Putin’s Puppet

You don’t need a smoking gun when the trail is this clear.

Puppet or not, Donald Trump has delivered on nearly every strategic objective Russia could hope for from an American president.

Donald Trump has long appeared to be in the thrall of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In her October 2016 Presidential Campaign debate, Hillary Clinton called Trump a puppet for Putin. It struck a nerve, and an angry Trump responded, “No puppet! You’re the puppet!” Secretary Clinton was referring to multiple reports of Russian money bankrolling Trump’s candidacy and reported comments from Trump’s own sons regarding the prevalence of lots of Russian money invested in Trump businesses.

If you look at the many seriously extra-Constitutional actions Trump has carried out as President, there have been clear benefits to Putin and Russia to the equally clear detriment of the United States. From campaigning to destroy NATO, to threatening close allies and major trading partners with massive on-again off-again tariffs, to selling out Ukraine, to rewarding Russia for providing Iranians targeting data to kill American soldiers in the Gulf, Trump’s goal appears to be to weaken America’s world leadership, power, and prestige.

Ukraine has been bravely fighting to defend democracy against Russia, a brutal dictatorship that America has long considered a dangerous adversary. Yet Trump has rewarded Ukrainian courage by cutting off American aid, repeatedly belittling President Zelenskyy while praising aggressor Putin, and making it increasingly clear that he wants Putin to prevail.

With Trump’s seemingly impulsive start of an unprovoked war in the Middle East, the question is no longer whether Trump does things to weaken and diminish America globally; coincidentally, in lockstep with Putin’s dream of payback for America’s role in the dissolution of the communist Soviet Union.

Reminiscent of Trump’s 2018 Helsinki statement contradicting US intelligence and taking Putin’s word as conclusive that Russia played no role in the 2016 election, when asked about recent reports from Ukrainian and regional intelligence sources of Russian targeting American forces for Iran, Trump’s billionaire international negotiator-at-large, Steve Witkoff told the press in March that it’s not a problem, saying, “The Russians said they have not been sharing. That’s what they said. So, we can take them at their word.” This, despite Putin confirming Russia’s unwavering support of and solidarity with Iran. As if to confirm he is indeed still in Putin’s sway, in the wake of Iran shutting the Strait of Hormuz, Trump lifted sanctions on Russian oil, gifting Putin freedom to sell unlimited amounts of its oil and finance Russian military aggression against Ukraine.

Trump first attracted Moscow’s beneficence when he needed cash bailouts in the 1980s and ‘90s. This financial dependence grew over time, making Trump increasingly susceptible to Russian influence. He was the perfect “Manchurian Candidate” for Putin: an American businessman with political ambitions whom Putin would later help become President in exchange for “favors” to Putin. Trump is well known for being 100% amorally transactional, using whatever ideology, value system, or performative act suits the moment, while actually operating independently of any doctrine, to secure whatever he perceives will net him personal gain.

It is well known that Russian oligarchs laundered money through Trump’s business operations in the days of his multiple bankruptcies in the 1990s, when he could not get any loans from reputable banks. Russian financial “help” expanded considerably during the 2016 Presidential Campaign. The Center for American Progress has documented an expanded pattern of contacts and transfers of money between Russia-linked operatives and members of the 2016 Trump campaign and 2017 transition team, concluding “while an analysis of the publicly known transactions cannot answer all the questions about Trump’s involvement with Russia, they do show a significant nexus between his political campaign and Russian money and suggest a number of important avenues for further oversight and investigation.”

Trump’s 2016 Campaign Manager, Paul Manafort, who was previously employed by Putin’s people to install a pro-Russian puppet as Ukraine’s president in 2010, admitted that he was regularly feeding campaign strategy and polling information to Russian intelligence. Throughout the campaign, Manafort let Russian intelligence know how best to help Trump win, and it appears that Russia indeed jumped into American social media with viral bots and propaganda.

There are credible assertions from American intelligence sources that when Trump was first elected, there was literally partying in the Kremlin, celebrating a victory they believed they had made happen. In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Foreign Minister in what Trump thought was going to be a “secret Oval Office meeting.” Ironically, the Russians released an embarrassing photo to the press, resulting in Mossad having to relocate and provide a new identity for that spy. That in turn prompted the CIA to worry that a longtime American spy in the Kremlin was similarly vulnerable to Trump outing him to Putin. According to CNN and other reporting, the CIA concluded that the risk Trump had revealed or was about to reveal our human asset was so great that they pulled our spy out of Russia in 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency.

The Steele Dossier and Mueller Report both suggest plausible reasons for Trump to act as Putin’s puppet (blackmail, money, and domestic political help). However, the former relied on confidential sources and was publicly squelched by a vigorous disinformation campaign, while the latter was limited in scope by then-Attorney General Barr. Over Trump’s first term in office, there were several meetings and calls with Putin and Russian leaders with apparent coordination and “meeting of the minds.” No memoranda or notes were taken; the most curious meeting being an unusually cordial, even jovial, tete-a-tete in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, closed to media coverage with only a Russian propaganda “readout” afterward.

. Further, Trump’s January 2021 theft of highly classified national security secrets is, in itself, consistent with Trump continuing to act as Putin’s “useful idiot.” It is still unclear exactly why Trump stole that trove of classified material; he may have taken it to show to Putin, to sell to Putin, to sell to other nations, or to hoard it. But take the material he did, and having those documents in his Mar-a-Lago country club was a clear and significant national security problem for the United States. And a clear and significant national security problem for the United States is a clear and significant win for Mr. Putin. It proved to Putin that Trump would violate the strictest US regulations if he felt he could benefit or please another world leader. Even if this was not a task that Putin gave Trump, it was validation that Trump would take a significant risk to please Putin while endangering the national security of his own country. It was also some confirmation that Trump was eager to please Putin, which is not at all a trivial thing for his Russian counterparts to know should they need or want it.

Puppet or No Puppet? You be the judge. What specific actions to weaken America would Putin ask a puppet to pursue? A few very serious “asks”:

- Withdrawing US assistance to Ukraine to facilitate a Russian takeover. Check!
- Disengaging from US alliances to weaken the economic and military strength of the Western democracies. Check!
- Destabilizing and weakening the US economy through on-again, off-again crippling trade tariffs. Check!
- Belittling, attacking, sowing discord in NATO and EU nations to reduce their ability and confidence to counter a Russian expansionist agenda. Check!
- Lifting sanctions on Russian oil to provide more financial and material lifeblood to Russia’s military operations (which are simultaneously providing an active US adversary with targeting data on our troops). Double check!

The real question is, WHY would Trump want to enable Putin’s anti-America agenda? Why would he imperil three-quarters of a century of post-World War II American leadership, forging peace-promoting alliances, creating trade-enhancing partnerships, and conducting humanitarian democratic nation-building, undermining America’s strength and reputation?

His siding with a historically belligerent adversary nation begs the question whether Trump is operating as Putin’s quisling apostate. While there is as yet no “smoking gun” proof that he is, in fact, a Russian asset, Trump has certainly been doing all the things one would expect a well-placed Russian agent to do.

Douglas Clapp, Captain USCG (Ret.) is a member of The Steady State. His career service in Maritime Safety & Security culminated as Deputy Director of the Coast Guard’s Training & Education System, Reserve Component, and Leadership/Diversity functions. In his post-military career, he served as Senior Analyst for the Operations Directorate, USNORTHCOM as a missions expert in Defense of the Homeland and Defense Support of Civil Authorities for emergencies and disasters.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rFounded ule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.