Trump wants to be your Putin

And the corporate right seems to want that, too.

It’s not just about “collusion.” It’s about an almost complete alignment in opposing truth, justice, and the American way.

Towards the end of the latest episode of Ball of Thread (which you can subscribe to on Patreon, Apple, Spotify or YouTube), Marcy Wheeler makes an essential point about coordination or “collusion” between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin:

There's no reason to believe they wouldn't coordinate at this point. We can point to people close to Trump reaching out to Russian spies. At this point, it would be unshocking if Trump were overtly coordinating with Russian spies, but they don't need to coordinate. They never needed to coordinate because their modus operandi has always been the same. Always lie, always claim to be the victim, always project, and therefore, the stories that Russia was going to tell are the same stories that Donald Trump was always going to tell.

This episode winds through the story of the so-called “Trump dossier” to explain how Republicans employed a strategy Paul Manafor brought back from a January 2017 meeting in Spain about “re-establishing” his relationship with Oleg Deripaska to discredit the investigation in the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia as Putin was attacking our election. And it pretty much worked.

Likewise, the focus on “No collusion!” also helped Republicans sidestep the abundance of lies, and the five Trump associates who pleaded guilty to lying about their relationship with Russia as Trump and his lawyer covered up an attempt to do business with Putin both were lying about long after the election.

The endless lying and degrading of democracy that came from Trump’s defense has always been energized by Trump’s awareness that he doesn’t need to collude in private. He can do it in public. Because this isn’t just about some secret deal. It’s about an alliance against democracy, against a united and law-based Europe.

Trump doesn’t have to be ashamed about aligning with Putin because he wants to be our Putin. The only time he's ever appeared joyful in his life is in Putin's glow.

That his aspirational devotion to Putin remains stronger than ever — even after Putin invaded Ukraine, raping his way across the country with unashamed war crimes, including the mass kidnapping of children — shouldn’t surprise anyone. However, it should be considered treason against the best American ideals, just like January 6th and his declaration of king-like “absolute immunity” as president.

This shameless identification and devotion is why he felt confident saying, “Russia, if you’re listening,” on TV in 2016 after months of private indications that Putin was indeed trying to help him. It’s why he’s engaged in public hostage-taking with Putin, making his election a condition of the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich’s release.

This sort of instinctual alignment is also why the corporate right is rushing to Trump’s rescue to help make up for Republicans once-floundering fundraising. It’s why Trump feels comfortable demanding a billion dollars from oil executives who know he’ll set them free to destroy the climate should he take power.

Joe Biden, while obviously not perfect, has taken on corporate power through the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, Medicare prescription drug negotiation, and numerous other ways in a way that no president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has dared.

For many corporate donors, the choice between an actual democracy that holds them accountable while protecting consumers and making the richest pay a fair share of taxes and fascism is easy. They’ll take fascism every time.

But the thing about fascism is it’s a system both designed and doomed to swallow itself. Eventually, the failing leader who believes he cannot fail but only be failed even comes for his oligarchs.

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