The Man Whispering in Trump’s Ear

This talk of annexing Canada didn’t come from nowhere.

Fearless reporting, a behind-the-curtains look at how journalism is made — and an unabashed point of view. Welcome to Chills.

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Trump’s Jan 6. post on Truth Social is delusional.

It’s easy to roll your eyes at Donald Trump. We know he speaks without a filter, and often seemingly without a thought in his head. During his last presidency, much of his jabber was never realized for a few reasons, one of which is that Trump is a man who rarely has more than “concepts of a plan”; another is that he surrounds himself with an ever-evolving cast of sycophants who are not necessarily experts in anything, let alone governing. Last time around, the Democrats still had some power in government, providing a modicum of protection against the extreme right. This time, however, there is little to stop Trump from enacting his xenophobic — and suddenly imperialist — agenda.

Trump campaigned, as usual, on fear. He preyed on Americans’ worst instincts, telling them that migrants are dangerous and eating up their jobs, when in reality migrants come to this country to escape grinding poverty or war, and take the jobs few Americans are willing to do.

But the incoming president’s agenda has been evolving rapidly and now involves making threats of a kind this country hasn’t seen since more than a century ago. Annex Canada? Invade Panama? Greenland? Trump said this week that he would not rule out using military force against the latter two, prompting the leaders of France and Germany to remind him that a NATO country does not invade another NATO country (Denmark).

All this talk feels like it came a little out of nowhere, no? As I thought about it, I quickly realized the most likely answer. As someone who reports on Ukraine, I imagine that Trump can only have been inspired to start spouting about neocolonialism by one person: Russian President Vladimir Putin, a brutal dictator and longstanding enemy of the United States who Trump has professed to admire.

“Donald Trump, unfortunately, models himself after Vladimir Putin,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in 2020 on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

In February 2022, Trump called Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine “genius” and “savvy.”

“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” Trump said in a radio interview with “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.”

Here’s a book review I wrote for The Washington Monthly that lays out the myth Putin sows that Ukraine has always rightfully belonged to Russia.

He continued the next day: “They say, ‘Trump said Putin’s smart.’ I mean, he’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions,” he said at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, according to a recording of the event. “I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.”

You know where else is a vast location, a great piece of land? Canada. Or Greenland. A few days ago on Truth Social, Trump wrote that he’s “hearing” that the people of Greenland — all 57,000 of them — are “MAGA.”

And the Trump-Putin bootlicking goes both ways. After last year’s assassination attempt on Trump’s life, Putin said: “He turned out to be a courageous man. He showed himself, in my opinion, in a very correct way: courageous, manly.” Manly. Could there be a higher compliment for a simp like Trump? And from the mouth of Russia’s strongman, it carries even more weight in Trump’s insecure eyes.

In a piece for The Washington Monthly, I wrote about a September 2022 rally Putin held to celebrate his illegal annexation of Ukraine. It was a spectacle much like Trump’s rallies, replete with flags and huge TV screens, the swirling spires of Saint Basil's Cathedral in the background.

Putin’s rhetoric at that September annexation ceremony referred again and again to the West as plunderers. Putin’s lies have convinced many Russians that the invasion is right and just, that he is “liberating” Ukrainians from the West and its perverts and satanists. And as he tends to do from deep down in his rabbit hole, Putin tried at one remarkable moment in his speech to spin his enemies as the real propagandists…

Sound familiar? Putin’s fight against his enemies is partially a Russian, even Soviet, version of our culture wars, in which right-wingers twist words while trying to prevent what they see as “perverse” behavior, whether it is gender-affirming surgery or a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body. Putin continued, saying of his enemies:

“They drowned the truth in an ocean of myths, illusions and fakes, using extremely aggressive propaganda, lying recklessly, like Goebbels. The more incredible the lie, the faster they will believe in it — that’s how they act, according to this principle.”

It’s bizarre, isn’t it, how the men who use the heaviest propaganda toward a goal of restricting the most basic human rights are the ones who call the other side names like “socialists” and “Nazis”? Trump has outright tried to brand politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders “a socialist-slash-communist” and has decried the scourge of communism. (Weird, no? Considering how much Trump admires Putin, who rules a country that some argue is still communist, although conversely, it’s seemingly more of a kleptocracy than anything.) And Putin has repeatedly justified his invasion of Ukraine by saying that he is ridding the country of “Nazis.” (Weird, no? Considering that Ukraine has a Jewish president.) Nobody said these men have consistent internal politics.

Here’s an interesting read on U.S. conservatives’ long love affair with dictators.

Both Trump and Putin are calling on the past glory of their nations with their verbal gambits. Trump is recalling American dominance in the time of the “Red Scare” while Putin is evoking Russia’s ultimate triumph over the Nazis in WWII, arguably its shining moment in history.

Ultimately, Trump’s talk of potentially forcefully seizing the Panama Canal or Greenland and annexing Canada would sound like nonsense except for the fact that Trump World takes its leader’s utterances as gospel, and have a soon-to-be united government with which to rule.

We can hope that ultimately, Trump’s most insane ramblings will be stopped by the Constitution, the Supreme Court or, least likely but still possibly, Congress. It may turn out, though, that through Trump’s own doing his cries of American carnage may eventually come to fruition.

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