Treat Donald Trump as a Russian asset and everything else finally makes sense

I'm not sure there's ever been a heel turn quite this abrupt, not in all the history of United States diplomacy. And yes, I'm including the Bay of Pigs in that.

As The Criminal runs roughshod over a century of United States diplomacy, this might be the single most humiliating act yet: the "United States" voting against a resolution condemning Russia for its bloody attempted conquest of Ukraine, joining dictatorships in Russia, China, and North Korea.

Except it isn't the "United States" doing it, and that's where I have yet another bone to pick with sloppy media conventions. "Washington" isn't doing squat. "The United States" isn't siding with Russia. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are siding with Russia, after a long history of siding with Russia, and the rest of "Washington" is involved in this only to the extent that every last humiliatingly shitty person in The Criminal's orbit are obligingly following orders because they'd far rather act as accomplices to the full dismantling of American foreign power than face the wrath of His Royal Pantload's social media scorn. Republicans are siding with Russia against all of Europe, with every previous "foreign policy hawk" turning belly-side up in the hopes of avoiding a coup-attempting convicted felon's dementia-laced ire.

But it should piss all of us off to hear it described as "America" siding with Russia. The actual majority of "America" is no more on board with this than they are with The Criminal's original coup attempt, and are being dragged along for the ride.

Yes, yes. The president is in charge of foreign policy, not anyone else—a tradition that only applies during Republican presidencies and applies not at all when billionaire Elon Musk wants to pursue a foreign policy of sabotaging American allies so as to better curry favors with world dictatorships—and the conventions of the press therefore describes the presidential stance as "America's" stance. But that was in the before-times, back when "the president" could be presumed to at least plausibly be working for America's interests.

That ain't true no more, and every damn one of us knows it. Donald Trump has telegraphed his personal devotion to Vladimir Effing Putin since the day he first entered the White House, has gone to extraordinary lengths to fete the murderer even as his own aides tear their hair out over it, and remains single-mindedly devoted to it now.

That clip is from a truly humiliating meeting between The Criminal and French president Emmanuel Macron. I won't subject you to the rest of the clips because it's agonizing but Macron could, ahem, not keep a straight face as King Pantload lied and rambled with his usual abandon.

Back to the original point, though: We have on our hands a situation in which the foreign policy of the supposed U.S. president is transparently self-serving and harmful to actual United States interests. There's no plausible case that allying with dictator Putin while intentionally ostracizing every current U.S. partner will result in a better American future than not doing that. There's no case to be made there, and nobody is even attempting it.

It's yet another unprecedented detail in our unprecedented new "what if we turned over the entire executive branch to an organized crime syndicate" era, and our media overlords might want to consider whether claiming the clearly destructive policy to be "Washington's" policy might once again be normalizing non-normal events to the point of misinforming the public.

As for the rest of us, I think it's long past time we stopped beating around the bush and just assumed, with no further argument necessary, that everything Donald Trump does he does corruptly. He is allying with Putin because he wants Putin to give him cash, or because Putin already has. He excluded foreign aid to Egypt from his otherwise worldwide halt of such aid because Egypt did pay him. He will sell out whatever part of the world China wants him to, and he'll do it in exchange for hotel rights or a golf sponsorship. The man is crooked, and petty, and is quite obviously celebrating his reprieve from prison by launching a new bribe-o-rama; one of his administration's first acts has been to deprioritize prosecution of bribed politicians, including the prosecution of New York City mayor Eric Adams.

Putin has spent a good chunk of money on Trump's political career, from 2016 to now, but if Trump is a true, on-the-books Russian asset he is a self-made one. Like Elon Musk, he courts Putin because Putin has enough money and enough murderous power to make it worthwhile. There's no larger reason, no blackmail, no broader plan. Abandoning Ukraine isn't a strategic "Washington" shift, it's a crooked move from a crook looking for favors from world dictators while simultaneously probing Ukraine to see what they, too, might offer in exchange for continued support.

Which is what he was impeached over the first time. And what Republicans protected him from, leading inevitably to him committing worse acts, attempting to overthrow the government, and now bending America into a mere puppet state controlled by himself, a malevolent fellow billionaire, and whichever foreign entities might write him the biggest checks.