Reporters and pundits covering the presidential campaign of Donald Trump have
been torn between two conflicting narratives: The first is that Trump is a reckless
amateur and, as president with his finger on the nuclear button, he would bring
the world to the brink of catastrophe. The second is that Trump is a cat’s paw
for Russian President Vladimir Putin and, as president, he would, advertently
or inadvertently, work to implement Moscow’s agenda for world domination.
The first narrative is a familiar one. Past Republican presidential candidates – Barry
Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan – have all had to fight off accusations
that, if elected, they would waste no time before launching World War III. The
second narrative however is somewhat unusual. It is not often that Republicans
are accused of acting as witting or unwitting tools of the Kremlin – at least
not by so-called liberals.
For it is liberal media outlets that are the most enthusiastic purveyors of
this tale of Putin, the manipulative mastermind, and Trump, his would-be hand
puppet. Most of these stories depict Trump as a buffoonish narcissist, easily
susceptible to the empty flattery doled out by a predatory Putin. In a story
titled “Putin’s
Puppet,” Franklin Foer in Slate claimed that Putin “has a plan
for destroying the West – and that plan looks a lot like Donald Trump.”
Foer set the Red-baiting tone by announcing that Trump’s campaign is “the moral
equivalent of Henry Wallace’s communist-infiltrated
campaign for president in 1948….A foreign power that wishes ill upon the United
States has attached itself to a major presidential campaign.” Trump’s ambition
doesn’t go beyond fulfillment of a “longtime dream of planting his name in the
Moscow skyline.” Putin’s dream is far more sinister:
If Putin wanted to concoct the ideal candidate to serve his purposes, his laboratory
creation would look like Donald Trump. The Republican nominee wants to shatter
our military alliances in Europe; he cheers the destruction of the European
Union; he favors ratcheting down tensions with Russia over Ukraine and Syria,
both as a matter of foreign policy and in service of his own pecuniary interests.
A Trump presidency would weaken Putin’s greatest geo-strategic competitor. By
stoking racial hatred, Trump will shred the fabric of American society.
“Trump is Vladimir Putin’s stooge,” Jonathan Chait claimed in New
York in a story headlined “Why Is Donald Trump a Patsy for Vladimir Putin?
The New
York Review of Books also chimed in: Under a Trump presidency, “American
policy to [sic] Europe will be guided by Russian interests,” wrote its resident
“Russia expert” Timothy Snyder. Until “the rise of Trump the idea of an American
who would volunteer to be a Kremlin…