Trump's Strange Familiarity with Kremlin Talking Points

That Donald Trump is a traitorous puppet of Vladimir Putin is hardly news. It has already been more than two years since the presidential debate during which Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of being Putin's puppet, to which he infamously responded: "No puppet! No puppet! You're the puppet!" And he's spent the intervening 27 months proving that he is indeed a puppet. The puppet.

As I have observed many, many times: The collusion has always been, and continues to be, right out in the open. It's hardly a mystery.

But over the past few days, Trump's puppetry has taken a curious and troubling turn. I mentioned in yesterday's We Resist thread that Trump had offered a wildly incorrect version of Soviet history during his Wednesday Cabinet meeting. Trump was wrong, like he is about most things — but it was wrong in a very particular way.

In comments, Shaker Aphra_Behn pointed to this piece at Maclean's by Terry Glavin, in which Glavin notes [Content Note: Disablist language] that Trump's "disquisition on the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan" is not only deeply problematic but alarmingly timed:

"Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan," Trump began. "The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt; they went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of these places you're reading about now are no longer part of Russia, because of Afghanistan."

They were right to be there.

You'll want to let that sink in for a moment: On Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2019, Donald Trump endorsed a revisionist lunacy that is currently being championed by a bunch of cranks at the outermost neo-Stalinist fringe of Vladimir Putin's ruling circle of oligarchs. They've already managed to cobble together a resolution in Russia's Potemkin parliament that is to be voted on next month. It's jointly sponsored by lawmakers from Putin's United Russia and the still-existing Communist Party.

As Aphra said: "The timing is interesting, to say the least. We all know that Trump spouts off shit that somebody has been telling him. Who's been giving him the pro-Stalinist version of the Afghanistan invasion just as the Russian parliament is set to debate it?"

She's not the only person wondering. On Twitter, Jamie O'Grady asked: "Where/when/how does Trump access and memorize these random Russian talking points?" He further noted that Rachel Maddow used her show last night to lay out "multiple instances — Poland supposedly invading Belarus, Montenegro a risk to start WW3, justification of Russia's Afghanistan adventure — where Trump has parroted Putin propaganda that doesn't (shouldn't) exist anywhere in Trump's normal info sources."

Here is that segment, the transcript for which will be here as soon as it's made available.

Again, it's not news that Trump is Putin's puppet and has used the United States' foreign policy apparatus to serve Putin's aims in myriad ways, from undermining NATO to creating a power vacuum in Syria to creating instability on the Korean peninsula, etc.

But one question that must be answered urgently is how Trump is getting his orders from the Kremlin. Because it's abundantly clear that he's getting specific talking points accompanied by instructions on when to deploy them.

There is ongoing collusion. It must be investigated; it must be exposed; and it must be stopped.