Russia, Russia, Russia

Trump just loves the red, white, and blue 🇷🇺

Have you heard the latest? The Department of Justice has just informed the American public that Russia has been bankrolling Tenet Media, a right-wing media startup based in Tennessee, and is using it to promulgate Russian propaganda. It’s yet another attempt by Russia to influence US elections. And it begs the question: how many others are there that we don’t know about? 

An ongoing campaign by Kremlin-run media and other online platforms is actively targeting U.S. voters with disinformation. I’ll give you one guess as to who they’re trying to help.

We’ve been down this road before. Hearing the news yesterday immediately brought back bad memories of the humiliation in Helsinki, when Trump publicly sided with Vladimir Putin against the U.S., contradicting his own intelligence community’s assessments about Russia’s interference in 2016 (which aided Trump, incidentally). It may seem like a long time ago, given everything that’s happened since, but it was just a few years ago that we lived it...

In former Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster’s new memoir, he describes how the Russian dictator exploited Trump’s “ego and insecurities” to manipulate him throughout his presidency and says Trump wouldn’t tolerate any criticism of Putin from his White House staff. I can confirm. It’s why several longtime leaders and mentors of mine in the intelligence community, like former acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, were removed from their roles during the Trump Administration and replaced with unqualified loyalist bootlickers like Richard Grenell. The message was this: tell the truth about the danger of Russia and you’ll endure the consequences. 

How very Putinesque one might say. But that’s probably not surprising; Trump doesn’t exactly make his man crush on Putin a secret. The reality is that he and many across his inner circle behave like Russian assets.

Before he was even president, there were years of weird fanboy behavior toward Putin and a very public request that Russia hack Hilary Clinton’s email. And later we learned about the infamous Trump Tower meeting and campaign manager Paul Manafort’s work for Russia, including sharing campaign data with Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik. 

So it was clear from the start that Trump was a very different kind of Republican — one that represented how the GOP was about to be manipulated into giving up its strong-against-Russia card. And a very different kind of American. I use both terms lightly.

What often gets forgotten in the sea of chaos and dictator-fawning is how Trump used Ukraine as a pawn in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Just one day after former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill that Russia is interfering in U.S. affairs “as we sit here,” Trump asked Ukraine for a favor. That “favor” was more of a demand: investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter or he would hold up Congressionally earmarked funds to the embattled country in its defense against Russia. It was the ideal scenario for Trump: it helped Russia, and it helped him. But this “perfect phone call” led to his first impeachment in late 2019.

“It’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Ambassador Bill Taylor texted a colleague at the time. Indeed. But Trump’s chief of staff Mick Mulvaney copped to Trump’s self-serving actions like they were SOP for presidents. One of Trump’s attorneys, Alan Dershowitz, argued during the impeachment trial that a president taking action in the public interest is unimpeachable — and if the president believes his re-election is in the public's best interests, then any actions he takes to assist his re-election are okay, too. Yup, that was an actual argument.

If you’re thinking this all sounds a bit like a mafia protection racket, you’re not wrong. But it gets worse. Remember Lev Parnas? He’s the Rudy Giuliani associate who was in the room when Trump said he wanted to “get rid” of the former Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. When she resisted Giuliani’s coercion tactics and refused to go along with Trump’s scheme, she was tracked by Giuliani’s gang to get her removed from her post—or perhaps something more ominous. Ukraine had to alert this long-time public servant and patriotic American that she was being monitored by our own president.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, one of the House impeachment managers, said during the trial, “President Trump has made clear in word and deed that he will persist in such conduct. He poses a continuing threat to our nation, to the integrity of our elections, to our democratic order. He must not remain in power one moment longer.”

But of course, Republicans in the Senate (except one — thank you, Mitt Romney) did let Trump remain in power, free to do exactly what Nadler said he would do. And he did.

I dread a second Trump term, with the presidential immunity ruling from the Supreme Court now in place and Project 2025 on the horizon. Those who hold their oath sacred to serve the American people, as Marie Yovanovitch did, will be dismissed, replaced with drones who follow ‘dear leader.’ And I fear a world where the U.S. doesn’t stand up to dictators like Putin but allows them to roll over our NATO allies and other sovereign states while practicing politics that resemble a criminal syndicate here at home.

When Trump parrots Kremlin propaganda, praises Putin’s tyrannical actions in Ukraine, claims our own government is worse than Russia’s, and threatens to turn his back on NATO, he is advancing someone’s interests, but definitely not America’s. Michael McFaul succinctly sums it up: “Trump’s embrace of Putin has not achieved a single beneficial outcome for the American people.” Nope, not one. But it’s been very beneficial for Putin.

Keep an eye out for who else is helping Putin as well. Tucker Carlson. Elon Musk. Jill Stein. Tulsi Gabbard. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. JD Vance. The list goes on. We’re tracking it here too. More to come soon.

Until next time,

Olivia