Why Was Trump’s Own National Security Adviser So Stumped by Putin’s Hold on Trump?
There’s no mystery about Trump's deference to the Russian leader. Here's an abridged list of potential reasons for it.
Donald Trump’s former national security adviser says he was mystified by Vladimir Putin's hold on his old boss. That's mystifying.
In a new book, retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster relates the mystery he carried with him as he left the administration – one he confided to his wife in early 2018.
“After over a year in this job,” he told her, “I cannot understand [Vladimir] Putin’s hold on Trump.”
It sounds as if McMaster decided to play diplomatically dumb. There’s nothing mysterious about Putin’s hold on Trump at all.
As his careers in business and politics have demonstrated, Trump has no discernible beliefs or scruples. He approaches life as a series of transactions, guided exclusively by the interests of his bank account, his ego, or both.
Trump’s Dealings With Putin’s Russia
Trump has conducted many transactions, over many years, with Putin’s Russia. Let’s review a few of them:
Trump SoHo
In 2006, the former president’s partners in the Trump SoHo hotel and condo project included a former official of the Soviet Union and a Russian who had confessed to felony fraud involving organized crime.
Real Estate
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. described the family business this way at a real estate conference: “In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets…We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
One especially lucrative example came in Florida that year. A Russian oligarch paid Trump $95 million for a Palm Beach mansion – a mansion Trump had bought for $41 million just four years earlier.
“I will demand that he put up the American flag – and the Russian flag can fly right under it,” Trump told CNBC at the time. His former lawyer, Michael Cohen, later wrote in his book that “Trump was convinced the real buyer of that house was Vladimir Putin” since he considered the oligarchs “just fronts for Putin.”
Golf Courses and Miss Universe
When American banks would not supply sufficient capital for Trump golf courses, the former president’s son, Eric, reportedly told a journalist in 2013 that Russian financiers would. (Eric Trump later denied saying that.)
When Donald Trump scheduled his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow that year, he asked on social media: “Will [Putin] become my new best friend?”
2016 Election
Even as he sought the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Trump looked to Russia to make money. He sought to develop real estate in Moscow with help from the same organized-crime-linked felon he partnered with on Trump SoHo.
And then Russian intelligence interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win the presidency.
No one can say whether Russia’s assistance changed the election outcome. But special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that the Trump campaign knew of the assistance, and welcomed it.
What Putin Got
In an adapted book excerpt published by the Wall Street Journal, McMaster documents some of the returns Putin received on his investment.
Propaganda Boost
They started with a propaganda boost; on Fox News about two weeks after his inauguration, Trump dismissed the description of Putin as a killer with a question deriding the US itself: “Our country’s so innocent?”
In 2018, a hitman attempted to assassinate a former Russian intelligence officer with a military-grade nerve agent in England. Even though McMaster called the nerve agent “easily traced to Moscow,” Trump reportedly questioned the conclusion of British intelligence that Moscow ordered it. Later that year, meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Trump embraced the Russian leader’s denial of 2016 election interference over the verdict from US intelligence agencies.
Praise and ‘Congratulations’
The Russian president manipulated his American counterpart by playing to his ego. A few days after the attempted assassination in England, Trump saw a New York Post headline reporting, “Putin heaps praise on Trump.”
Trump tried to send a thank-you note, though McMaster writes that he stopped it. He admires dictators for their absolute power since he has always wanted to wield absolute power himself.
In a comical post-script, Trump called the Russian authoritarian after his “election” to a fourth term. His national security briefing materials beforehand instructed him, “DO NOT CONGRATULATE”; Trump congratulated Putin anyway.
‘All Roads Lead To Putin’
Of course, McMaster didn’t speak out about Trump’s conduct when he held his White House job. Even now, he departs from the harsh criticism leveled by former colleagues by offering praise for Trump’s foreign policy instincts.
But the record of Trump’s anti-American alliance with Putin keeps telling its own story. In just the last few days, he has welcomed the endorsements of Russia-friendly former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.
Current Democrats don’t equivocate. “With him, all roads lead to Putin,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once said. More bluntly, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told the Democratic National Convention last week: “We know Trump would sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets…”
Those assessments pack more political punch when they come from Trump’s fellow Republicans. So far, few beyond the likes of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have played that lonely role. In the campaign’s homestretch, making the reality clear to American voters may require more boldness from former Trump aides who have seen it up close, like H.R. McMaster.
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And of course leaving Syria and getting out of the Iran nuclear deal, leaving the Paris climate accords, threatening to leave NATO, love affair with Kim, and the lack of support for Ukraine all benefit Putin.
It is the so called “ good men “ like Gen McMaster that enabled the rise and the power of trump.
Men whose storied career gave them the patina of wisdom, ethics, and strong morals, as well as deep love of democracy, who in fact, are enamored or afraid of a single man, who place him above the constitution, who remain silent or explain away the failings or even criminality of said man. Becoming public apologists if not not sycophants, they breathe life into his desires, while sucking the life out of our democracy.
McMaster may have a chest full of metals, but within that chest lies a man of moral turpitude, void of the true meaning of valor. While in the clutch of trump and after his firing, he had many moments to protect his country one more time, yet failed. He may never have feared bullets or personal harm while he served bravely, but once in the clutches of a diapered Don, he bowed low and switched his allegiance to a single man.
The danger to America are the many McMasters among us.