There’s a very simple explanation for what happened in Alaska today.
People with Alzheimer’s have good days and bad days; today was not a good one in Anchorage. He couldn’t remember much of what had been said in the ‘summit’ and didn’t want to admit it in front of a big audience. He was afraid of getting caught being stupid. He’s always afraid of that.
Today was a day where he was totally at sea and couldn’t cognitively encompass the situation he was in. The factors & implications escaped him. His situational awareness started out with waiting for someone he wanted to impress, on a deeply symbolic red carpet.
In front of the whole world.
He recognized that it was IMPORTANT; he apparently couldn’t remember all the reasons why, but Putin was there and didn’t look angry, he looked happy to see him. He appeared nice, welcoming. That felt good. And safe. He wanted to protect those feelings.
So he wanted very much to keep things within that frame, maybe because things with his father could sometimes be good, then get twisted and turn bad for reasons that he often didn’t understand, so there was anxiety, and incentive to appease Putin and keep him happy.
The situation was way too big for him to keep track of today, way too many things moving outside of his field of vision, so he focused down & tried to say positive things that would get him through the situation without being caught. And still cover all the bases that he could remember.
And circle back for. As many times as they occurred to him. Just to make sure he hadn’t missed an important one.
His father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and lived with it for decades. Some part of him remembers that process, remembers watching it progress, how people talked about Fred losing it. Remembers how people worked around Fred’s increasing infirmities and took advantage of him.
He’s very afraid of that happening to him. He’s afraid of people noticing he’s not keeping up, of taking advantage of him in the same ways he undoubtedly took advantage of his father.
The way he takes advantage of so many others.
There are a lot of people who don’t like him. Who are mad at him, and would use against him any opening that he leaves.
People with Alzheimer’s often have enough awareness to recognize they’re missing things, slipping, losing their place. It makes them feel vulnerable. It leads them to very much want to hide that vulnerability from everyone, deny that there’s any kind of problem for as long as possible before they finally lose control of their lives.
One of the MSNBC hosts commented -more than once - that Putin appeared unusually uninterested in openly humiliating Trump today.
That’s simple, too. It takes all the fun out of humiliating someone when they can’t recognize or remember that you’re doing it.
He was no longer a challenge. Putin had objectives to achieve, but he no longer had the added enjoyment of seeing his victim squirm and understand that he was losing.
His generals & oligarchs all know they’re losing as Putin takes everything away from them, threatens their families and causes their deaths. They know who has the ultimate power over them. Trump couldn’t recognize and appreciate Putin’s finesse & mastery of manipulation. Putin’s premier audience wasn’t home & awake.
So Putin went through the motions, took three hours instead of a dozen, packed it in & flew home with his objectives in his pocket.
He’d been invited to the United States in front of the whole world. He’d seen the [technically] most powerful human on the planet waiting for him, wiggling like a puppy ecstatic to see its master. He got to ride in the Beast, feel immensely superior and know that he was going to walk away with virtually everything he could have expected.
At a time when things really weren’t going well at home.
He knew he couldn’t overcome the combined opposition of Ukraine and the EU as far as ownership of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, but he put off new sanctions and any serious talk of a ceasefire. No mention of his ongoing war crimes and daily attacks on civilians.
It was a very good day for Putin.
Addendum
A recent development that has puzzled and genuinely surprised me is that Trump has suddenly showed evidence of being be bothered by death, IN THE ABSTRACT.
It’s well known that he believes that soldiers dying for their country are ‘Suckers and losers’. He dismissed one soldier’s death with ’He knew what he signed up for’. This is almost certainly derived directly from his father's attitudes.
He’s never shown or expressed any sort of sympathy for victims of natural disasters or other mass casualty events. He has shown a horror of disfigurement and assiduously avoids it if possible, but never any empathy or sympathy.
But he’s recently volunteered- several times- concerns about, ‘all the dying’ related to the Ukraine war. And repeatedly stated that, ‘The dying has to stop’, with what appears to be genuine, if faint, distress. This is distinctly out of character.
I’m not sure what to make of this. A number of people seem to have taken it as a sign of incipient humanity developing, and been encouraged by it. And this has been the basis for the one place he’s been willing to apply leverage and threaten sanctions.
I can understand this hopeful response by onlookers, wanting to see him finally come around to a more human reaction to the suffering of others, but it doesn’t comport with my experiences of people like Trump.
I have no evidentiary basis for this, but my instinct, just a gut reaction from watching him all these years- and having dealt with others like him- is that it may be the tiniest vestige of the original, undamaged personality. A faint green shoot that’s somehow managed to sprout in some hidden grotto and avoided all the triggers and toxins strewn throughout the rest of his existence.
But since he has shown repeated irritation regarding the ongoing slaughter, and willingness to exert himself to ‘stop the dying’, it may be possible to encourage those impulses, if we can avoid triggering his other defenses.
For instance, he’s not a huge fan of generals, his relationship with the ones he’s interacted with have often been adversarial. That may be an avenue to focus his impulses to punish ‘bad’ people, and stop the slaughter.
The Russian military is particularly brutal organization, its generals are a product both of that and of the rampant corruption seething through many Russian organizations.
He can understand this mafia type of power structure. If it’s pointed out that many Russian generals and other officers are causing so much senseless death and horrific disfigurement at least partly for their own glory and profit, that may be the way in.
Separate the Russian generals from Putin, target the military for pressure, and we may find a workable wedge for sanctions and punishment for ‘...all the dying’, and disfigurement.
Putin is much too deep and sensitive a trigger for Trump. There’s absolutely no way around that. Those daddy issues are the beating core of his pathology, any approach that may make Putin turn on him, like his father often did, will immediately throw him into ‘appease and defend daddy’ mode.
As we’ve seen. He comes into Putin’s presence and he’s a puppy looking for praise.
I strongly believe that this was a significant factor in Putin wanting to come to Alaska. So he could lean on and reinforce that trigger in person. To bring Trump to heel.
