I said this before, but I'll say it again. When Trump hosted Russian diplomats/spies at the White House, when he confiscated his translators notes after a meeting with Putin, when he had another meeting with Putin with no US translators present, when he left the Kurds high and dry, the press would ask, "why would Trump do this?"

Every time Trump did something inexplicable, there were always a range of explanations. However, there was one that explained them all.

There is a trail of circumstantial evidence he has been a Russian asset since 1986 at least. I suggest you read American Kompromat by Craig Unger.

You have to understand both conservatives and narcissists.

Conservative morality isn't based in utilitarian ethics; it's nothing to do with greater good or least harm. It's about pecking order: those at the top are protected by rules and not bound by them, while those beneath them are bound by rules but not protected by them.

And the important thing to realise is this isn't a cynical observation of a regrettable truth for them, it's aspirational and idealistic. That's how they think it ought to work, and they admire it when they see it.

For them, the world is full of winners and losers. Not only is it good and right and moral for a person in power to abuse that power and violate laws and customs, doing so makes them a winner who deserves to get away with it. To attempt to hold a winner accountable is an affront to the natural order, blasphemy, sacrilege, dragging god from his throne.

And similarly, it's good and right and moral for losers to be punished for violating rules, and to submit to abuse and oppression. All the rules and double standards around gender roles, racial roles, etc are not hypocrisy to them, they're the whole point. High-status people in society (eg rich cishet white men, or police or military officers etc) are celebrated for getting away with things that others are punished for, and demonstrating both sides of the dichotomy is actively desired.

If a cop beats the shit out of a black kid and is rewarded rather than punished, that's justice on both sides for them. The authority figure is allowed to revel in their license to abuse, as is their due, and the black kid is punished with humiliation and further trauma for daring to complain. If a woman is punished for promiscuity while a man is rewarded for having sex with her, ditto.

That's why LGBTQ rights are such a threat to them - making gender identity anything but hardcoded messes with all their hierarchies, as does any change to man=fucker=winner, woman=fuckee=loser, and of course queer=victim=super-loser. It's their whole social order turned on its head and dumped out on the floor.

So amidst all this, dictators are the the ultimate celebrities to them: they don't just get away with murder, they get away with genocide, and wholesale flouting of both national and international law. They are rockstar-gods, accountable to none, the highest status imaginable. They will fawn and grovel and dream of being that great.

(That's why they're all so fucking pro-israel, and why pointing out their genocide and torture of the Palestinians is so completely infeffective - all it's doing in their view is establishing Israel's credentials as untouchable winners.)

On top of that, DJT is a malignant narcissist - as conservative leaders tend to be, since conservative voters admire those personality traits like dictators in miniature.

And narcissists are pathetically dependent on praise from the people above them - it's the strongest hit of self-esteem they can get to fill the eternal sucking void in their souls for a tiny instant, even better than victimising someone themselves and mocking them for it.

So when Putin and the Saudis and the russian mob and every other fucker tossed him some sad little scrap of status, he whined and pissed on the floor like a submissive little lapdog, desperate for more. He got suckered into shady deals that left him owned body and soul, he got suckered into kompromat of all kinds leaving him even more vulnerable to external leverage, and all of this left him grateful for being able to attract the attention of vicious bastards, because it made him feel important and special.

People throw rumors around that Putin could have material for blackmail on him RE Golden Shower tapes and business dealings with Russian Oligarchs.

Another, simpler theory is that since he also throws compliments toward other Dictators as well as Putin is that he just admires their ability to do what they want.

Lending and credit from western banks dried up for Trump, but he continued to find willing lenders overseas. It’s likely that he owes hundreds of millions of dollars to Russian oligarchs and as a result is beholden to Putin because he can’t afford for those loans to be called.

https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-trump-golf-courses-russia-funding-2017-5?op=1

I read a good breakdown about this earlier in the week, basically saying that Trump thinks all he needs is to be buddy-buddy with dictators and he can use that to control them. He also honestly believe he IS buddies with these people and that they will do anything he asks, ignoring the fact that the rest of the world sees him as a joke that makes America weak. So while Trump continues to believe he is popular everywhere, the reality is that dictators want him as President because he is easily manipulated.

Broadly, they share the same goals, as in the total destruction of Western Democratic society.

Or rather, this is Putins goal, and has been for several decades. Trump himself has no real goals other than 'being' in power, and is in this sense a limited kind of cypher (although I argue he is a very poor/ extremely predictable cypher, it just occurs along different axis than policy). If Putin provides a pathway to power for Trump, then they are allies. If Putin was in anyway a barrier to power for Trump, he would drop him.

There is of course, very reasonably worthy speculation on the exact nature of the covert aspects of the Trump/ Putin relationship. MSNBC jerked off their viewership for almost 3 years in this regard and came up with basically nada-enchilada. Nothing truly came of any of the 'leaks' or otherwise. That being said, the Democrats in that time period worked their asses off to make sure that any investigation into foreign influence over the Trump campaign was fundamentally hampered from the beginning. It seemed like the Democrats were interested in making a show of it, but in proper Democratic fashion, refused to fully commit to something meaningful, and it all ended up being a big nothing burger. We do know that the kremlin worked their tails off to support the Trump campaign in 2015/ 16. We know that the specific leaks they made of the DNC effectively cheating to ensure Bernie didn't win came from Russian sources. We also know that the DNC did not deny any of the fuckery they were conducting, so what was leaked likley happened. However, the Democratic investigation into any kind of formal relationship (which was the investigatory equivalent to building a lego set wearing oven mitts), ended up being mostly a show. That all being said, if we consider the overt aspects of how Trump supports Putin, and if we map Trumps typical actions and behavior to the situation, its almost assured that there is a there there, even if the Democrats worked their asses off to ensure we would fail to find it. Its very clear that the kremlin and Putin heavily favored Trump in the very very early period of his time as a candidate in 2015. The did engage in an influence campaign that effectively borne the modern white nationalist movement. Many of us watched this happen via r/TheDonald. These efforts lead directly to things like truth.social, the current state of the Republican party, the collapse of the BLM movement in late 2020, however, to the best of my knowledge, its all vectors pointing in basically the same direction. Few if any direct links are visible. If they exist, they've been well hidden or intentionally ignored.

So this brings up the overt aspects of the Trump/ Putin relationship. Trump has repeatedly shown unwavering support for the individual Putin, as this seemed to have been the approach he used to almost all of his foreign policy. Its all about relationships flowing through 'him'. Trump isn't making a relationship for the US and Russia by working with Putin, its a personal relationship Trump shares with Putin, and it just so happens that the US and Russia get to ride in the back seats. You can see this same pattern repeated through almost all of Putins relationships, the sets of world leaders I would say he was on 'good' relationship terms with were Putin, Kim Jon-Un, Bolsonaro, and the Saudis. Trump is very transactional in all his relationships; because in his approach all statecraft has to 'flow' through him, the result is that for these groups to have a relationship with the US (ie, Trump), they would need to enrich Trump in some way. See billion dollar loans etc to the Trump family, there is much one this. This can tie back into the covert aspects of how Trump does business. We shouldn't expect him to do anything for anyone where he isn't personally being enriched. Its very clearly this is the only way he does business.

As much as Trump is a cypher around policy, he isn't so much of a cypher on business and statecraft. Its very clear through his behavior that Trump will adopt whatever policies lead to him being personally enriched, and will only adopt those policies in-which he is personally enriched. Trump is highly predictable in this regard; he has almost no subtly here. Because of this its reasonable to assume he is or has been personally enriched in some manner by Putin/ Russian oligarchs. He just doesn't do relationships otherwise, and is likely to take a counter position if he isn't being enriched. He's incredibly consistent in his behavior in this regard.

I think the biggest question in the room that remains un-answered for me is:

"Is and has Trump been acting as a foreign agent for Russia (likely starting well before 2015), and if so why?"

Its a question worth bringing up, simply because Trump is so markedly consistent in the transactional nature of all of his relationships, and yet for this one particular Trump/ Putin thing, he actions practically and apparently orthogonal to all of ways he engages otherwise. He's extremely consistent in his behavior, predictable to a laughable fault. So why this one? Why bend over for Putin?

I think if Trump saw Putin as a pathway to power, this would all make more sense, but also, Putin failed to get Trump into power in 2020, the way he was able to use social and mainstream media in 2016. Yet Putin still seems to hold the reigns. Its definitely worth speculating on.

He's wanted a Trump hotel in Moscow for decades now.

Evidence that Donald Trump supports Putin more or less then any other president or public figure?