According to the dossier written by Christopher Steele (ex-MI6 agent, MI6 is the UK equivalent of the CIA), Trump and Russia have been working together for years. Russia offers him nice financial deals and information on his enemies (Trump is also aware they have blackmail material on him), Trump offers Russia information about influential Russians in the US. This has supposedly been going on for years now.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html
I highly doubt it’s mutual. Putin is an intelligent and educated man (unlike Trump), if thoroughly misguided. I think he looks at Trump as a pawn to manipulate.
I don’t know the Russian language but When Putin said Trump was briiiiant it didn’t mean genuis like Trump thought, but the Russian way of saying Flambouyant.
Mostly just a boy-crush on Putin. He basically a 6 year old seeing everybody walk lightly and speak carefully when the thugy drug-dealer walks around the neighborhood, and thinks that is height of cool.
That could as easily be a description of how the world sees the US.
Honestly, what on earth is wrong with the US and Russia having better relations???
I do not know. I suspect it will make a great book someday soon.
I can see that President Trump’s relationship with the Russians and cannot be explained by conventional means. This seems to indicate there is something unconventional going on.
Peace and prosperity for himself. That’s fine because it would be good for all innocent people in the world as well.
Sure, if from the universe of “innocent people” you exclude Western Europeans, Russians, Syrians, etc…
I’m not sure he’s intelligent. There are rumors that his KGB superiors in the 1980s saw him as a “dumb jock” and gave him a sinecure post in east Germany rather than a tougher one.
Even if that’s true (the rumor, that is), it doesn’t mean they were right, especially considering that they’re very likely fat-ass suits who wouldn’t know a barbell from a cowbell.
I’ve seen all of Oliver Stone’s interviews with him, and, while Stone himself appears more than a little biased in favor of Putin (which could be what he truly believes or a way to make Putin feel comfortable with answering his questions), and he could be cutting things to make Putin look better than he is, I really don’t get that Putin is dumb. He appears to be on it, and he’s a damn good liar…one helluva lot better than Trump.
Maybe, maybe not. I do think you have a point that the Russians are much more into using trump than admiring him. I think if you want to get into Putin’s head you have to look at that TV documentary called something like “Byzantium: Fall of an Empire” made about ten years ago by his spiritual adviser, Shevkunov. The documentary itself is about the Byzantine Empire, but it was clearly mean to have present-day applications, and Shevkunov ends by saying something to the effect that Russia needs to “use the West against the East, and use the East against the West.”
From the Shevkunov / Putin point of view (and I’m betting a majority of Russians who think about these issues at all agree with them), both Islamic civilization and ‘Western’ civilization are existential dangers to Russia and Russia’s interest lies in playing one against the other, depending on the situation.
Various hypotheses (most already noted in the above posts):
No.
Trump has an overbearing fear of the prospect of losing WWIII.
Otherwise I agree with 1 and 2. Mostly with 1. Trump is a narcissist from the word go, and few things are more important to a male narcissist than operating in a space where manliness, especially his manliness, is unquestioned.
Hilarious. Of course under Trump, “having better relations” means that Trump makes massive concessions to Putin and gets nothing in return (except a warm smile from Vlad, of course, which actually does mean a lot to little Donald).
Anyway, contributors to this thread have done a great job of laying out the reasons for Trump’s attitude:
[ul]
[li]money --‘loans’ Trump can’t get anywhere else; purchases of his properties for wildly above-market prices[/li][li]Trump’s knowledge that Putin can reveal details of Trump ‘business deals’ that violate US federal statutes, which at the least endangers the Trump Organization if not Donald’s own freedom[/li][li]Steve Bannon’s worldview, which as mentioned, leads him to see white Russia as his best ally against the non-white, non-Christian world–and Bannon remains the main architect of Trump Administration policy despite his recent low profile[/li][li]Trump’s well-known admiration for dictators and contempt for democracy and the rule of law[/li][li]the efforts Putin has been putting into flattering Trump (for several years, now)[/li][/ul]
I would add one item not yet mentioned: Trump’s sensitivity about the number of Americans who voted for him as compared with the number who voted for his opponent.
If Trump concedes that Russia interfered in the election in such a way that Hillary Clinton lost votes she’d otherwise have gotten, that makes Trump’s victory even shakier—therefore he cannot concede that Russia interfered. It must be the case that Putin is a sweet-natured guy who would never, ever interfere in US affairs…it simply MUST be.
Yes, money. Money, money, money, monnnnnney. Trump is not alone, he’s just voicing the opinions of our own oligarchic class that sees no wrong in anything that profits them. And it’s nothing new either, this class regained the political power in the 1980s they lost as a result of the Great Depression and we’ve been heading in this direction ever since.
Ok, I’ve had enough. What money, exactly? I mean, our trade with Russia is basically peanuts (IIRC less than 5 billion dollars a year both ways)…and, even if we had a roses and puppies relationship with Russia and Putin that’s not enough money to worry about. Oh, it SOUNDS like a lot, but real trade relations a la the US are measured in 10’s or 100’s of billions…Russia isn’t even in the top 20 (they are just barely in the top 30). And there isn’t enough market there to change that substantially.
If we were talking about China (or India or any number of other countries), I’d probably be ok with this explanation, but Russia? It makes no sense that our ‘oligarchic class’ would be all aquiver and willing to bend over for that. Even our Euro buddies aren’t all that wedded to the trade with Russia to seriously agitate to get rid of the sanctions…and WE certainly don’t give much of a shit about Russian oil or gas, since we import zero from them.
So, what money are you talking about? How much money are you talking about?
It’s not clear this premise is true in any substantive way. It does seem Trump has a reflexively positive view of ‘strong men’. That’s also showed up in his comments about Duterte in the Philippines, who is more legitimately elected than Putin and the Philippines is still a free country with some rule of law unlike Russia. But still Duterte has shown limited respect for the rule of law, and Trump’s at least shallow natural inclination to that seems to be positive.
But in substance it’s harder IMO to point to the evidence US policy to Russia is more favorable, for Russia, under Trump than it was under Obama or than it should be (a matter of opinion anyway). Trump seems to tend to listen to his national security team, though also to listen to whoever he spoke to last. That team has a conventional GOP conservative view toward Russia for the most part. Bannon might have some deeper ideological reason to favor Russia, but it doesn’t seem he’s that influential now that the Trump admin is up and running to some extent as a practical matter, and Trump himself doesn’t have a deep ideological view of much of anything AFAICT.
The stuff about Trump’s personal financial stuff is basically crap. That relies on buying into Trump’s own myth that he’s a big real estate developer. He was a relatively big one at one point (though never among the really biggest), but after almost going broke in the 90’s shifted his approach to much more of a fee/royalty based business model selling the brand of Trump. Trump doesn’t have massive debt relative to income or assets by real estate developer standards because that’s not really what he has been in recent times, but more of an entertainment franchise. There’s no evidence he has lots of debt owed to ‘Russia’, it’s not certain there’s any.
In summary it does seem there’s some natural affinity by Trump for strong men, and obviously has some instincts as a politician and there is some resonance on the populist right for a friendlier approach to Putin (the populist right in various Western countries). But now that’s he in, there’s been a distinct lack of sharp policy divergence from before Trump. Or even if one thinks it’s too soon to say that, Trump is also paying notable lip service to ideas Putin doesn’t want to hear, like the speech in Poland talking about Russia’s ‘destabilizing meddling’ and the US as alternative gas supplier.
All of it. They don’t want Russia’s money, our own overlords want an oligarchy like Russia to take all that we have, all that they have, and anything they can get anywhere else. These people want power and control, money itself means little to them.
No I had them in mind in particular considering they are currently taking the brunt of animosity between the US and Russia.
Innocent Western Europeans were harangued into sanctions that hurt their economy. Innocent Russians suffer from the sanctions. Innocent Syrians are caught in between the fanatics funded by the US and the despots backed by Russia.
Even if that’s true, it doesn’t preclude a previous relationship with Russia (say, when he was going through all his financial troubles in the '90’s) which they’re holding over his head. However, either Uday or Qusay (I forget which…Don Jr., I think) has bragged about how they’ve been involved in Russia, so I wouldn’t reject a current financial relationship out of hand.
Trump hasn’t had any major policy to really change that, other than withdrawing from the Paris Accord…big mistake. Lots of hot air…but talk is cheap. As a matter of fact, Trump could be an alternative gas supplier himself; just hook him up to a windmill and point him there.