Will Trump give Putin credit for his victory?

On By Littum

Just a week has passed since Donald Trump’s election triumph, and already Russian President Vladimir Putin – one of the strong leaders Trump admires the most – is messing with his head.

First, Putin waited two days before congratulating Trump on his victory. One can imagine Trump fielding phone calls from kowtowing leaders around the world — Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas, the NATO chief, European heads of state — all the while marveling at the man he has admired public and private in the last eight years: When does Vladimir call?

So in response to Trump’s claim that during their phone call he asked – on some accounts, warned– Putin for not escalating the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin spokesman declined that the two had even spoken on the phone. (Putin issued his belated congratulations at a news conference.)

I do not know who is telling the truth, a practice for which neither man has an excellent reputation. But whatever, in the next few weeks, when Putin orders 50,000 fresh recruits (including 10,000 imported North Korean troops) to go on the next spree — expelling Ukrainian soldiers from the thin sliver of Russian territory they hold and then taking back land across the border in Donbas province — he can tell a whining Trump that he do not remember any such conversation. If Trump believes that Putin will actually refrain from escalating attacks on Ukraine as a friendly favor…well, maybe our once and future president will learn a lesson about the limits of personal relationships in the face of perceived national interests early in his second period.

The latest twist in this saga came on Monday, when Russia’s intelligence chief, Nikolai Patrushevmade the following comment in an interview with the Moscow newspaper Kommersant:

The election campaign is over. To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.

This is an amazing bit of psychological warfare! The Russians are basically saying to Trump: We put you in office. Now it’s time for you to pay us back.

This made Trump wonder: WTF?

It is well established that towards the end of this year’s presidential campaign, Russians created and propagated fake videos designed to sway voters away from Vice President Kamala Harris. One such video purported to show illegal Haitian immigrants voting. (The FBI, the director of national intelligence and the top cybersecurity agency issued a rare joint statement about this claim and warned that these videos were fake and of Russian origin.) Russians also chimed in bomb scares to polling places in black neighborhoods that tend to favor Democratic candidates.

However, there is no evidence – and no one has alleged – that Trump or his campaign staff colluded in or knew anything about these videos or the bomb threats. If Trump had some engagement or if Russia possesses some other kind of kompromat (compromising material) about Trump, Patrushev’s message constitutes an extraordinarily bold threat of blackmail, delivered publicly, against a newly elected US president.

If Trump wasn’t involved in this escapade, Patrushev’s play shows—some would say, confirms– that Russia’s main goal in all these disinformation projects is to sow chaos, create distrust and weaken the sinews of democracy in Western countries, especially in the United States, regardless of who is the president.

What Trump is doing about this campaign—whether he is fully aware of its scope and depth—is yet to be seen. His foreign policy, which he has clearly expressed many times, is angled towards a realignment with Putin’s Russia. At an initial news conference in Helsinki, he said he believed Putin over his own intelligence on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election. More generally, Trump loathes multinational alliances, especially NATO. He considers US military aid to Ukraine a waste of money; he doesn’t much like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, denouncing him as a “seller“, and he no doubt remains bitter about the role their “beautiful phone call” played in his first impeachment. (This was the call in which Trump tried to delay the delivery of US anti-tank missiles until Zelensky agreed to dig up dirt up on Hunter Biden.)

The entire MAGA wing of the Republican Party – meaning the Republican Party – supports Trump’s desire to renew good relations with Russia, all the better to go after America’s real adversary, Xi Jinping’s China. The first few of Trump’s Cabinet nominees—Rep. Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, Sen. Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Rep. Elise Stefanik – everyone shares this perspective. Shortly after his victory, Trump drew attention tweeting that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, both of whom had lobbied for a top post, would have no place in his administration. Haley had committed the unforgivable sin of running against Trump in the primaries, but beyond that, both she and Pompeo supported—and still support—increasing military aid to Ukraine. So they were out.

One can only wonder what Trump will do – whether he will change his mind, whether he is capable of changing his mind – when he realizes if he realizes that Putin is not his friend. Trump certainly shouldn’t act like he does is.