Putin’s Investment in Trump Pays Off Bigly

Russian leader Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump at a press conference in Helsinki on July 16, 2018. Sergey Guneev/Sputnik via AP

Talk about a good ROI. Vladimir Putin’s investment in Donald Trump is sure paying off.

In recent days, Trump has promoted Moscow’s horrendously false talking points, excoriating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and blaming Ukraine for the brutal war that Putin, a real dictator, launched. He also kicked off talks with Russia to end the war and left out Ukraine. It’s hard to imagine a better scenario for Putin. And at the United Nations, the Trump administration proposed a resolution on the war that declined to hold Russia responsible for the conflict. (It was amended to include language blaming Moscow and then passed, with Washington abstaining.)

Plus, the chaos caused by Trump and Elon Musk’s blitzkrieg against US government agencies could well redound to the Kremlin’s advantage. With national security agencies—the CIA, the FBI, and others—and the Pentagon under siege due to this assault, their capabilities to defend the nation from threats posed by Russia or other adversaries will be diminished. All the Trump/Musk-generated conflict is in sync with Putin’s long-standing aim to sow discord in the United States.

Moreover, on her first day in office, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, which sought to counter secret operations waged by Russia, China, and other foes to affect US elections. She also cut back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a tool used by the feds to neutralize malign influence and disinformation operations. And now the FBI is being run by Kash Patel, a MAGA provocateur who has hailed the January 6 rioters and who has echoed Putin’s phony claim that Moscow did not clandestinely intervene in the 2016 campaign and assist Trump.

What a good deal for Putin: Trump siding with him on Ukraine, legitimizing his tyrannical reign, and breaking with Western allies. The US government and national security community in turmoil. Washington undermining its standing throughout the world and diminishing its global influence. And a US administration opening the door for more Russian covert attacks and holding Moscow blameless for its previous assaults on American democracy. No wonder Putin did what he could to help Trump win the presidency—not once but thrice. 

The Trumpers will tell you that “Russia, Russia, Russia” was a hoax, a witch hunt and a diabolical Deep State plot. That’s another con that Trump whipped up, with a boatload of help from Patel. But as the Trump-Putin relationship returns to prominence and as an American sellout of Ukraine looms, it’s important to keep in mind that Trump sits in the White House partly because of Putin’s skullduggery and his own betrayal of America.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Just ask Marco Rubio, who’s now Trump’s secretary of state. As I’ve pointed out before in this newsletter, in August 2020, Rubio, then the GOP chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a bipartisan 966-page report on the Trump-Russia scandal. It’s the most comprehensive public account of Putin’s attack on the 2016 election. It concludes that Putin “ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president” and that he did so “to help the Trump Campaign…and undermine the US democratic process.”

The report points out that “the Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia”—that is, Trump helped cover up Putin’s culpability. The report also reveals that Paul Manafort, the chief executive of Trump’s 2016 campaign, secretly met with a Russian intelligence office who was possibly connected to Russia’s hack-and-leak operation and shared private campaign information with him. (Does that sound like possible collusion?)

So no hoax. Putin schemed to place Trump in the White House, and Trump aided and abetted the operation by falsely denying its existence.

The Russian operation helped Trump win in 2016. In the final weeks of a tight election, it produced a steady stream of damaging leaks about Clinton that impeded her campaign. The Kremlin also ran secret projects that tried to assist Trump in 2020 and 2024. What’s the source for that? The first Trump administration. In 2020, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and the Treasury Department each publicly disclosed that Russia was conducting a disinformation campaign spreading false information about Joe Biden’s actions in Ukraine to smear the former vice president and Trump’s main rival. Rudy Giuliani, then a lawyer for Trump, peddled this phony, Russia-generated propaganda to try to undermine Biden’s presidential campaign.

Such bunk became the basis for the long-running and false GOP narrative that Biden was corrupt. This line of attack failed in 2020, but the Republicans stuck with it. After they won control of the House of Representatives in 2022, they hyped the Biden allegations cooked up by Russian agents and used this disinformation to try to discredit Biden with the false charge that he headed a “Biden crime family.” They cited this bogus claim as the basis for an impeachment investigation. That probe went nowhere, but for years, the Republicans and MAGA-aligned media used the Kremlin-orchestrated smear to advance the impression that Biden was crooked—a sham that Trump enthusiastically promoted and exploited in the 2024 campaign.

Russia’s effort last year to help Trump was not a secret. In the spring of 2024, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines publicly testified before Congress that Russia was once again waging information warfare to influence the presidential election, obviously to benefit Trump. This would come to include a host of disinformation projects. But none of this became major news stories—a true failure of the media. And, it would turn out, one of the key false allegations the Republicans and their media mouthpieces pushed—that Biden and his son had covertly pocketed $10 million in bribes from a Ukrainian energy firm—originated with an FBI informant with ties to Russian intelligence officers. (In December, this informant, Alexander Smirnov, pleaded guilty to lying to the bureau about this supposed scheme.) 

There’s been no good review of the operations the Kremlin implemented to swing the 2024 election to Trump. And with Trump in charge, Patel at the FBI, John Ratcliffe (another Trump loyalist) heading the CIA, and Tulsi Gabbard serving as the director of national intelligence, there’s as much chance of one being ordered as Trump attending a racial sensitivity seminar. Whatever the Russians did last year to help Trump will be buried by what we can now call the Trump Deep State.

There’s certainly a lot more to the Trump-Putin connection than this brief rundown. In 2013, when Trump announced he’d be holding his Miss Universe contest in Moscow, he tweeted about Putin becoming “his new best friend.” (Putin was already recognized at this point as an antidemocratic thug.) While in Moscow for the event, Trump was obsessed with meeting Putin—which never happened. But the Miss Universe pageant netted Trump $2.3 million—mostly because his partner in the endeavor, a Russian oligarch who was close to Putin, paid Trump a very generous licensing fee and absorbed millions in losses. (Was this a sweetheart deal with a pro-Putin billionaire?)

During the 2016 campaign, Trump tried to set up a megadeal to develop a tower in Moscow and requested help from Putin’s office. (He never told voters about this.) And his top campaign aides met with a Russian emissary after being informed the Kremlin wanted to secretly help his campaign. Of course, Trump has a long history of fawning remarks about Putin, and top administration officials during his first term wondered about his unending and bizarre affinity for Putin. (This past week the Mirror reported that a former Kazakh intelligence chief, who claimed he had served in the KGB, said that Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987. There is no way to evaluate this claim.)

The Trump-Russia tale has largely been smothered by Trump’s endless screams of “witch hunt” and “hoax.” But as Trump moves to help Putin obtain an advantageous end to the cruel and criminal war he initiated, the full context of their relationship ought to be center stage. Yet it’s not been.

One example: On Thursday, the New York Times published a story reporting on Trump’s “familiar pattern” of “elevating Kremlin talking points”—an accurate characterization. But not until halfway into the piece did it refer to Putin’s attack on the 2016 election. The article said that the Senate Intelligence Committee report had concluded that the Russian government “engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.” But the Times did not point out that the committee declared that this operation had been conducted to help Trump triumph. The newspaper noted the Russian endeavor had “damaged” Hillary Clinton’s campaign but said nothing about Trump’s attempt to cover up Russia’s role. The Times also did not mention Putin’s secret efforts in 2020 and 2024 to assist Trump. It downplayed the whole Trump-Russia saga.

Trump’s love affair with Putin has been something of a mystery. Less mysterious is the basic fact that Putin helped Trump reach the White House initially and mounted covert actions in 2020 and 2024 to boost Trump’s chances. What could be more relevant at a time when Trump is demonizing Zelenskyy and trying to broker a resolution of the war that will favor Putin and his regime over a democratically elected ally of the United States?

Putin wanted Trump in the White House, and he screwed with American elections to make that happen. Now Trump is acting like Putin’s handmaid—and pursuing policies and creating discord that could well undermine American democracy and fray, if not shatter, the Western alliance. MAGA refuses to see this. Congressional Republicans won’t face it. And the media doesn’t fully cover this all-important backstory. Whether or not there are secrets to the Trump-Putin relationship that we don’t know, it’s clear that Putin made a clever bet, and it looks like he’s about to cash in.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

Last issue, I noted that this feature has tended to focus on media outlets and their owners. But we now have a major sporting figure on the list. On Thursday, the Trump White House held a reception to honor Black History Month. This was obviously absurd. After all, Trump and his crew have been waging war on DEI initiatives since his first hours in office. And Trump—without any evidence—deplorably blamed diversity programs for the tragic and deadly plane crash over the Potomac River in Washington, DC. Then there’s his long history of racism, which includes his promotion of the racist birther conspiracy theory about Barack Obama and his false claim last year that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets. So it’s pretty rich to have this guy celebrating Black history.

Yet there he was doing just that in the East Room of the White House, and he was sharing the spotlight with his good pal Tiger Woods. During his 20 minutes of remarks, Trump repeatedly referred to the golfing great. But Woods was not present merely as a POC. He’s involved with Trump in a big golf deal that aims to bring about a merger of the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league—a potential venture that could end up immensely profiting Trump’s business. At this event, Woods—who has not identified as Black and, instead, highlights his mixed racial heritage and calls himself “Cablinasian”—was providing cover for Trump. And perhaps earning a pretty penny.

SNL50: The Anniversary Special. I grew up with Saturday Night Live. When it first hit the airwaves, the show was a cultural earthquake, a subversive mix of satire, silliness, and hipness—just right for high school teens soon to head to college. For years, it was essential on a Saturday night—whatever you might be doing—to be near a television set at 11:30 p.m. This was in the long-ago era before you could catch the best clips the next day on the internet. You needed to watch in real-time to know what the cool kids were doing and what they made of recent developments in our mess of a world. Plus, the only way to see some of the best music of the day—this was before MTV—was to view the show. Back then, SNL was an important touchstone, not to be missed. And despite all its ups and downs since, it has managed to hold on to a piece of that early magic.

The 50th anniversary special that aired a week ago—on a Sunday night!—captured some of that feel. Like a typical episode, it included moments of brilliance (Kate McKinnon!), of wit (Tina Fey and Amy Poehler!), poignancy (Paul Simon!), sophomoric, not-quite-successful humor (more than one former cast member), and tremendous creativity. In that last category goes a skit that covered the history of New York City from the mid-1970s until today via famous songs with rewritten lyrics from Fame, Les Misérables, The Lion King, Hamilton, and Little Shop of Horrors. If you didn’t see this, you should watch below.

But there was a major absence in the show: politics. Political humor has always been a mainstay—perhaps a foundation—of SNL. The flashback montages in the show did not cover its searing political sendups over the years. There was, as far as I remember, no clear references to Trump. (And, yes, Alec Baldwin was there.). The “Weekend Update” segment mostly focused on SNL itself, ducking the ongoing Trump-Musk chaos. With an exception. It brought out one of its regular commentators: The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With at a Party (Cecily Strong). She did her usual routine, blathering in half-sentences. She referred to current events, noting there was now “an acopalypse” and a “constipational crisis.” She made a joke about DEI and “R.F. Carl Jr.” (“His brainworm earned it. It ate its way to the top.”) And the punchline came when she was asked where she works, and she replied that she’s a press secretary at the White House. Yet this rambling bit was far from a clever and sharp stab at the moment. (In the opening monologue, Steve Martin did note he had just been vacationing at the “Gulf of Steve Martin.”)

It was not until after I had watched the show that I sensed that something was absent. I wonder if this was purposeful—whether for this primetime special the show had decided to go light on politics. If so, that would be rather worrisome. Media corporations seem to be rather sensitive these days about aggravating Trump, which is understandable, given his threats to use the power of the federal government to harm media outlets and corporations that draw his ire. But if SNL pulls its punches, that would be a sad way to mark its 50 years of presenting some of the best political humor of the day.

Black Doves and Prime Target. If you’re eagerly awaiting the next season of Slow Horses, the le Carré-ish spy series on Apple TV+, you might be tempted to sample Black Doves or Prime Target to get a fix of Brit-intel entertainment fare. And if you do, prepare to be disappointed.

Black Doves (Netflix) is a comic-book spy thriller. Keira Knightley plays Helen (if that’s her real name), the wife of the British defense minister. Unknown to her hubby, she’s also a spy who works for a shadowy private intelligence outfit that does shady work for whoever is willing to pay. Might be a government, might be a corporation, might be a criminal enterprise. And Helen is not just a sneak; she’s an action-hero who can shoot, stab, or fight her way out of any tight pinch.

After her (secret) lover is killed because he’s somehow connected to the death of the Chinese ambassador to the UK, Helen’s covert identity is at risk of being exposed. This triggers a chain of unfortunate events…at Christmastime. So as a good mum, Helen must procure gifts for the family while trotting about London, uncovering assorted mysteries, neutralizing threats, engaging in gun fights, and contending with a cold-blooded boss who’s playing a variety of angles. It’s rather messy and incredibly implausible. The show lacks the nuances and smarts of Slow Horses. It can be fun to watch Knightley in anything, and the best part of the series are her interactions with Sam Young, a onetime Black Doves operative who’s trying to protect her. He’s played by Ben Whitshaw, perhaps best known for serving as Q in recent James Bond films. Knightley and Whitshaw have plenty of chemistry. Alas, it’s deployed for booms, bangs, and shootouts, not for a clever plot.

Speaking of James Bond, Leo Woodall, a possible successor to Daniel Craig in the legendary film series, stars in Prime Target as Edward Brooks, a math whiz pursuing pioneering research at Cambridge University on prime numbers. Little does he know that the National Security Agency is scared shitless about his work because it could lead to a mathematical formula that would unlock any cryptographic code in the world. Imagine a world with no digital security. The NSA does, and it doesn’t like it. Brooks and his adviser, another math (or as they call it, “maths”) genius, are being secretly surveilled by the NSA, as part of a program that covertly monitors mathematicians around the world to make sure no one succeeds in this prime number research.

But Brooks is getting too close and that triggers a couple of targeted killings. This causes Taylah Sanders (Quintessa Swindell), the NSA agent who’s been keeping tabs on Brooks, to go rogue to try to protect him. They team up to find a missing link in his work—a piece of an equation recently discovered in an ancient library at an archeological site in Baghdad. There’s plenty of spy-versus-spy hijinks. Sanders’ godmother works at the NSA, and she may not be on the up-and-up. A Serbian operative is on their tracks. A shady private institute has an obviously less-than-noble interest in Brooks.

It's an engaging setup. Yet the show, like Black Doves, veers too far into the realm of the implausible—and not only because the math at the heart of the series doesn’t exist. Sanders, who’s in her late 20s, is far too experienced as a spy. She somehow knows how to hook up with criminals who can get her out of Paris while she’s being chased by the NSA. Plus, the show suffers from laptop-itis. As a hacker, Sanders can get her and Brooks out of any jam by opening her computer and punching a few keys. Woodall is playing a nerdy fellow who might be described as on the spectrum and doesn’t exude much charisma. It’s tough to see this fellow as Bond, but that just may be because of good acting. Prime Target comes close but doesn’t quite hit the mark. The good news is that a new installment of Slow Horses is expected to drop later this year.