The Brooklyn Rail

What “cards” does Vladimir Putin have on Donald Trump? And what else could possibly explain the disgraceful actions of Trump and JD Vance toward our besieged ally, President Zelensky of Ukraine, while he was on a state visit to the Oval Office on Friday?

If not a KGB operation, one might think what we saw was political retribution played out on a global scale. President Zelensky was ambushed by the always smarmy JD Vance, who then invited Trump to join in the mugging. A wartime president like Zelensky should perhaps have seen the attack coming. His first clue might have been that he wasn’t given simultaneous translation like every other foreign leader is in these press conferences. The second clue was JD Vance’s stance of agitated negative charisma, waiting to take his shot. And the third was the presence of a Russian state media reporter from TASS in the room, set up to livestream the debacle back to Putin.

After JD Vance ham-handedly assaulted Zelensky and Trump joined in, both of them began spouting Kremlin talking points about the war in Ukraine and berating Zelensky for not being grateful enough, to them, and for “gambling with World War III.” Then Trump announced that “This is going to be great television,” and threw Zelensky out of the White House.

After the disgusting presser, the coward Lindsey Graham rushed to a podium to give a post-fight report dictated to him by Trump: Trump and Vance won and Zelensky should probably just resign and give Trump somebody else to do business with. Graham did this after spending the entire morning praising Zelensky for his courage under fire.

What this shameful spectacle did make clear is that Trump was not thinking tactically or strategically during this bullying display. He was only thinking about what it meant for him personally, and how he can get revenge and retribution for what happened to him six years ago, when he called Zelensky and asked him to dig up dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for promised aid, and Zelensky refused the attempt at extortion. And that this led to Trump’s first impeachment in the House of Representatives in December 2019 for collusion with Russia. It’s what Trump calls “The Russia Hoax,” or “Russia, Russia, Russia.”

When Trump really got heated up in his dressing down of Zelensky on Friday, he said that Putin “went through a hell of a lot with me” during the Russia Hoax. “He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia.” So this is Trump’s chance to repay Putin with Ukrainian blood and territory, and to punish Zelensky for telling the truth.

And for this, Trump has turned America’s place in the world upside down. Long the counter to Russia’s oligarchical authoritarianism, America has now officially joined the bad guys, and Ukrainians are the victims. In effect, America has switched sides. The President is no longer the leader of the Free World, or even part of the Free World.

This day, I am ashamed to be an American.

All of Europe rushed to defend Zelensky after the attack, as did most Americans. In a Quinnipiac poll a week ago, the question asked was, “Should the US trust Putin? And the response was Yes, 9%; No, 81%. In a poll done by The Economist, Putin received a Favorable rating of 11% and an Unfavorable rating of 78%.

Then why is Trump going out of his way to open America up to interference from Putin and a Russia whose principle goals in relation to the US are to spy on us, disrupt our elections, and steal our technology? And why is Trump so eager to trade 80 years of carefully built alliances for a shaky one-sided alliance with a sworn enemy that has an economy 1/20^th the size of our allies’?

And why did new US Attorney General Pam Bondi, in her first day in office, shut down the years-old federal law enforcement effort to combat secret influence campaigns by Russia and other adversaries to sow disinformation and chaos in American politics, and do away with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, also geared toward Russia?

I receive at least ten emails every day from Trump’s propaganda machine. When Trump himself signs on, he almost always says something about being impeached. “The Democrats are threatening to impeach me. Will you support me if I am impeached? Give me $10.” He seems to be very worried about being impeached (again). It may be the only thing he still has to be afraid of. Maybe the third time’s the charm.

Axios has reported that corporations and wealthy donors are shoveling money into the Trump coffers at an astounding rate, and are expected to raise about $500 million by this summer. And that’s even though Trump cannot run for President again. So, what is that money for?

Meanwhile, if the Trump administration follows through on their threat to fire 800,000 federal workers, that will immediately plunge the US into a recession. Well, that’s one way to bring prices down!

They’re also threatening to slash half the payroll of the Social Security Administration, which would almost certainly cause chaos in the timely disbursement of Social Security checks. Fooling around with active Social Security payments has always been considered a third rail in American politics, but Trump and MAGA are feeling so emboldened that they may be willing to go there.

Bernie Sanders says that “Musk-Trump’s goal is to privatize USPS, the VA, NASA, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and give them to their billionaire friends.”

Much of Musk’s current wealth has come from government contracts. His various companies have received approximately $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits over the last few years.

Now, Musk and Trump appear to be locked in a death spiral of alternating incompetence and bad politics. Musk has baldly intervened in an existing $2.4 billion contract the Federal Aviation Administration had with Verizon to overhaul the communication system for the nation’s air traffic control system, to give it to his own company, Starlink. Starlink had lost to Verizon in a bid for the contract previously. The FAA was scheduled to start paying Verizon under the contract next month. This kind of “corruption in plain sight” will certainly become more and more common, as it did in the Russian oligarchy, which is now our model.