When a man loves a despot
I’m reminded anew that we are a species capable of endless fascination with the absurd. We’ve an infinite appetite for a querrelous old man who shouts at clouds and raves at phantoms. The pissed-up cretin at the end of the bar — the one who has the answers to all the world’s problems, the one who begins every other sentence with “if only they would …” — was finally elected president of the United States. And we can’t get enough of him.
We saw with our own eyes that he was wrong, that he didn’t have “all the answers.” But fully one third of the country wants to make sure just one more time and give the certifiable loony a second chance.
Well, the man who helped prevent one president from completing a second term is at it again: he just might help to ensure Trump doesn’t ever start a second term. Bob Woodward, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who helped to bring down Nixon, has written a new book. “War” is, as the title suggests, about one third as thick as “War and Peace,” which is considerable enough. It is also full of revelations powerful enough to shock a weary world that frankly has had enough shocks.
But the biggest shocker of all is that Donald Trump’s well-known love affair with the monster Vladimir Putin has been given new proof. It turns out (according to Woodward) that Trump betrayed the citizens of the United States and the Constitution he swore to “preserve, protect and defend” by covertly diverting a substantial supply of Covid test machines to the Russian dictator. He did it during a crippling US shortage, when those test machines could have been efficiently employed for the prevention of the disease at home.
In short, Trump sacrificed American lives for the sake of his beloved Vladimir. It turns out that Putin was terrified of the disease so he accepted the supplies. But he also cautioned Trump to keep the deal secret. Putin was obviously alert to the disastrous political fallout that Trump would suffer should the truth come out. “Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward.
Woodward reports that Trump’s reply was typically Trumpian: “I don’t care. Fine.”
It was, Trump suspected, the equivalent of shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue. He probably wouldn’t lose any votes from it. Certainly not from the glassy-eyed cult of drooling carnival geeks known as his fanbase. And since these days that fanbase thinks Covid is a government conspiracy (though which “government”? Trump’s? The fanbase doesn’t say) they probably don’t care anyway.
But we ought to care. Woodward’s revelation ought to be huge news in the mainstream media, and it ought to further cripple Trump’s chances for votes from the undecided. It ought to be the October surprise of October surprises. But so far the sound coming from the mainstream media is largely crickets. Like Trump and his deportable wife, they don’t care.
This revelation is joined by another one, that, since leaving office, Trump has spoken to Putin at least seven times. These conversations unquestionably included Ukraine. This is in clear violation of the Logan Act, which forbids a private citizen from negotiating on behalf of the United States with a foreign power. My resemblance to the drunk at the end of the bar is a mere coincidence when I say Trump should be instantly arrested for this and placed in shackles in Guantanamo Bay.
Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen reminds us that Trump’s fixation with Putin stems from a severe case of Dictator Envy. Trump’s Freudian inadequacies are on full display here. He wants to be Vladimir Putin. He wants Putin’s money, he wants Putin’s power, he wants the freedom to defenestrate, Putin-like, anybody that he hates. When a man loves a despot, he can’t keep his mind on nothin’ else. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe. Donate now
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.