All it took was one Internet Boiler Room and one compromised candidate in his pocket. A few multimillion dollar loans of dirty Russian money that a nearly bankrupt business failure like Trump couldn’t refuse, and the fix was in (Tax returns? Hahahaha, yeah, sure). Even a KGB spook as cynical as Vladimir Putin must have been astonished at the ease with which his mortal enemy, the United States of America, collapsed like a house of cards. Dupe a few million fools in the U.S. with some Facebook propaganda (thanks so much Mark!), sneak in your bought and paid for stooge, and Presto! Putin has, for all intents and purposes, destroyed the Western Alliance.
“Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!” the president tweeted.
He followed up by tweeting: “PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, ”US Tariffs were kind of insulting“ and he ”will not be pushed around.“ Very dishonest & weak.
Calling the Prime Minister of our second largest trading partner a liar, “dishonest” and “weak” on the heels of dissing the entire G-7 summit may go over well with those ignorant, racist crackers who’ve never ventured beyond the Walmart or the Applebee’s in their hometowns and regard “Furrners” as something Fox News has taught them to make fun of, but in an interdependent “global” economy, it is about as stupid and self-destructive a move as can be imagined, particularly when the eyes of what used to be our traditional economic and military allies are already looking at us askance with a mixture of contempt and trepidation.
Putin is loving this, and with good reason. His useful idiot is paying dividends he could scarcely have imagined when he dispatched his alluring Russian lawyer to chat with the emissaries of the Trump campaign and dangled the prospect of pilfered Hillary Clinton emails in front of their eager eyes. (Note to self, Vlad—after the Ecuadorians finally get tired of Assange, remember to set him up in a nice dacha near Sochi).
What makes this doubly hilarious for Vladimir is that it wasn’t like he was hiding his intentions or anything. This was all laid out in the Western Press, but nobody paid any attention.
As Europe’s political stability, social cohesion, economic prosperity and security are more threatened today than at any point since the Cold War, Russia is destabilizing the Continent on every front. Indigenous factors—whether long-extant nationalism, design flaws in the Eurozone lack of a common foreign policy, or incapability at assimilating immigrants – certainly lie at the root of these crises. But all are exploited by Moscow and exacerbated by its malign influence. Fomenting European disintegration from within, Russia also threatens Europe from without through its massive military buildup, frequent intimidation of NATO members and efforts to overturn the continent’s security architecture by weakening the transatlantic link with America.
Now Trump has turned the U.S. into a veritable pariah, and the other NATO countries are signalling they will be going it alone. But they’ll be picked off, and turned against one another, one by one. Damned if Brexit didn’t turn out to be one hell of a trial run, huh?
Vlad’s got the system figured out at this point. Just stoke the hate and racism, and they’ll destroy themselves, eventually.