A vacation on Ireland’s west coast should have provided relief from the depressing realities of the U.S. election season.
But it’s hard to escape when every Irishman or woman you meet asks the same question, differing only in the choice of adjective: “You Americans aren’t really going to elect that awful (or dangerous or bigoted) Donald Trump, are you?”
My reply: “I still believe most Americans have the common sense to grasp that Trump presents the greatest threat to U.S. security and democracy since the end of the Cold War.”
Anyone who doubts the threat need only observe Trump’s repeated praise for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, which he continued last week. “I’ve already said he is really very much of a leader,” Trump gushed to NBC’s Matt Lauer, “far more than our president has been a leader. The man has very strong control over a country.”
Take a close look at what the Donald finds so appealing about the ruthless Putin, and you see what we could expect from a President Trump.
Since 2000, Putin has systematically dismantled every check and balance that might have limited his power. Regional governors, once freely elected, are now controlled by the Kremlin. Any serious political opposition at a national level has been crushed.
The dynamic and dedicated democrat Boris Nemtsov was assassinated near the Kremlin’s walls; oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sent to a Siberian jail for a decade; anticorruption fighter Alexei Navalny received a suspended prison sentence on trumped-up charges, while his brother was jailed as a hostage.
Ah, but Putin has an 82 percent approval rating, Trump has crowed. Perhaps, if you trust Russian polls. What Trump didn’t mention is how Putin earns his popularity. It isn’t through improving the Russian economy, which depends primarily on oil and has tanked as oil prices plummeted. Putin’s determination to maintain central state controls has thwarted efforts to diversify Russia’s exports.
First, the Kremlin seized control of all privately owned national television stations (most Russians still get their news from TV). Journalists critical of the regime have been beaten and murdered; the Kremlin, of course, denies any connection and Trump brushes off questions on the subject. That’s no surprise, given Trump’s open hostility to pesky journalists and calls for strict (but unconstitutional) libel laws.
Allowing himself to be used
None of this appears to bother the GOP candidate, who has his own enemies list, and has made clear he’s willing to junk NATO and America’s alliances in Asia.
Trump also seems indifferent to Putin’s anti-democracy efforts, which include hacking efforts to influence the U.S. election in his favor. Indeed, last week the Republican nominee gave an interview to the Kremlin’s mouthpiece, RT, in which he denounced U.S. media as “unbelievably dishonest.”
Which leads me to the most dangerous aspect of Trump’s Putin-ophilia. The GOP candidate appears totally oblivious to how he is letting himself be used.
Putin’s weakened Russia no longer poses the same threat the Soviet Union did during the Cold War. But the Russian strongman seeks to promote an alternative model of “managed democracy” (meaning authoritarianism with democratic trappings). He is working to weaken Western democracies, with money, propaganda and violence at the edges — at a time when those countries are under strain.
Any U.S. leader, when dealing with Russia, must keep Putin’s machinations in mind. Yet Trump is so narcissistic he thinks he can easily outmaneuver Putin. The Donald keeps repeating that Putin called him “brilliant” (a claim Putin says is a mistranslation). “If he says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him,” Trump told Lauer.
Here’s the Trump mindset, as South Carolina’s Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham succinctly put it: “Other than destroying every instrument of democracy in his own country, having opposition people killed, dismembering neighbors through military force, and being the benefactor of the butcher of Damascus, (Putin’s) a good guy.”
In Ireland, they joke that Trump is “Putin’s poodle.” Should Trump reach the White House, that line won’t be funny at all.
