Trump's Alaska gambit was a massive failure

Once, it was hard to believe. 

The presidential candidate of the Republican Party—the party defined for half a century by its hatred of the Soviet Union and KGB that produced Vladimir Putin—was not only echoing but weaponizing Russian disinformation to destroy trust in America’s democracy, right as the Russians were carrying out a multi-pronged assault on our elections and intelligence agencies. 

Ten years later, we’ve been so frog-boiled that most of the press refuses even to acknowledge that the president of the United States is the largest single node in Putin’s international propaganda machine.

A failure by Trump’s definition

As Putin’s Chief Propagandist, Donald Trump has to pretend that the meeting the president gifted to Russia’s dictator was a success. And much of the press will repeat that bit of Russian disinformation, even if the meeting was an undeniable failure based on Trump’s own definition:

But this is Putin’s world, for now

However, if you look at this “summit” entirely from the point of view of Vladimir Putin, as Donald Trump seems to, the rendezvous in Alaska was a massive success.

It’s a glorious victory that would have been unimaginable in late July of 2016 when Trump stood at a microphone and—after covering up his ongoing attempt to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and suggesting an openness to ceding Crimea to Russia—asked Russia to cyberattack America in general and his opponent in specific.

Trump got nothing—except Putin stroking his ego with the lies and disinformation that have defined Trump’s grievances for eight years now. 

Putin got the president of the United States rewarding the dictator of Russia for invading a neighbor and committing untold war crimes, and then using the international platform as a moment to assault American democracy and heighten the polarization that has driven this country into fascism.

Trump and Putin hate the same thing

You may know—if you’ve accidentally tuned into Fox or read THE FARCE—that the Trump Regime is busy trying to prosecute and execute Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over what they call “the Russia hoax.” 

The details are nauseating, so let me boil it down to this: They are trying to turn it into “treason” to have ever investigated Trump’s ties to Russia.

How dare you say the guy whose closest advisor, campaign manager, and National Security Advisor all pled guilty or were convicted of crimes related to lying about their ties to Russia might have any illicit ties to Russia?

To re-stoke this witch hunt that Trump first reheated at the peak of the fallout over his refusal to disclose the Epstein Files because they included his ties to the notorious sex trafficker, the regime isn’t arguing that Russia didn’t attack our elections. It goes with the same finding that the 2020 report from the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, which found:

The Committee found the ICA presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Instead, they’re using a sleight of hand to pretend that it was criminal to suggest that Putin was trying to do anything but attack our democracy in general. It uses a purposeful confusion, conflating attacks on voting machines with the attacks on the election in general, to argue it’s preposterous that Putin wanted to help Trump win.

Unintentionally, they make an interesting philosophical point: Is there any discernible difference between attacking democracy in general and wanting Trump to win? 

Putin has more leverage over Trump 

How much leverage would Putin need over Trump when they both want the same thing: the destruction of American democracy and influence toward democracy around the world?

Not much. This is why you don’t have to look too deeply into the multiple quid-pro-quos the Mueller team identified to accept the most damning possible assessment about Donald Trump: He sees the dictator of Russia as an ally because his goal is to become our Putin.

And in August of 2025, he has never been closer to that goal.

Of course, as Marcy Wheeler has been reporting almost exclusively, Putin has a ton of leverage over Trump.

That leverage only grows as Trump’s dependence on Russian disinformation deepens and the president executes his vision of hollowing out the institutions—like the NIH, NASA, and USAID—that were created to oppose the Soviet Union, which now must be gutted because they’re rightfully seen as obstacles to fascism.

We must stand for truth to defeat fascism

This mess, unfortunately, becomes another action item for us. Trump's assault on truth and democracy is a fundamental part of our challenge in saving what’s left of our democracy to oppose Russian Disinformation. We must somehow restore the shame that must exist when you echo the worst crook and murderer alive as he assaults our country’s sacred honor.

This has been impossible so far. If the right won’t call it out, the media seems to refuse to be happy to be a conduit for Trump echoing Putin’s lies even when they reinforce the exact filth that led to the assault on our Capitol.

But even the media can’t help but see Trump floundering to prop up this monster who is drone-striking strollers and grandmas daily. If you call the debacle in Alaska anything but a disaster, you’re just doing Putin’s dirty work.

And that’s Donald Trump’s job. Not yours.

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