Weaponized Fluffery

 

The murder of Charlie Kirk makes me feel ill. So does Elon Musk’s response to it. Beyond that, nothing useful can be said, so we move on. 

Trump’s recent made-for-MAGA “Cabinet Meeting” was nothing about policy and everything about serial assculation, a showcase of Trump’s bottomless need for fawning sycophancy. If MAGAs don’t see it for what it is, namely a gaping vulnerability in an American “president,” other world leaders do.

Like many clear-eyed observers of Trump’s obsequious deference to Vladimir Putin, I once assumed there must be blackmail behind it. The rumored “pee tape,” for example, or recordings of likely “ungentlemanly” behavior while he was in Russia, tending to his Miss America ladies. There were hidden recording devices in my room in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow while on tour in college, so I’m certain there are recordings of Trump when he was there, too, whatever the content. I was talking with a young artist, wrongly unworried about speaking in my room, who spoke longingly of America, where artists are free to create. Immediately after accompanying us to the train station, he was arrested.

The recent showcase in Beijing, featuring Putin, Modi, Kim, and representatives of many other countries, including some of our pre-Trump allies, all aligning with China’s Xi, made me realize Putin didn’t need blackmail to get what he wanted from Trump. For Putin, a former KGB operative trained to take the measure of people, sizing up Trump was easy as pierogi. He saw a man so in need of flattery, so prone to bragging undeservedly and lying unreservedly, that manipulating him must have been lesson one of KGB Spying 101. So, seizing the opportunity fate handed him, using fake media and other methods, he helped to get him elected.

Unlike Trump, whose thought timeline measures in seconds and who suffers from premature emanation, our adversaries think long-term. Grooming Trump, for example, for years. It’s taken decades for China to achieve world economic and scientific dominance. By happy coincidence, Trump’s self-pleasuring tariffs sealed it, convincing the world to abandon America for more reliable trading partners.

There’s no strategy to Trump’s spur-of-the-mouth declarations. His destructive tariffs were meant to bully other countries into respecting him, consequences to our country be damned. The result, predicted by politicians and economists of both parties, is that our economy is shrinking like his approval ratings while prices rise like global temperatures. The latest jobs report showed net job loss in every sector except healthcare. Because he has the same understanding of economics that he has of Constitutional law, he promised supercharged job growth at home, spurred b y his ill-conceived, ego-driven tariffs. Instead, manufacturing jobs have declined for six straight months. We should be grateful for growth in healthcare jobs, though. RFK Jr’s attacks on science-based medical institutions mean we’ll need every one of them.

If Putin didn’t foresee that Trump would weaken America by imposing tariffs (or maybe he did), he knew it’d happen some way. He probably saw that, in Trump’s need for adulation, he’d seek democracy-ending authoritarian power at home, no matter how destructive. We “Never Trumpers” saw it and predicted it. So must have Putin. It wasn’t subtle.

The content of Trump’s private meetings with him remains unknown. But it’s a solid bet that bolshoi stroking of Donald’s ego was included, flattering him into wanting more. And he knew how to get it: by doing whatever was asked of him. The firing, by unqualified DNI Tulsi Gabbard, of 37 CIA Russia experts immediately after the Trump/Putin/Alaska fiasco didn’t go unnoticed by Putin’s state media, who gloated that Trump and Gabbard did exactly what Putin wanted. More recently, Trump announced his intent to end financial support for Europe’s security initiatives, including border fortifications intended to discourage Russian invasion from the East.

The pattern is clear. In the Kremlin, they must be doing high pyahts. Unlike so many other players, Putin didn’t need to buy Trump’s bitcoins or stay in his hotels. Just well-placed but insincere, approbation turned the trick.

But, some might say, Trump seems finally to be getting tougher on Putin. Doesn’t matter. Thanks to Trump, Vlad has what he wants from the countries he needs.

Putin’s kind of weaponized flattery trickles down. Trump uses it on his besotted followers. Certain of their credulity, he’s posting signs at infrastructure projects under construction because of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, against which Trump bleated vociferously. “President Donald J. Trump,” the signs lie, shamelessly, “Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure.” It’s disgusting.

MAGAs, whose news sources are Trump and his fawning media, will accept it as God’s truth. As they will his “hearing it now for the first time” lie regarding that botched Seal Team Six operation in North Korea. Right. Incursions into enemy countries are always undertaken without sign-off by the president. MAGAs will believe that, too, just like they’ll believe that raiding a Hyundai plant in Tennessee is consistent with encouraging foreign investment.

It’s embarrassing. And frightening. The putative “Leader of the Free World” is an easily manipulatable liar. Our global foes exploit it. Millions of Americans continue to believe him, unwittingly validating the long game of those foes.