We pick up on today’s BradCast with something that came up at the very end of yesterday’s program. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
After I raised the question we’ve been discussing of late, regarding why Donald Trump is seemingly dismantling the U.S. Government from top to bottom, despite the unpopularity of the bulk of his actions, our friend ‘Driftglass’, one of my guests yesterday, suggested that everything Trump was doing was clearly very popular with Russia and its strongman President Vladimir Putin.
Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley came at the same the point during a confirmation hearing this week for two Trump nominees in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Is President Trump a Russian asset?,” the Oregon Senator asked Deputy Sec. of State nominee Christopher Landau directly, before detailing one thing after another that Trump has done, particularly regarding Ukraine, that would seem to directly benefit Putin.
“What else could a Russian asset actually possibly do that Trump hasn’t yet done?,” he asked both Landau and Matthew Whitaker, Trump’s nominee to be Ambassador to NATO. Tune in for Merkley’s full line of questioning and the two nominees’ embarrassingly evasive answers.
Relatedly, and amusingly, Elon Musk‘s AI chatbot called Grok, was asked a similar question this week. The query asked Grok to “use all publicly available information from 1980” through the present to determine: “What is the likelihood from 1-100 that Trump is a Putin compromised asset”?
We share part of the detailed answer, as Musk’s AI explains why it estimates “a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties.”
Well, that’s probably embarrassing for Musk’s co-President.
As to Merkley’s question about what else a Russian asset could “actually possibly do that Trump hasn’t yet done,” while Trump’s nominees tried to change the subject rather than answer that question, Reuters offers an exclusive today that offers such an answer. The outlet is reporting that Trump is readying plans to revoke legal status for some 240,000 refugees who fled to the U.S. from Ukraine after Russia’s invasion of their country. They also cite reporting from CBS News last week that Trump is planning to revoke legal immigrant status for as many as 1.8 million migrants here legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and, perhaps most alarmingly, Afghanistan.
Reuters details the case of a former Afghan intelligence officer who served as a CIA asset identifying “High Value Targets” for the U.S. during our long war there. He was granted a two-year parole by the U.S. in January of 2024, on the very strong recommendation of his CIA handler after the Taliban retook Afghanistan. The man, with no criminal record, identified as Rafi, was recently detained by ICE when he showed up for a regular check-in, in advance of an asylum hearing scheduled for next month. When Reuters inquired with ICE as to why they were keeping Rafi in detention, they were told that immigration policies for Afghan refugees who aided Americans were “ended on January 20, 2025,” the day Trump was sworn in to office.
If it’s not clear by now that Republicans are lying when they claim to support “legal” immigration, they’re just against people coming here “illegally”, then the stunning story of what the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) tweeted last night about Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) — a 40-year American citizen who came to the U.S. lawfully as a child 60 years ago, and delivered the Spanish-language rebuttal to Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night — may be an eye-opener for you.
Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, rebutting a litany of environmental and energy related lies that Trump unleashed during his Congressional address, and much more…
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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“why Donald Trump is seemingly dismantling the U.S. Government from top to bottom, despite the unpopularity of the bulk of his actions, our friend ‘Driftglass’, one of my guests yesterday, suggested that everything Trump was doing was clearly very popular with Russia and its strongman President Vladimir Putin.”
They are planning to open a nothing burger chain in Florida to run McDonalds out of bizness …
I don’t know how much the Russian people themselves have bought into the war.
There were numerous protestors early on, and they were dealt with harshly, so I would imagine folks keep their objections behind closed doors nowadays.
I would guess it is nowhere near a Majority that wholeheartedly support the war. I don’t really know for sure, so I could be wrong.
But, I see this as mainly Putin’s war.
I know probably many Russians felt uncomfortable with NATO, and the many military bases the US has built around that country in recent decades.
But the war has taken a toll on the Russian people, with no real reward.
Plus, Putin’s invasion has only strengthened the case for NATO.
I realize there are always some “super-patriot”/”My country right or wrong” types.
But I’d be surprised if anything close to a majority of Russians truly supported the invasion and war.
Am I off here?
DonL @2 said:
“I know probably many Russians felt uncomfortable with NATO, and the many military bases the US has built around that country in recent decades.”
Which bases?
“Plus, Putin’s invasion has only strengthened the case for NATO.”
Yup. And strengthened NATO, which now has two more nation’s (Sweden and Finland), both on the border of Russia, but they didn’t invade them or complain about them joining NATO. Huh…
“But I’d be surprised if anything close to a majority of Russians truly supported the invasion and war. … Am I off here?”
Nope. They hate it. But can’t say so out loud. Just what Trump hopes the U.S. to be like in the near future.
I would never say there is any justification for Putin’s invasion, but Russia is largely surrounded by our bases, in a way that WE are not, and never would allow (see 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis).
I was talking about THESE bases, which include at least 1 or 2 big ones built since the verbal agreement not to expand our military any more back in the 90s:
https://thegarlicwww.blogspot.com/2025/03/us-military-bases-around-russia.html
I should add:
“Not to expand our military near Russia”.
JMO, but Gorbachev should have gotten it in writing.
Excerpt:
“Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner”.
From here:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
DonL –
That map is not very good or hi-res. Makes the US bases seem closer to Russia than they actually are. Here’s a slightly better one showing all NATO (and Russia) bases in the same area. I think.
Note that they are not actually in bordering countries. I would also add that the “not one inch eastward” agreement you mention, was, indeed, in the context of German reunification and — though not an official agreement — was made with USSR, versus Russia.
Still, Putin is on record (don’t have time to track it down), saying that he has no prob with neighboring countries joining NATO. Since Finland and Sweden are now in, and Putin said that was no problem, the old saw about Russia in Mexico isn’t quite as apt as many think. At least in my opinion.
A Russian base in Honduras might be a more apt analogy.
What I’m trying to say (poorly), is that Putin didn’t invade Ukraine to hold off NATO or to protect themselves. But it sure makes a nice, apparently easily spread, talking point. I was guilty myself of doing so before I learned more about the issue that DIDN’T come vis a vis Russian propaganda channels.
In any case, in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Russia, China, US, France, Germany and the UK all agreed to protect Ukraine’s sovereign border in exchange for them giving up their entire nuclear stockpile, which was the second largest in the world at the time (after the break up of the Soviet Union).
I guess Putin forgot about that agreement?
Thanks, Brad.