clear to me that during the infamous private meeting between Putin and Trump that they discussed a quid pro quo where Trump got the US out of NATO and Putin continued to provide cyber propaganda support to keep Trump in office. Trump has shown he will do anything to stay in power including supporting the enemies of Democracy and peace worldwide.
Trump was always going to scream Stolen Election if he lost. It is the inevitable outcome of his personality. Nothing bad is ever his fault and he never makes mistakes and is not a loser (in what passes for his mind).
He would have screamed stolen election if HC had won in 2016. He would have been riding that pony until 2020 and beyond, just like he is riding it now to 2024. He will ride it into the ground.
He played the "rigged election" theme leading up to 2016 election too,, just not as heavily as in 2020. I think in 2016 he didn't necessarily want to be president; he just wanted a way to claim that he didn't actually lose a fair contest. And IIRC he subsequently claimed that he would have won the popular vote in 2016 if not for cheating.
My general sense is that Trump rn as a promotional gig to revitalize his brand. He did not really expect to win and probably (if he thought about it honestly) did not want to win.
There was no real upside for Trump in actually winning... as we ended up seeing. It brought to light many things he would have preferred not be seen and is probably going to cost him a lot of money and maybe even his company in the end.
After it all plays out, I seriously doubt the bit of graft he got out of it will make up for what he loses. He could have made more money and had all the adoration if he had lost (and the loss would not have been his fault because it was "rigged.").
He seems to have lost money by being president, much as he tried to monetize the presidency, but he gained a bigger, more fanatical cult following than he could have dreamed of, and even the fawning praise of some "intellectuals" who should know better. If there's one thing that Trump cares about more than wealth, or being perceived as very wealthy, it's adulation. And he got it without having to put much actual work into presidential duties, since he had other people to do that.
Balanced against that adulation is the awareness that even more people than his followers have come to hate and despise him. The thing is, he could have probably had the adulation if he had stuck to the media end after a losing run at President... and would probably be less hated.
Well, actually, as far as a democratic election goes, HRC did win in 2016. The EC is not a democratic institution and was never meant to be so we truly have never had a really democratic presidential election (or Al Gore and HRC would have taken office after winning the popular vote).
But I think he believes in the Big Lie of the Steal because he thought his own stealing of the election was set up and because it worked in 2016 when much more loosely organized by Russia and the Republican Party. I thought he thought it could not fail in 2020 with both Putin and the GOP behind it. So of course he must assume that Biden just had a better rigging system in place. Hence, the Steal.
We do have a Democratic presidential election. It's just 50 separate State elections. Those are the rules that everyone knows going in. If you don't win the majority of electoral votes you don't win the election. Doesn't make the election non-democratic
Interesting POV but the EC is in itself an undemocratic institution as it was created to ensure the "wrong" person was never elevated to office despite winning a democratically held election (one person one vote all persons). When the person who wins the most votes is not allowed to take the office, that is undemocratic by definition imho. (But I appreciate hearing your justification for it; I just will never agree. The EC manipulates results deliberately. It may be legal. It isn't democratic.)
I think liberals are overly focused on the state by state nature of the EC that could mean a candidate who doesn't receive a national majority wins the election. A much, much bigger concern is the clunky and easily exploited process associated with counting and certifying electoral votes. That's something Trump tried to exploit in 2020. Here's a related concern. What if the D narrowly wins a sufficient number of states for an electoral majority in 2024 and Trump bribes a few electors to cross over to vote for him so he can win the EC vote for President? That didn't happen in 2000 b/c Bush and Gore were decent moral men who cared about the country. Trump is not decent nor moral and he sure doesn't care about the country.
I am focused on the popular vote electing the winner. So I would support eliminating the EC as it has proven to be easily manipulated by those neither decent nor moral. Twice in 20 years. But then, democracy only works if those working it abide by a social contract. Both parties must do so.
Do you remember the piece on the Trump Re-elect's finances in the NYT? It was low on cash. Parscale was briefly accused of stealing money; then of lavishly spending money. He was removed as campaign chair. There was a quarter billion dollars in money that had been paid for "consulting," to a post box. I've wondered whether Trump's high dudgeon about losing was partly due to the fact that he had paid a lot of money to rig the election himself and still didn't win--or got ripped off.
PS: It was also about the amount of money he would have needed for the loan that was coming due... .
I do vaguely remember that but I always assume he's putting the cash into his own account somewhere, like he did with his "nonprofits." But I do think in his own head he cannot fathom that he didn't rig it well enough...
OTOH, his campaign's internal polling, along with nearly every other poll, was consistently showing him likely to lose, which IMO is why he harped on the "rigged election" theme so heavily.
If he didn't know or strongly he was going to lose going in, he wasn't listening to his people with the data. As early as several months before the election, any time he was asked about what he would do if he lost, he never indicated that he would willingly leave... in fact, kind of the reverse.
o people like Trump and Putin and Xi, elections are these orchestrated things that return the desired results--because if you don't get the result you want, something is obviously crooked, right?
Just like I am absolutely sure that the referendum in Belarus about letting Russia permanently station troops and have nukes there is 100% legit. Uh huh.
True. It's why narcissism is a personality defect. Still, without QAnon, he would not have gotten as far as he did with it. It's emerging that QAnon was well represented in the series of meetings at which the plan for !/6 was crafted.
He is operating in an intellectual and media environment that makes doing what he is doing easier, because people see a chance to capitalize on it. Yay for the internet, where every tinfoil cap wearer can self-publish. :P
The informal fallacy of the decade seems to be "Everybody's saying it." When there are literal armies of trolls, bots, and cyborgs, it seems like everybody IS saying it.
I have been reading Peter Ackroyd's history of England/Britain (it is a decent and entertaining general treatment)--the part leading up to the English Civil War--and it is interesting to see the attitudes and beliefs of James I and Charles I--the belief in their semi-divine status and authority--what we would see as an extreme form of narcissism these days but was kind of par for the course for many of these royals at the time.
Trump is kind of a throwback to that. Entirely self-obsessed and caring only about what he wants and needs (and then a petulant child when he doesn't get it). Secure in his sense of entitlement and his belief that he deserves to have the power that he wishes to have.
He is no less a monster than Xi or Putin--they at least have the excuse of the system that they came up in. Trump? Spoiled rich boy.
Trump does what he does because it is what he thinks will get him what he wants--the adoration and obedience of the lesser people around him--except he doesn't know much about anything and is easily swayed by what he thinks will be popular or that will build his "strongman" image.
The Russians do not need to blackmail Trump or make him an agent--it is pretty simple to get him to do what they (the Russians) want him to do because of his adoration of people like Putin and his own UNenlightened self interest. he is the greyhound chasing the mechanical rabbit around the track.
This works because:
1) Other people to Trump aren't REALLY people, they are objects to be used/manipulated and thrown away when no longer useful --I am tempted to say that he is not just a narcissist but tends to solipsism;
2) As such he believes he is smarter and more capable than the objects that surround him (despite the fact that he is apparently largely uneducated and uninformed and apparently not exceptionally bright);
So he hears things from the people that surround him and grabs and runs with it--even if what he heard was badly misunderstood by him or just flat out obviously wrong. There is effectively no critical thought or strategy other than that which resembles something that flows from base animal cunning.
"Trump does what he does because it is what he thinks will get him what he wants--the adoration and obedience of the lesser people around him ..."
I'll be forever mystified that so many people, including some who aren't stupid, fail to acknowledge the most obvious facts about Trump: his extremely self-centered worldview and his insatiable demand for adulation. He realized that posing as a great patriot, hero of the little guy, defender of Christianity and foe of "the left" would win him a big fan base. All of that is merely instrumental to ego-gratification -- but people who should have better judgment tell themselves that he's the truest patriot in the land, and therefore anything that doesn't align with his wishes is anti-American and corrupt.
I know some of those people. It's befuddling and depressing.
I don't personally believe that he's some kind of direct Russian asset. Why? Because even the Russians aren't so direct as that. What I believe is that he admires Putin for the same reasons he admires Xi and Kim Jong Un; he aspires to that autocratic worldview and would love to be them. In some ways, this works against how we like to think; it's almost cartoonish after all. But really, he's exactly what he looks like.
He's a greedy narcissistic man who looks back in history and would love to be an actual king for all the most obvious reasons you can think of. The guy made his penthouse to look like Versailles or something. He's exactly as gaudy and greedy as any Czar. He's just never had that power for real, and he wishes he could.
The very traits we hate in someone like Putin; someone who cares not one bit about anyone or anything else and who is willing to kill to take what he needs; is exactly what Trump loves. I mean, this is a guy who stole his fortune from his father as he was dying and refused to meet with his fixer as he was dying because he was no longer useful.
He's not compromises and there's no conspiracy. He's just a small minded self focused evil man.
All correct, but there is also the point that intelligence officers tear their hair out over recruits who are unstable and frankly not overly subtle or bright -- like Trump. they can easily blow up.
There's a spectrum of what an asset is. Some are direct recruits run by case officers. Some are just accomplices who think they're doing occasional odd transactions in their own interest. Some are acquiescent and willing fellow travellers for any or all of a host of reasons, some reasons ideological, but most due to character and personality problems and delusions which the intelligence service finds and manipulates.
I doubt if Trump showed up at the Russian embassy one day and offered to pull the US out of NATO in exchange for millions of dollars of laundered money. I presume that over the years he has had many contacts and transactions in which he imagined himself "doing business" while they were roping him in. Each and every one of the points you list constitutes one of the hooks and rings in his nose by which his handlers control him.
You don't have to be a card-carrying Maxwell Smart with a phone shoe to be an intelligence asset. An intelligence asset is anyone an intelligence agency dedicates files and case officers to, works with and on, and seeks results from. For an asset like Trump, they probably have enough Trump dedicated FSB case officers to staff an entire football league.
I would add that in addition to case officers, there is Putin's network of oligarchs, all of whom rely on Putin's favor to do business. These are the guys who over the years purchased more than 1300 properties developed by the Trump organization; who got Trump involved in the Miss Universe pageant; who were among the first to suggest that Trump should have a go at POTUS.
Its easy to imagine how Putin would take a run at Trump to get him to want to leave NATO. He'd just point out how unfair it is that the US carries the greatest financial burden and how Obama was too weak willed to walk away from NATO. Then Putin gets his cyber assets to post that same idea all over right wing social media and eventually someone at Fox picks it up as a talking point for attacking Obama and other democratic leaders. Once Trump sees it being talked about by his base, he's hooked.
Rupert Murdoch simply wants to do whatever it takes to elect Republicans. I don’t think he is in Putins pocket. Murdoch knows that Republicans can’t win without support from Trumps base. Until it is proven that Trump is toxic to Republican fortunes as a party, Murdoch won’t change. Having said that - he is a soulless husk for prioritizing party and profit over democracy and country.
I agree with your last sentence, but not the one before it. Everything you said about Trump is true. But the Soviets/Russians are that direct in many cases. Americans have sold out for Soviet money lots of times. Trump loves money, loves to be on top (in his brain), loves to be in charge, etc. - which requires gobs of money. Yeah, Putin fed Trump's image of himself, but as As Eric Trump admitted years ago, "We get all the money we need from Russia."
The one thing I think you may be missing is that what makes sense to us logically from the outside does not make sense to him logically, and vice versa. What I mean is, we see sucking up to dictators and the like for money to be a sign of weakness. We think that shows that he's owned by them.
But I doubt this is how trump thinks. In fact, I think it's the opposite. Think of Putin not as Trump's handler but like a bank. Trump goes to him, says all these nice words, gets all this money. Trump is thinking 'what a sucker. I got him to give me all this stuff.' Of course, he's never planning on paying it back, just like all those creditors he stiffed. Words, you see, are cheap. He'll say anything if it means getting something, because what Trump cares about are physical things. Once he has them, he'll do anything to keep them.
Beyond that, there's another reason to suck up to people like Putin; people who are seen as beleaguered from the outside make good marks. Trump is a conman, that's why he preys on the right wing grievance machine. But think of it like this: he sees Putin, Xi, ect as international pariahs. What does that mean? It means they'll owe him for sticking up for them, leveraging the US' clout for his own personal gain. But as we've seen with everyone who's ever worked with him, at some point he'll decide to get rid of you.
It's also why when dealing with people he can't get to owe him in this manner he turns to threats, or tries to remove them entirely, like leaving NATO. They won't agree to owe him, so they're not a benefit to him, they're a liability. No one exists beyond him, no interests exists beyond his own. If he can't get them to give him something, he'll get rid of it and hopefully leave someone else with the bag. That's always been his modus operandi.
Too many people apply some kind of personal viewpoint upon him. They think he's a patsy or a fool or a psychopath. He's none of those. To use a lord of the rings reference, he's not Saruman. He's not Sauron. He's Wormtongue. He's the guy who will do anything if it means getting ahead and getting something for himself. That's partially why lots of people struggle to understand him; we like to assume he must have some greater motive, or that someone else does. He doesn't.
He's just greedy and immoral, and he's open about it. He's not book smart, but he's cunning enough to know how to make people owe him, and then how to leverage that for his own gain, not caring about who else gets hurt in the process.
This is a really clear take and seems pretty accurate but I thought that was kind of the definition of psychopath. I think it's likely the definition fits both Trump and Putin. These are not what we usually call rational actors, though each of them used to be I think.
I think what we see as irrational, is just Putin and Trump using the bully's playbook because that playbook has always worked in the past and they've never been held accountable. What's happening to Putin right now is the first time he's ever faced existentially negative consequences for his actions. Watching the whole world coming down on Putin's head, must have Trump terrified.
All true, and all consistent with being a controlled asset of the FSB living a delusion that when doing his masters' bidding he is a respected equal making canny deals.
Except he OWES Putin how many billions? Putin can see right through someone like Trump. Don't think Trump's figured it out yet. BTW, it's already a given that IF Trump gets power, he's turning on NATO and the rest of Europe, not mention everyone else. Unless McConnell and other Rs rediscover their balls.
Whoever primaries Trump in 2024 (Cheney? Kinzinger?) must rub the Putin fiasco in his face repeatedly. The idea that Trump wants to pull us out of NATO should be used by both Democrats and sane Republicans to just hammer Trump.
I agree. I think he will turn on the American People in just as murderous a fashion, as he sees us all as having betrayed him by not going along with the Big Lie and keeping him in power in 2020. This guy doesn't even like his own children; everything is an asset or a liability to him. Given the opportunity, his revenge will know no bounds! He will finish off the federal govt and the GOP as well as NATO etc. He will be unstoppable in his bloodlust. Like Putin. They are like peas in a pod at this point and both are dangerous to all life on earth. It is a bit gobsmacking to see the similarities between them in their madness.
The Trump Org ties to Russian money has me wondering how the ongoing collapse of the Russian economy the last few days is affecting them. I have seen no reporting or opinion pieces about this yet.
If only someone in the media would look into this. But, even if the connection was completely uncovered, his supporters would praise Russia for helping Trump. Funny how the Tea Party patriots turned so quickly into anti-American detractors
This is a great question. If the Treasury department goes after Yachts and Condos, one wonders how many units of Trump properties will end up being owned by the US Government.
Most of that money is off the books money coming from the oligarchs, turning what are essentially largely worthless rubles into physical assets and American dollars.
It will take some time for that to have an effect on the Trump Organization (unless people start calling in their loans because of the whole untrustworthy financial statements thing from Mazars).
It's amazing how we see things that aren't there (Hillary and George Soros wearing the flensed faces of little children in nonexistent basements of pizza parlors) but never see what is right in plain view.
If Donald Trump is not an actual paid agent of Russia and the FSB, he is their willingly manipulated asset whose financial existence depended on a flow of laundered Russian money.
He attempted publicly to create support for moving the US out of NATO when in office, if not at the specific direction of the Vladimir Putin and the FSB, then in accord with their lead.
He has committed himself to ending the US involvement in NATO after he takes office again. He has praised the invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin and continues to do so.
Where is the mystery about who and what directs and controls him?
I think Putin is everything Trump wants to be: dangerous, fabulously wealthy through corruption and destroying his enemies, and willing to gain power by any means. Instead he's a fat and lazy man-baby who whines incessantly when he can't get what he wants.
It's not that we don't see it; it's that we have clear incentives to pretend or to convince ourselves we don't see it. Like how every damn Republican with any brains could see that Trump's call with Zelensky was far from "perfect". In fact they all knew exactly what Trump was doing and rationalized it at Trump's insistence.
Or how, once upon a time, almost every Republican, save for a handful of regressives eyeing a sleeper stock, like Jeff Sessions and Jim Jordan, saw Trump for exactly what he was - unfit for office. And despite the fact that he in no way turned out to be any better than people expected (and in most respects far worse), almost all of them ended up warming up to him anyway out of political necessity - or cowardice, depending on how gracious you want to be. The people who resigned from the administration on Jan 6th or 7th weren't getting their first glimpse of "bad Trump". They had been biting their tongue and pretending the whole time - maybe even fooling themselves much of the way.
It is clear to me that during the infamous private meeting between Putin and Trump that they discussed a quid pro quo where Trump got the US out of NATO and Putin continued to provide cyber propaganda support to keep Trump in office. Trump has shown he will do anything to stay in power including supporting the enemies of Democracy and peace worldwide.
And he wishes he had the means that Putin has to stay in power. He pretty much said so openly.
The dots are few between Putin and "The Steal." 1) the DNC hack, 2) Pizzagate, 3) QAnon (Pizzagate sans basement)...
Trump was always going to scream Stolen Election if he lost. It is the inevitable outcome of his personality. Nothing bad is ever his fault and he never makes mistakes and is not a loser (in what passes for his mind).
He would have screamed stolen election if HC had won in 2016. He would have been riding that pony until 2020 and beyond, just like he is riding it now to 2024. He will ride it into the ground.
He played the "rigged election" theme leading up to 2016 election too,, just not as heavily as in 2020. I think in 2016 he didn't necessarily want to be president; he just wanted a way to claim that he didn't actually lose a fair contest. And IIRC he subsequently claimed that he would have won the popular vote in 2016 if not for cheating.
My general sense is that Trump rn as a promotional gig to revitalize his brand. He did not really expect to win and probably (if he thought about it honestly) did not want to win.
There was no real upside for Trump in actually winning... as we ended up seeing. It brought to light many things he would have preferred not be seen and is probably going to cost him a lot of money and maybe even his company in the end.
After it all plays out, I seriously doubt the bit of graft he got out of it will make up for what he loses. He could have made more money and had all the adoration if he had lost (and the loss would not have been his fault because it was "rigged.").
He seems to have lost money by being president, much as he tried to monetize the presidency, but he gained a bigger, more fanatical cult following than he could have dreamed of, and even the fawning praise of some "intellectuals" who should know better. If there's one thing that Trump cares about more than wealth, or being perceived as very wealthy, it's adulation. And he got it without having to put much actual work into presidential duties, since he had other people to do that.
Balanced against that adulation is the awareness that even more people than his followers have come to hate and despise him. The thing is, he could have probably had the adulation if he had stuck to the media end after a losing run at President... and would probably be less hated.
Well, actually, as far as a democratic election goes, HRC did win in 2016. The EC is not a democratic institution and was never meant to be so we truly have never had a really democratic presidential election (or Al Gore and HRC would have taken office after winning the popular vote).
But I think he believes in the Big Lie of the Steal because he thought his own stealing of the election was set up and because it worked in 2016 when much more loosely organized by Russia and the Republican Party. I thought he thought it could not fail in 2020 with both Putin and the GOP behind it. So of course he must assume that Biden just had a better rigging system in place. Hence, the Steal.
We do have a Democratic presidential election. It's just 50 separate State elections. Those are the rules that everyone knows going in. If you don't win the majority of electoral votes you don't win the election. Doesn't make the election non-democratic
Interesting POV but the EC is in itself an undemocratic institution as it was created to ensure the "wrong" person was never elevated to office despite winning a democratically held election (one person one vote all persons). When the person who wins the most votes is not allowed to take the office, that is undemocratic by definition imho. (But I appreciate hearing your justification for it; I just will never agree. The EC manipulates results deliberately. It may be legal. It isn't democratic.)
I think liberals are overly focused on the state by state nature of the EC that could mean a candidate who doesn't receive a national majority wins the election. A much, much bigger concern is the clunky and easily exploited process associated with counting and certifying electoral votes. That's something Trump tried to exploit in 2020. Here's a related concern. What if the D narrowly wins a sufficient number of states for an electoral majority in 2024 and Trump bribes a few electors to cross over to vote for him so he can win the EC vote for President? That didn't happen in 2000 b/c Bush and Gore were decent moral men who cared about the country. Trump is not decent nor moral and he sure doesn't care about the country.
I am focused on the popular vote electing the winner. So I would support eliminating the EC as it has proven to be easily manipulated by those neither decent nor moral. Twice in 20 years. But then, democracy only works if those working it abide by a social contract. Both parties must do so.
Do you remember the piece on the Trump Re-elect's finances in the NYT? It was low on cash. Parscale was briefly accused of stealing money; then of lavishly spending money. He was removed as campaign chair. There was a quarter billion dollars in money that had been paid for "consulting," to a post box. I've wondered whether Trump's high dudgeon about losing was partly due to the fact that he had paid a lot of money to rig the election himself and still didn't win--or got ripped off.
PS: It was also about the amount of money he would have needed for the loan that was coming due... .
I do vaguely remember that but I always assume he's putting the cash into his own account somewhere, like he did with his "nonprofits." But I do think in his own head he cannot fathom that he didn't rig it well enough...
OTOH, his campaign's internal polling, along with nearly every other poll, was consistently showing him likely to lose, which IMO is why he harped on the "rigged election" theme so heavily.
If he didn't know or strongly he was going to lose going in, he wasn't listening to his people with the data. As early as several months before the election, any time he was asked about what he would do if he lost, he never indicated that he would willingly leave... in fact, kind of the reverse.
You're right he thought he could just stay office and do away with elections entirely.
o people like Trump and Putin and Xi, elections are these orchestrated things that return the desired results--because if you don't get the result you want, something is obviously crooked, right?
Just like I am absolutely sure that the referendum in Belarus about letting Russia permanently station troops and have nukes there is 100% legit. Uh huh.
True. It's why narcissism is a personality defect. Still, without QAnon, he would not have gotten as far as he did with it. It's emerging that QAnon was well represented in the series of meetings at which the plan for !/6 was crafted.
He is operating in an intellectual and media environment that makes doing what he is doing easier, because people see a chance to capitalize on it. Yay for the internet, where every tinfoil cap wearer can self-publish. :P
The informal fallacy of the decade seems to be "Everybody's saying it." When there are literal armies of trolls, bots, and cyborgs, it seems like everybody IS saying it.
Shawn pretty much nails it in his post.
I have been reading Peter Ackroyd's history of England/Britain (it is a decent and entertaining general treatment)--the part leading up to the English Civil War--and it is interesting to see the attitudes and beliefs of James I and Charles I--the belief in their semi-divine status and authority--what we would see as an extreme form of narcissism these days but was kind of par for the course for many of these royals at the time.
Trump is kind of a throwback to that. Entirely self-obsessed and caring only about what he wants and needs (and then a petulant child when he doesn't get it). Secure in his sense of entitlement and his belief that he deserves to have the power that he wishes to have.
He is no less a monster than Xi or Putin--they at least have the excuse of the system that they came up in. Trump? Spoiled rich boy.
Trump does what he does because it is what he thinks will get him what he wants--the adoration and obedience of the lesser people around him--except he doesn't know much about anything and is easily swayed by what he thinks will be popular or that will build his "strongman" image.
The Russians do not need to blackmail Trump or make him an agent--it is pretty simple to get him to do what they (the Russians) want him to do because of his adoration of people like Putin and his own UNenlightened self interest. he is the greyhound chasing the mechanical rabbit around the track.
This works because:
1) Other people to Trump aren't REALLY people, they are objects to be used/manipulated and thrown away when no longer useful --I am tempted to say that he is not just a narcissist but tends to solipsism;
2) As such he believes he is smarter and more capable than the objects that surround him (despite the fact that he is apparently largely uneducated and uninformed and apparently not exceptionally bright);
So he hears things from the people that surround him and grabs and runs with it--even if what he heard was badly misunderstood by him or just flat out obviously wrong. There is effectively no critical thought or strategy other than that which resembles something that flows from base animal cunning.
Stupid is as stupid does, as Forrest would say.
John Cleese has something to say about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvVPdyYeaQU
Yep, that sums it up
"Trump does what he does because it is what he thinks will get him what he wants--the adoration and obedience of the lesser people around him ..."
I'll be forever mystified that so many people, including some who aren't stupid, fail to acknowledge the most obvious facts about Trump: his extremely self-centered worldview and his insatiable demand for adulation. He realized that posing as a great patriot, hero of the little guy, defender of Christianity and foe of "the left" would win him a big fan base. All of that is merely instrumental to ego-gratification -- but people who should have better judgment tell themselves that he's the truest patriot in the land, and therefore anything that doesn't align with his wishes is anti-American and corrupt.
I know some of those people. It's befuddling and depressing.
In a word, Trump is a barbarian. What we used to call the "higher things" play absolutely no part in his life.
I don't personally believe that he's some kind of direct Russian asset. Why? Because even the Russians aren't so direct as that. What I believe is that he admires Putin for the same reasons he admires Xi and Kim Jong Un; he aspires to that autocratic worldview and would love to be them. In some ways, this works against how we like to think; it's almost cartoonish after all. But really, he's exactly what he looks like.
He's a greedy narcissistic man who looks back in history and would love to be an actual king for all the most obvious reasons you can think of. The guy made his penthouse to look like Versailles or something. He's exactly as gaudy and greedy as any Czar. He's just never had that power for real, and he wishes he could.
The very traits we hate in someone like Putin; someone who cares not one bit about anyone or anything else and who is willing to kill to take what he needs; is exactly what Trump loves. I mean, this is a guy who stole his fortune from his father as he was dying and refused to meet with his fixer as he was dying because he was no longer useful.
He's not compromises and there's no conspiracy. He's just a small minded self focused evil man.
All correct, but there is also the point that intelligence officers tear their hair out over recruits who are unstable and frankly not overly subtle or bright -- like Trump. they can easily blow up.
There's a spectrum of what an asset is. Some are direct recruits run by case officers. Some are just accomplices who think they're doing occasional odd transactions in their own interest. Some are acquiescent and willing fellow travellers for any or all of a host of reasons, some reasons ideological, but most due to character and personality problems and delusions which the intelligence service finds and manipulates.
I doubt if Trump showed up at the Russian embassy one day and offered to pull the US out of NATO in exchange for millions of dollars of laundered money. I presume that over the years he has had many contacts and transactions in which he imagined himself "doing business" while they were roping him in. Each and every one of the points you list constitutes one of the hooks and rings in his nose by which his handlers control him.
You don't have to be a card-carrying Maxwell Smart with a phone shoe to be an intelligence asset. An intelligence asset is anyone an intelligence agency dedicates files and case officers to, works with and on, and seeks results from. For an asset like Trump, they probably have enough Trump dedicated FSB case officers to staff an entire football league.
I would add that in addition to case officers, there is Putin's network of oligarchs, all of whom rely on Putin's favor to do business. These are the guys who over the years purchased more than 1300 properties developed by the Trump organization; who got Trump involved in the Miss Universe pageant; who were among the first to suggest that Trump should have a go at POTUS.
Its easy to imagine how Putin would take a run at Trump to get him to want to leave NATO. He'd just point out how unfair it is that the US carries the greatest financial burden and how Obama was too weak willed to walk away from NATO. Then Putin gets his cyber assets to post that same idea all over right wing social media and eventually someone at Fox picks it up as a talking point for attacking Obama and other democratic leaders. Once Trump sees it being talked about by his base, he's hooked.
You laid it out perfectly. This has played out over and over, most people don't have the critical thinking skills to see the pattern.
I wonder what the connection, if any, is between the owner of Fox News and Putin.
Rupert Murdoch simply wants to do whatever it takes to elect Republicans. I don’t think he is in Putins pocket. Murdoch knows that Republicans can’t win without support from Trumps base. Until it is proven that Trump is toxic to Republican fortunes as a party, Murdoch won’t change. Having said that - he is a soulless husk for prioritizing party and profit over democracy and country.
Trump has been a de facto member of the Russian mob for decades--though low level and not Russian.
The Secessionist-In-Chief must have a rumbling in his loins with the updated "Godfather" out for its 50th anniversary.
I agree with your last sentence, but not the one before it. Everything you said about Trump is true. But the Soviets/Russians are that direct in many cases. Americans have sold out for Soviet money lots of times. Trump loves money, loves to be on top (in his brain), loves to be in charge, etc. - which requires gobs of money. Yeah, Putin fed Trump's image of himself, but as As Eric Trump admitted years ago, "We get all the money we need from Russia."
The one thing I think you may be missing is that what makes sense to us logically from the outside does not make sense to him logically, and vice versa. What I mean is, we see sucking up to dictators and the like for money to be a sign of weakness. We think that shows that he's owned by them.
But I doubt this is how trump thinks. In fact, I think it's the opposite. Think of Putin not as Trump's handler but like a bank. Trump goes to him, says all these nice words, gets all this money. Trump is thinking 'what a sucker. I got him to give me all this stuff.' Of course, he's never planning on paying it back, just like all those creditors he stiffed. Words, you see, are cheap. He'll say anything if it means getting something, because what Trump cares about are physical things. Once he has them, he'll do anything to keep them.
Beyond that, there's another reason to suck up to people like Putin; people who are seen as beleaguered from the outside make good marks. Trump is a conman, that's why he preys on the right wing grievance machine. But think of it like this: he sees Putin, Xi, ect as international pariahs. What does that mean? It means they'll owe him for sticking up for them, leveraging the US' clout for his own personal gain. But as we've seen with everyone who's ever worked with him, at some point he'll decide to get rid of you.
It's also why when dealing with people he can't get to owe him in this manner he turns to threats, or tries to remove them entirely, like leaving NATO. They won't agree to owe him, so they're not a benefit to him, they're a liability. No one exists beyond him, no interests exists beyond his own. If he can't get them to give him something, he'll get rid of it and hopefully leave someone else with the bag. That's always been his modus operandi.
Too many people apply some kind of personal viewpoint upon him. They think he's a patsy or a fool or a psychopath. He's none of those. To use a lord of the rings reference, he's not Saruman. He's not Sauron. He's Wormtongue. He's the guy who will do anything if it means getting ahead and getting something for himself. That's partially why lots of people struggle to understand him; we like to assume he must have some greater motive, or that someone else does. He doesn't.
He's just greedy and immoral, and he's open about it. He's not book smart, but he's cunning enough to know how to make people owe him, and then how to leverage that for his own gain, not caring about who else gets hurt in the process.
This is a really clear take and seems pretty accurate but I thought that was kind of the definition of psychopath. I think it's likely the definition fits both Trump and Putin. These are not what we usually call rational actors, though each of them used to be I think.
I think what we see as irrational, is just Putin and Trump using the bully's playbook because that playbook has always worked in the past and they've never been held accountable. What's happening to Putin right now is the first time he's ever faced existentially negative consequences for his actions. Watching the whole world coming down on Putin's head, must have Trump terrified.
Trump is now pretending he was against him from the beginning.
All true, and all consistent with being a controlled asset of the FSB living a delusion that when doing his masters' bidding he is a respected equal making canny deals.
Except he OWES Putin how many billions? Putin can see right through someone like Trump. Don't think Trump's figured it out yet. BTW, it's already a given that IF Trump gets power, he's turning on NATO and the rest of Europe, not mention everyone else. Unless McConnell and other Rs rediscover their balls.
Whoever primaries Trump in 2024 (Cheney? Kinzinger?) must rub the Putin fiasco in his face repeatedly. The idea that Trump wants to pull us out of NATO should be used by both Democrats and sane Republicans to just hammer Trump.
I agree. I think he will turn on the American People in just as murderous a fashion, as he sees us all as having betrayed him by not going along with the Big Lie and keeping him in power in 2020. This guy doesn't even like his own children; everything is an asset or a liability to him. Given the opportunity, his revenge will know no bounds! He will finish off the federal govt and the GOP as well as NATO etc. He will be unstoppable in his bloodlust. Like Putin. They are like peas in a pod at this point and both are dangerous to all life on earth. It is a bit gobsmacking to see the similarities between them in their madness.
The Trump Org ties to Russian money has me wondering how the ongoing collapse of the Russian economy the last few days is affecting them. I have seen no reporting or opinion pieces about this yet.
If only someone in the media would look into this. But, even if the connection was completely uncovered, his supporters would praise Russia for helping Trump. Funny how the Tea Party patriots turned so quickly into anti-American detractors
This is a great question. If the Treasury department goes after Yachts and Condos, one wonders how many units of Trump properties will end up being owned by the US Government.
Most of that money is off the books money coming from the oligarchs, turning what are essentially largely worthless rubles into physical assets and American dollars.
It will take some time for that to have an effect on the Trump Organization (unless people start calling in their loans because of the whole untrustworthy financial statements thing from Mazars).