Democracy is the belief that together we can make each generation better than the last. Trumpism is the belief that only one man, actin’ in his own best interest will miraculously make our lives better.
—T-PAIN
Donald J. Trump is a millionaire developer who fancied himself a billionaire; a malignant narcissist whose sole concern was for his money and his ego. Trump was easily led by a golden nosering when he was complimented on his business prowess, flooded with beautiful women, and shown riches that he could never attain. He held a devilish aspect that was belied by his real idiocy and poor-little-rich-boy appeal to the “common man.” He was the archetype of the American that Putin’s old organization, the Soviet-era KGB, had been turning into spies, assets, and useful idiots for over 70 years.
The mindset of Russian intelligence is that Americans are full of themselves, over-preening fools who believe they alone can change the world, yet always need someone else’s money to do it. It is a sucker’s nation without strength of character or manliness. Had the Soviet Union had the financial resources to be on par with the United States, America’s downfall would have happened before Russia itself fell. If Russia acquired Western wealth, America would be eaten hollow like Swiss cheese at a mouse convention. When the Soviet Union fell and the Russian Federation gained billions in oil wealth, Putin would set out to do just this.
By 2000, Soviet Communism was out and mass consumerism was in, fueled by selling off massive parts of the Soviet economy. The new Russian Federation was a hybrid of the old Soviet Union, with a love of authoritarianism and modern economic power. By 2007, Vladimir Putin would have the technological means to make use of a player like Donald Trump.
Russian intelligence transformed from a paper-based organization of old wily alcoholics to a younger, faster technologically savvy organization. However, some skill sets were core valued—foreigners were evaluated and made ready to be Moscow’s spies. These potential spies and assets they contacted and recruited were collected like trinkets and when their time came, they would be turned, given orders, and deployed to spy on their own nation. Intelligence officers are trained to handle each potential asset differently. A good human intelligence officer could handle a person like Donald Trump, where he or she would get the person to do his or her bidding unknowingly while he—the poor victim—remains unknowledgeable about who he or she works for and the real objective of the spy’s mission. In intelligence work, these are called the Unwitting Assets. If an asset figures out that a spy is handling him, but the rewards make it worth his while, he becomes a Witting Asset. Other assets need much more subtlety. Some personalities will do work for a spy or a propagandist without any prompting. Particularly when they share common ground with spies. Often these persons will contribute to the cause without concern so long as they benefit, especially if their efforts are paved with money; they are called by the intelligence community Useful Idiots. The Useful Idiots are often manipulated by financial payments or recognition for their influence. Those who seek no reward but cooperate purely for shared ideology are the Fellow Travelers. Under the Soviet intelligence system, Fellow Travelers were the least desirable of the assets. They were fickle and because they believed what you believed, only with more fervor, they were often pushing a more ideologically pure line. Worse, if they turned on officers, they could cause serious damage should they go public and reveal your operations. Their repentance would be solidified by their depth of knowledge. They can burn you with credibility, but the influence of Fellow Travelers is deep and can reach areas no foreign intelligence officer could touch in some societies. If carefully handled, they could become a perfect Fifth Column—workers on the inside who corrupt and sabotage their own countries. Between 2010 to 2016 Russia would successfully craft a league of Fellow Travelers in the West including a whole new branch of Fifth Columnists in America.
So what about the hapless American President? What category does he fit? It will be easily revealed that to Russia, Donald Trump started as a Useful Idiot, and then became an Unwitting Asset, but quickly became a Witting Asset once he realized that Russia was working in his best interest.
Trump’s usefulness to Moscow was critical to their goal of breaking links between America and its traditional allies. Trump has lived up to that expectation. Within the first year of his presidency, Trump managed to insult virtually every ally, neighboring country, international treaty body, and all of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Yet Vladimir Putin held such sway over him that it would take almost 15 months and a brazen chemical weapons attack to offer the first mild criticism.
This sycophancy had an effect. By early 2018, as much as 65% of America is permanently alienated from Trump’s administration, as it has become increasingly clear that he is determined to rule only for his 35% core constituency. No matter, Trump views anyone who did not vote for him as alien. Non-voters and opposition are unworthy of his attention. He wants to lead and reward those who elected him and no others. Policies have been designed to punish the major blue states that had the nerve to vote for Hillary Clinton. His only piece of major legislation, a massive one trillion dollar tax cut to the ultra-wealthy, included many provisions which raised taxes on states like California and New York, and cut them for the impoverished deep-red states like Alabama and Mississippi.
A figure like Trump was bound to come up in American history: a man who rigged the system for his own benefit and rode the wave of populism to win. The Founding Fathers warned of such an event. Over two centuries ago, in 1792, Alexander Hamilton predicted Trump’s strategy to divide America. The new nation was an agrarian society that had just come through a baptismal fire. It had beaten a massive army and formed a new type of governance. However, those who won this victory were relatively uneducated, prone to conspiracy theories, easily led by falsehoods and generally a rabble that looked to the educated and wealthy to navigate the political waves. The brilliance of those educated men of enlightenment, for all their flaws, shone a light on America’s susceptibility to being conned by a fraud. Hamilton said, “The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the country is by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion…”1 Throughout American history, those confusions and commotions have sprung forth in the form of rebellions, clashes, and civil war. Yet America had never been tested with a leader who had the same mindset of King George III; a monarch who ignored the voice of the majority, who ruled as he lived above the rest, and cared not a whit about the traditions of the free society in America.
Trump lived for the conman’s game. He also brought the persona of a larger than life cartoon—the “professional” wrestler—to the campaign trail. Before he entered politics, he was a man who had appeared on wrestling shows and enjoyed the spectacle of riling a crowd of young children and the great blue-collar worker. Trump played himself, an indifferent rich guy with a fake giant million-dollar check to the delight of the audiences. He understood the pantomime of giving the public heroic characters and evil villains. All these Punch-and-Judy traits propelled him into the White House.
Within a few months of the election, what was a once a recognizable republic was backsliding down the guardrails of law and justice, and careening toward a totalitarian family and single party nation much less like King George’s monarchy and more like the Borgias—a medieval papal crime family that held power through nepotism, murder, corruption, and deceit.
In less than a few months, Trump had done more damage to America’s political world order than any event since World War II. Diplomacy was dead. His chosen Secretary of State, Exxon CEO and friend of Vladimir Putin Rex Tillerson, lasted only one year. When Tillerson publicly criticized Russia on a chemical weapons assassination in London, Trump fired him by tweet. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and his wife Ivanka were sent to address state issues that bypassed all of America’s diplomats. To fill the void, the military was ordered to step into the breach as the principal voice of American power. The nation went from managing a dying terrorist insurgency to talks of a sneak attack nuclear war on the Korean peninsula or a disastrous war with Iran. The State Department’s website removed “spreading democracy” from its mission statement.
Trump’s standing with the American public went into immediate free fall. By January 2018, 53% of the nation rated his administration as a failure, 57% said the country was headed in the wrong direction, and 61% would assert that he had divided the country. Majorities disapproved of his handling of virtually every policy he proposed from immigration to foreign policy. His personal approval rating of 37% was rated as a historic low, beating George W. Bush, who had one of the worst rankings after his disastrous invasion of Iraq, which smashed the last vestiges of stability in the Middle East. America’s worldwide standing plummeted as well, and the US under Bush was rated at 39% approval. Under Barack Obama, the ratings had risen to 55%. Trump almost equaled Bush’s status when it dropped to 42% approval in less than 12 months.
Yet for Donald Trump, planned and unplanned chaos is his guiding star. In his mind, his style of daring risk-taking honed in the New York City real estate market would translate well to big wins politically and admiration globally. That was not to be, but in the hermetically sealed world of conservative politics he only saw success where the world saw a disaster. Trump saw his first year in office as a smashing success because when he visited towns like Altoona, Pennsylvania, he was cheered by people who looked like him and clung to his every word. Praise on Fox News, public applause, and laurels given in his presence were his measures of success. The reality of the nation’s descent would be precipitous, terrifying, and maddening but only for the 260 million Americans who did not vote for him.
Now that Trump held the reins of power, he thought that he was capable of hiding any offenses he may have made in his past life or his relationships with Moscow. He took his first step to hide his relationship with Putin early in February 2017, when FBI Director James Comey was invited by Trump to the White House for a dinner. During the meeting, Comey claimed that President Trump asked him more than once to consider stopping the investigation into General Mike Flynn. General Flynn, the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was under a National Security investigation related to the lies he told about his phone calls with the Russian Ambassador in December 2016. Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had informed the White House that Flynn was at risk of blackmail since only the Russians knew what was said in the conversation and could hold it over his head. Trump said to Comey, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.… He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”2 Comey was noncommittal, and after leaving the meeting he immediately drafted a memo detailing what Trump had said and informed his deputies what had transpired.
A few months later, on May 9, 2017, in a surprising move the White House announced that President Trump fired James Comey. The firing required the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to find cause to remove him from office. Rosenstein was directed to draft a 2½ page memo with the justification. Comey’s letter of removal was delivered to the FBI headquarters by Trump’s longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller. The memo noted that Comey had fumbled “handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary [Hillary] Clinton’s emails.” This accusation was outrageous since Trump himself benefited from said handling. Clinton believed the “Comey statement” in the last week of the election was critical as it gave the impression that she was under investigation, which was not true. In fact, the Trump White House was also furious at Comey for not revealing to Trump his testimony in advance of a hearing on the Flynn and Russia investigation.3 More likely Trump was angry because he could not stop the Russia investigation or the inquiry into Mike Flynn’s susceptibility to blackmail.
The backlash was withering. When the news hit the wires, Trump was deluged with negative comments. His staff said he was personally taken aback by the outrage. He tried to justify the firing “[Comey] wasn’t doing a good job, very simply. He wasn’t doing a good job.” In his letter to Comey, Trump claimed the FBI Director had told him “on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.”4 Trump assumed that like on his reality TV show, he could fire people at will. It also stunned him that Democrats, who had severely criticized Comey, were not siding with him and cheering him on. He tweeted, “The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!”5
Trump’s tweetstorm continued with a lie that was equally as outrageous. “Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me!”6 Displeased with the public backlash, Trump resorted to fantasy and made up fantastical, near pathological lies, “He cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness… and now he is judge & jury. He should be the one who is investigated for his acts.”7
Amazingly, the day after firing Comey, Trump kept a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak at the White House. Though the optics of meeting with Russians the day after attempting to stop an investigation into his contacts with Russia were alarming, even more surprising was that US news media was forbidden to cover the meeting. But Trump allowed a Russian news media photographer into the Oval Office.8 During the meeting, Trump bragged to Lavrov about how he got rid of the FBI Director, “I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job…”9 As if to impress the Russians, he blurted out, “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” The Russian photographer took pictures of Trump huddled together with the two diplomats as if sharing a joke. It was no joke when soon after reports emerged that during that same meeting Trump had compromised a highly compartmented top secret Israeli spy mission in Syria to the Russians.10
If there were doubts about Trump’s intention to cover up the Russia investigation for the Kremlin and himself it was wiped clean within 48 hours. A few days later Trump granted an interview with NBC News’s Lester Holt. During the interview Holt asked a series of questions about the firing of Director Comey. Trump was nonplussed. If he had stayed on message with the story the Attorney General had helped him manufacture he would likely have gotten away with it. But Trump has a predictable pattern of masticating the truth. His usual pattern is to 1) Lie; 2) Dissemble; 3) Spread Disinformation; 4) Confess; 5) Threaten. After trying numerous stories about why Comey needed to be fired because he was hated by the FBI, “he’s a showboat, he’s a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil” (lie), he then claimed that he only went by the recommendation of the Rob Rosenstein (dissemble). Trump attempted to spread more false stories about Comey (disinformation): “You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil, less than a year ago. It hasn’t recovered from that.” Finally Trump, not realizing he was committing perjury told the truth:
TRUMP: What I did is, I was going to fire Comey. My decision. It was not—
HOLT: You had made the decision before they came in the room.
TRUMP: I was going to fire Comey. There’s no good time to do it, by the way.
HOLT: Because in your letter you said, “I accepted their recommendation.”
TRUMP: Well, they also—
HOLT: So, you had already made the decision.
TRUMP: Oh, I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.11
Trump seemed to be completely unaware that he had contradicted days of statements. He also seemed unaware that firing an FBI Director to stop an investigation into potential espionage was the textbook definition of “obstruction of justice.”12
Trapped by the news media, Trump then claimed that there were tapes of the conversation in an effort to intimidate Comey. He didn’t seem to understand that this also was a potential additional obstruction of justice charge. “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”13 The White House would eventually have to admit there were no tapes.
Trump was hell-bent to defend himself from the accusation of collusion but never disputed the fact that he wanted to be friends with Putin. If his co-option by Moscow was unwitting then it could have been seen as an acceptable reflex to protect himself. But Trump’s behaviors and defenses went far beyond a man out to defend his honor. He made it clear that he would defend Moscow even above himself at every turn. Whatever effect he thought he would achieve by firing Comey was then magnified when the Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein would submit to political pressure and appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia. No better investigator could have been chosen for the task. Robert Swan Mueller III was a Vietnam War combat veteran, Silver Star winner, federal prosecutor, and Director of the FBI for three Presidents. He reorganized and revitalized the bureau after 9/11 and was deeply admired throughout Washington. He was the last man Donald Trump would ever want investigating him.
The Special Counsel wanted to know if Trump and his team had been a party to a foreign intelligence operation that may have damaged American democracy. All the evidence pointed to a tribe that was active in conspiracy with the Kremlin and with financial ties that were beyond suspicious. Mueller reviewed Comey’s notes and set about hiring a Murderer’s Row of top financial and espionage prosecutors to fill his staff. Trump was now in mortal danger from his own government so he set out to do the only thing he knew how—he tried to fire Mueller.
According to the New York Times, less than 30 days after the Special Counsel had been appointed, Trump tried to fire him. White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II was called in and informed that the Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein was to fire Mueller.14 Trump threatened that if Rosenstein balked, he too would be fired and the number three official Rachel Brand would be appointed in his place to carry out the order. Trump argued that Mueller needed to be fired due to a conflict of interest. Trump said Mueller disputed golf fees at a Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, and that disqualified him from investigating the administration. Trump also asserted that Mueller had also worked at a law firm that represented his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. McGahn tried to disabuse the President of this course. As a lawyer he was well aware that if he carried out this order he would be participating in a crime. McGahn refused the President’s request and told the President he would resign instead.
Trump backed off his demand, and when asked he lied to the press that firing Mueller had never been considered. Still, Trump decided that the Special Counsel had to be stopped. He cared not that firing FBI Director Comey had been incredibly damaging. Trump was the firing kind. A month earlier, Trump expressed frustration that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the Russian probe. He later told the New York Times in an interview that he was frustrated with Sessions over the Russia issue. Trump said, “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else…”15
The Director of National Intelligence’s report on Russian hacking concluded that “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.” The intelligence report read, “We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”16
Those goals were each achieved but the larger question looms over the entire controversy: What did they intend to do by making Donald Trump president? The answer is simple. For decades, Soviet Communists in the Kremlin had spent billions of dollars and countless intelligence operations trying to achieve one goal: to reveal to the world that American democracy was an old, dead system of government that had to be replaced. The Soviet Union could never do it but in 2016 the Russian Federation had brought America to its knees at the speed of an election while Americans and its officials were still at home watching cable TV and trying to figure it out. Russia is a dictatorship led by a single, ruthless autocrat who simply had to give an order to change the fabric of the Western world. According to Russia, Trump’s true destiny was to be an inaugural member of the world’s newest alliance—the Axis of Autocracies.
The election of Trump led to an explosion of activity from the Russian government including coordinating direct meetings with transition officials. All of them were designed to be hidden from US intelligence and law enforcement. Within days of Trump’s taking office, it became clear that the White House wanted Putin’s number one goal—all sanctions against Russia would be lifted. The common denominator associated with every aspect of the Trump-Russia investigations was that Moscow was desperate to get the crippling financial and personal sanctions against Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs lifted. Each investigation starting with ex-FBI Director James Comey, the Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and the House and Senate Intelligence Committees found strong indicators that this was one of the core reasons for the attack on the United States.
For example, the US State Department under Rex Tillerson started seeking ways to lift the Obama-era sanctions designed to punish Russia for espionage, hacking, and violations of international law, including the invasion of Crimea and fostering an ethnic Russian insurgency in Ukraine. Retired diplomat Dan Fried told The Hill that almost immediately after the administration made its principal staff appointments to Foggy Bottom, “There was serious consideration by the White House to unilaterally rescind the sanctions…”
The American sanctions were not hurting the Russian economy; they were hurting the personal finances of Moscow’s most elite citizens and Vladimir Putin personally. To the Russian oligarchy the Americans were stealing the bread from the mouths of their children. Granted, the bread was handcrafted pan a l’ancienne from their Château outside of Monaco, made by a French master baker who studied all the recipes of Marie Antoinette and uses a 600-year-old stone oven, and was flown into Moscow 30 minutes before each meal by their own Gulfstream G650 executive jet—but it was their bread all the same. The Russian oligarchy needed American interference with their dirty money to stop the sanctions, and an ally in the Oval Office who would assist them in this endeavor. They found this in Donald Trump.
By fall of 2017, news reports would find that virtually all of Trump’s senior staff and family had numerous contacts with Russia that were nothing short of suspicious. Less than three weeks into the job, General Michael Flynn, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), would resign due to lying about secret phone calls with Russian ambassador Kislyak. That incident would eventually have him confess and plead guilty to criminal charges of lying to the FBI. Others were quickly implicated, including Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka Trump. He would be found to have asked Russia for a secure communication network within the Russian embassy to communicate without interception by the NSA or the CIA. He would later claim it was an innocent proposal to get Russian military information about operations in Syria to Trump. It was suspicious because the US military already had a formal liaison mission working with the Russians at their secret base near Qamishli in Northern Syria. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was found to have lied about meetings with Russians, including Kislyak, before his Senate confirmation hearing. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, Trump’s mafia consiglieri–like campaign manager and deputy campaign manager, were both so under Russian influence they were indicted for laundering funds believed to have come from a pro-Moscow Ukrainian strongman.17 Manafort was so uncooperative early on that the FBI carried out a predawn raid on his home to secure documents that would lead to his charges. Gates would plead guilty. George Papadopoulos was charged with lying to a federal officer and pled guilty along with Michael Flynn. Many reports would emerge about Trump’s son, son-in-law, and senior advisors willfully participating in schemes to get dirt on Hillary Clinton and unwittingly repeat the Kremlin’s finely tuned propaganda.
With all of this emerging evidence Trump’s daily refrain for almost a year was “No collusion. No collusion. No collusion.” Not only was America not going to do nothing about the Kremlin’s intervention in its affairs, they had two wings of the government dedicated to assisting them through inaction and disbelief. In the House of Representatives, Devin Nunes, Trump’s lackey on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence even issued his own unilateral report exonerating Trump from any collusion, while agreeing with all other intelligence findings that Russia rigged the election for him. So long as Donald Trump and his allies worked with Moscow and had control of Congress, there was little anyone else could do to stop Putin’s march to do the same worldwide.