Marco Levytsky, NP-UN.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s November 11 statement that he takes the word of Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia didn’t meddle in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election over that of the reports of his own intelligence agencies is an incredibly preposterous statement even by his own audacious standards.
It received immediate and widespread condemnation throughout the United States and the rest of the civilized world, typical among which was the statement of fellow Republican, Senator John McCain:
“There’s nothing ‘America First’ about taking the word of a KGB colonel over that of the American intelligence community. There’s no ‘principled realism’ in cooperating with Russia to prop up the murderous Assad regime, which remains the greatest obstacle to a political solution that would bring an end to the bloodshed in Syria. Vladimir Putin does not have America’s interests at heart. To believe otherwise is not only naive but also places our national security at risk.”
One of the more fascinating commentaries was provided by Scott Gilmore in a November 11, 2017, article for Maclean’s entitled “Donald Trump: Putin’s Manchurian Idiot”.
This is a reference to “The Manchurian Candidate” a 1959 novel by Richard Condon, which was adapted into a very popular movie in 1962, remade in 2004. It is a political thriller about the son of a prominent U.S. political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy. His target is a U.S. Presidential candidate whose death would leave the door open to the Vice-Presidential candidate who is actually a Russian mole. The term “Manchurian Candidate” has come down in popular political lexicon to mean a Russian plant.
In his piece, Gilmore points out that “revelations are now coming daily, and they draw an increasingly clear picture of widespread interference and direct collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.”
“The evidence, when considered in is entirety, is overwhelming. We know that Russian intelligence agencies were in contact with various members of the Trump campaign after he won the nomination. One of those staff members, George Papadopoulos, has confessed his Russian contacts offered the Trump team emails stolen from the Clinton campaign, and that the most senior people around Trump knew this and encouraged further contact.
“The Clinton emails were then leaked by Moscow, and dominated media coverage for the remainder of the U.S. election. And recent congressional testimony from both Facebook and Twitter has confirmed that Russia also sowed political unrest and improved Trump’s odds by spreading disinformation to millions of American voters.
“We know that Trump’s campaign manager, and other members of his senior team, had multiple financial links to Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin. We also know that Trump made one single change to the Republican platform once he won the nomination: removing anti-Russian provisions regarding Ukraine.
“The former National Security Agency director, both the former and current CIA directors, the former and current directors of the FBI and the Trump-appointed director of national intelligence have all publicly confirmed Russia actively undermined the presidential election. Even Russian officials, politicians and news anchors have openly boasted: ‘We elected Trump’.”
Examining various possibilities as to Trump’s personal involvement, Gilmore nevertheless believes that Trump “was indeed kept out of the loop and genuinely does not believe the accusations and indictments now being levelled at his team.” Even so “this is still a strategic coup for Moscow. Washington is embroiled in what will be years of partisan chaos. The American people are increasingly disenchanted with democracy. And in the Oval Office there is a man few take seriously at home or abroad. Trump is, in short, Putin’s Manchurian Idiot.”
But an alternative possibility was provided in an article by Craig Unger entitled “Trump’s Russian Laundromat”, which was published by the New Republic on July 23, 2017. In a very extensive and thoroughly researched investigative piece, Unger identified several Russian oligarchs who had laundered their dirty money through Trump Tower in Manhattan and helped bail out Trump when his real estate deals fell flat. He states the following:
“A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower — in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. ‘They saved his bacon,’ says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.”
So, is Donald Trump merely a “Manchurian Idiot”, or actually the “Manchurian Candidate” of 2016? Only further investigation will show. But one thing is certain. This bromance between the Moron of the White House and the Crocodile of the Kremlin remains a colossal threat not only to U.S. national security, but to global security as a whole.
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