Courtesy of
Newsweek:
The collapse of the Trump-Putin mutual admiration society—potentially the world’s most politically important relationship—is a story of unrealistic Russian hopes, badly-thought-out U.S. gestures and the Kremlin’s misguided attempts to interfere in American democracy. Putin believed Trump was a man with whom he could do business, a pragmatist willing to overlook Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and warmongering in eastern Ukraine; someone who would allow the Kremlin a free hand in exchange for Russian support against terrorism. Trump had long admired Putin’s authoritarian leadership and envied his dictator-like approval ratings. On the campaign trail, he also had viewed praising Putin as a useful, if minor, tool in his arsenal of anti-Clinton invective. “I think I would have a very, very good relationship with Putin,” Trump said in September 2016. “And I think I would have a very, very good relationship with Russia.”
Both men were very wrong.
Newsweek then reminds us that before Vladimir Putin wanted to go steady with Donnie boy that he was totally fixated on destroying that bitch Hillary Clinton.
So Putin sent his little internet ninjas in to hack, phish, and gather as much dirt on the popular girl that they could.
During that enterprise Putin noticed a certain special someone, and it was on like Donkey Kong.
The Kremlin’s love-in with Trump began in earnest after Super Tuesday, March 1, 2016, after he unexpectedly won seven states in the Republican primaries. Russia’s state-controlled media began talking him up as a pro-Russian maverick who admired Putin. “We never believed that the U.S. establishment would ever allow [Trump] to win,” recalls a senior Russian TV anchor and well-known Kremlin propagandist, who asked for anonymity when discussing the evolution of his show’s political position. “But it looked like this man was interested in a deal. He seemed like someone who wanted to break down Washington’s clichés about Russia.… Basically he looked like he could be nash —our kind of guy.” Kremlin-controlled TV, along with its foreign-language mouthpieces RT and the Sputnik news agencies, began spinning the line that Trump was a fan of Putin and an enemy of a supposedly Russia-hating Washington establishment. Meanwhile, on the dark side, Russian hackers began creating bots to boost Trump’s Twitter numbers—whether on the Kremlin’s orders or not hasn’t been proved—and retweeting anti-Clinton memes like #crookedhillary. “Trump has said that he does not want to impose the American will on other sovereign nations,” Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Duma’s Committee on Education, told Newsweek at the time. “That’s a world which I welcome.”
Many Russians were thrilled by Trump’s fondness for their supreme leader. As early as October 2007, Trump told CNN’s Larry King that Putin was “doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia period.” In 2013, when Trump brought the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow, he wondered in a tweet if Putin would “become my new best friend.” (Trump also falsely claimed that he had met Putin during his visit.) And in December 2015, on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Trump defended the Russian leader against allegations he had ordered the killings of journalists by retorting that “our country does plenty of killing also.” Most attractive to Russians was Trump’s often-repeated insistence on the same kind of machismo that forms the basis of Putin’s cult of personality. "I don't think [Putin] has any respect for Clinton,” Trump said in July 2016. “I think he respects me."
Yes, because the player always respects the booty call, right dumbass?
But just like Ross and Rachel, Sam and Diane, and the Captain and Tennille a happily ever after was simply not in the cards.
It was Congress that finally ended any chance of a Trump-Putin reset on July 25, when both chambers overwhelmingly passed a bill enshrining Barack Obama’s economic sanctions against Moscow into law, recommending even more sanctions against Russia’s energy sector and forbidding the president from easing them without congressional approval. The law struck at the very thing on which the Kremlin had hung its hopes—Trump’s authority to create his own Russia policy. Top officials in Moscow were quick to grasp that Congress had effectively neutered the president, at least as far as the Kremlin was concerned.
“Trump’s administration has demonstrated total impotence by surrendering its executive authority to Congress in the most humiliating way,” wrote Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in a Facebook post. “The U.S. establishment fully outwitted Trump.… The hope that our relations with the new American administration would improve is finished.” Or as Sergei Zheleznyak, deputy chair of the Duma’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, tells Newsweek , “Trump is no longer in charge. What is there for Putin to talk about with him? What is the point of talking to Tillerson if he comes to us, when [Putin] knows that [Trump] cannot remove sanctions?”
And just like that the Trump-Putin bromance hit the skids.
No more late night phone calls, no more staying up to all hours doing each other's hair, no more text messages bashing Hillary to each other during work hours.
Putin bet that Trump was finally the one, but as he and his followers have come to learn, he is just a reality show clown whose entire persona is made up of carefully crafted bullshit held together with good old American gullibility.
Like many famous sitcom relationships that have come before, there will likely be multiple attempts to rekindle the magic, but with so many eyes (Including those belonging to investigators and prosecutors) focused on what happens next it is unlikely that Putin and Trump will be riding off into any sunsets together.
But fear not Donnie, because history will surely remember that you were once Putin's little bitch and that ultimately, when you were no longer of any use, he unceremoniously cast you aside like a used condom.
