Donald Trump’s Putinization of America

No matter how often Donald Trump pagates the Kremlin line openly, it will not sound wrong if the President of the United States comes. At a press conference in Helsinki, Trump announced in 2018 that he had assumed Vladimir Putin’s claim that, despite the conclusion of our own secret services, Russia would not intervene in American elections. I saw the scene in the Finnish summer sun on a CNN set with Anderson Cooper, who came to the conclusion after a short, stunned silence: “You may have observed one of the most shameful appearances of an American president.” Later Fiona Hill, the Senior Director of the National Security Council, who had occupied Trump on the summit, would remind you what it felt like in the room when she heard Trump’s words about talking.

On Tuesday afternoon, a few hours after his foreign team in Riyadh met with Russian officials to discuss how the war in Ukraine was to be ended, the president had what could only be described as another Helsinki moment. At a press conference in Mar-A-Lago, Trump recorded why he had refused to include the Ukrainians in the Saudi meeting. The guilt of Ukraine. “You should never have started with it,” he said and spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “You could have done a deal.” To hear Trump, Ukraine could also bomb its own cities and kill its own citizens. He claimed that the United States spent three hundred and fifty billion dollars that helped them with Ukraine.

Until Wednesday, Zelensky Trump’s ridiculous claims pushed back by saying that he was living in a Russian “disinformation room”, and in response to it, Trump grabbed the Ukrainian leader as a “dictator without elections” in a long, false, wrong attack on social media Post. Over the past week, his officials made it clear that Trump’s Pro-Kremlin Rhetoric is more than just empty words. He seems ready to admit Russia about most major demands for a peace agreement, including the promise that Ukraine will never join NATOThe US troops do not allow to take part in the security of Ukraine, to put Ukraine under pressure, illegally deploy the territory to Russia and to remove western sanctions against Russia. Trump’s hug of America’s opponent and rejection of his ally was so fast and complete that even top -Kremlin officials are amazed. “If they had told me three months ago that this was the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud,” said former Russian President Dmitry Medwedev on X.

However, the fact that all of this has taken place in his second term in a month seems to be appropriate for an American president who has never made much secret his inexplicable wish to suck Putin. A difference to Trump’s first four years in office, however, is that he has not only taken over a pro-Putin conflict against the Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, but also an approach to foreign policy for everyone who reflects Putin’s relapse view of the world as a playground So that large robes have almost unlimited control over the smaller nations that fall into their sphere of influence. How can I explain Trump’s initial movements on the world stage since his return when he threatened to confiscate the territory in the western hemisphere from Canada to Greenland and Panama? He was certainly encouraged by Putin’s illegal annexation of the Crimea in 2014 – and one of many concessions that Trump will now push for Ukraine is to admit that this territory has been lost against Russia forever. Trump’s second opening speech in a strong contrast to his first, even the term “manifest fate” of the 19th century, raised the idea of ​​American expansionism as a divine right that should not only expand to the “one -hour state” make the state, the “most fifty -at -one state”, the “most fifty -first state”, the state to do that State that is Canadian not only on how Trump has made it call, but to the planet of Mars.

Trump’s open confirmation of a pro-Putin foreign policy has understandably shaken the world in the past few days. As it was in my opinion Trump’s hug of Putin-like tactics at home, it was a license plate of his return to power that developed at a speed and wildness that could withdraw far beyond what Trump could withdraw during his first term , unfolded. Name the Putinization of America.

A quarter of a century ago as a young foreign correspondent of the Washington post In Moscow I reported on Putin’s takeover of Russia when he crushed the country’s up -and -coming, incorrect democracy. The goals included possible competing power centers that Putin did not owe her authority, from independent media and wealthy oligarchs to elected governors. The Kremlin had dismantled or emptied them all within a few years. At the same time, Putin authorized former KGB colleagues from the security services that have created a modern dictatorship for him from their stronghold in what Russians describes the “Minister of Power”.

This game book is the same that Trump is now pursued. It is important to pay attention to this. I don’t know where it will end or how far Trump will bring. America, thank God, is still a completely different country than Russia with a long tradition of democratic freedoms, decentralized power in the states and the constitutional government. But count the damage of one month and it is considerable. And no, I am not just talking about threatening theatrics like Trump, who think openly, to stay in office about a constitutional third term or to proclaim a “king” on social media a day and his white house a false image in circulation to bring him that wears a crown on the cover of A Time-MAGE MAGAZIN.

Washington is now interacting with so many unpleasant memories of this transition moment in Moscow – the sudden, anxious silence of critics who had previously spoken, and the business activity that hurry up to kiss the president’s ring and reality to correspond to the official story. Trump’s consolidation of the power of this time was quick and consistent. In a number of executive regulations, he asserted the right to unilaterally revoke the guarantee for the birth law of citizenship to terminate billions of dollars of federal financing and to take over the executive control over independent federal authorities. He has empowered the richest man in the world to dismiss tens of thousands of government employees and to eliminate long-term, legally authorized programs that range from America’s famous epidemic secret services to his entire program for foreign AID programs. Although some of the cuts are fought in court, the congress controlled by GOP has approved this unprecedented usurpation of its privileges with hardly more than a few isolated bolemas of concern. In the Senate, the Republicans themselves adopted his most controversial, inappropriate candidates, including the most threatening coordination on Thursday to confirm Kash Patel as director of the FBI, despite (or perhaps because of) the prospect that Patel will use the agency according to Trump’s enemies – A list that Patel helped in a book published last year.

In a way, Trump seems to believe that he is already a dictator with an unchecked force. That was certainly the message of his social media post over the weekend and channeled his inner Napoleon with a quote that is often attributed to the French emperor of the 19th century: “Whoever saves his country does not violate a law.” This week alone, Trump ordered New York to take cars more for the trip to Manhattan, loudly refused to make himself in the Golf America in a further execution regulations – in a further execution regulations – the name of the Golf of Mexico change. In a Federal Court of Justice on Wednesday, Trump’s deputy lawyer Emil Bove, the corruption tracking of the New York Mayor, Eric Adams, argued that it caused several prosecutors to be terminated in protest. According to several news reports on Thursday, there is a loyalty cleaning of the top generals in the Pentagon, including possibly the chairman of the joint chiefs. This time Trump wants to make sure that the Power Ministry is fully in his control.

In 2019 Putin crossed in an interview with the Finance times About the end of the “outdated” liberal world order, which had long “survived its purpose”. The President of the then European Council, Poland Donald Tusk, pushed him back and insisted that what was “really out of date”. ““ Just a few years later, reading this sentence only creates sadness: it is no longer just Putin’s Russia that threatens the foundations of Western Liberal Democracy, but Trump’s Washington. ♦