You know, personally, I don’t think the rumours of Trump being an active foreign agent instead of “just” a narcissist grifter are useful, because they can be used to argue that things weren’t already pretty borked before in the status quo… (and I think they are wrong, personally)
But I do have to admit - if I was a foreign agent wanting to destroy the US and its influence in the world, I would basically do exactly what he is doing.
My college degree focused on the collapse of the USSR and the US diplomatic response to it. I studied a lot of Soviet and Russian foreign policy. If Donald Trump is not a Russian asset he weirdly backs every single position you would expect a Russian asset to have.
refusing to speak negatively of Putin in front of millions during the debate should’ve been a pretty clear wakeup call
“He’s a good man, strong man” and every red hat cheered. You dumb mother fuckers.
He’s in Putin’s pocket for sure. You remember the closed door meeting with him and Putin his first time in office? Putin came out looking smug af and Trump looked like he’d just seen the ghost of his dead dad. Trump was best mates with Epstien and famously can’t keep it his pants. My bet is that Putin has footage of him fucking a minor and is threatening to release it unless Trump toes the line.
Honestly, given the cult-like obsession of Trump followers, I can’t even imagine a video like that making much of an impact on them. Sadly…
I think he’s inept, stupid, and doesn’t have a plan or idea about what he’s doing. Tariffs, eg, are the polar opposite of what he claims.
His puppeteers, however? They’re just letting him run wild, destroying everything he touches, because they have the wherewithall to withstand the damage.
And they are all making $$$. Insiders make out like crazy when the economy crashes, buy the low and hold. Open a for-profit prison. Get shady government contracts. Get the President to do a commercial for your cars in front of the White House. And on and on.
That is true as long as there is a rebound though. Why would there be a return to normal after this?
What stocks do I invest in? I want to profit off the demise of USA as well.
You think Trump cares about all these things enough to run around destroying everything? His train of thought chugs for a second, sputters and switches lines. He’s obviously being fed things to be upset about and talking points, then an executive order is put in front of him to sign. He’s not writing these orders.
Oh, the puppeteers will have him under the proverbial bus the moment things turn back on them. Mr Trump has an inherent unlikableness about him that will work well for people needing a scapegoat. Once a win is achieved or a loss is unavoidable, he’ll be hung out to dry in a microsecond.
And that’s sad. The mean things we do is a reflection on us and not the victim.
I get the feeling such rumours are just the other face of the same kind of blind Nationalism as the MAGAts exhibit - the latter group is all about how America is a great country whilst the group spreading the “it’s all due to Foreign interference” rumours are really just denying that the huge problems in America are mainly the fault of Americans.
Both are just spewing self-serving nationalism in the same direction: that Americans are good and it’s foreigners who are bad.
It’s generally a good idea to be skeptical of “explanations” which make the people giving them indirectly it look better, either by claiming than the group they’re in is better than the rest or by exhonerating the group they’re in as the cause of the problems that group is having.
You put it better than I myself had formulated it in my head yet, why I am weary of those rumours. I find similar arguments here in Europe, where our fascist movements, which are without a doubt supported by Russia, are then sometimes reduced to being some sort of wholly foreign influence, instead of admitting that Russia is stoking flames in embers that had always been part of us and the problems we face.
The fields which are being harvested by both external adversaries and power hungry ethics-free insiders were plowed, fertilized and sowed by 4 decades of exposure to the style of disinformation favored by Neoliberalism whilst the consequences of its policies were getting more and more felt by the average person, IMHO.
When your belt keeps tightening, what you can buy with the income from working keeps being less and less and life feels more and more like swimming against the tide, all the while the authoritative figures of old (mainly the Press and mainstream party politicians) keep telling you that things are getting better (“the GDP is growing!”), eventually people lose trust in said authoritative figures and those with a similar style of discourse, which opens the door to non-mainstream political voices with a different style of discourse (including populists), and very wealthy people aren’t going to be funding Leftwing parties whose ideas are not shaped by Neoliberalism, to fill the political gap opened by the general loss of trust on the mainstream, they’re going to be funding Rightwing voices who blame the powerless for the ills of the nation rather than those very wealthy people who have been pillaging it for decades.
