Trump Was Chosen to Damage America, and He Succeeded
By: Manny Otiko
Tags: Russia, Foreign Policy, Putin, Trump, Politics

The disastrous Trump presidency is coming to an end as chaotic and dysfunctional as the rest of his term. Several government agencies were hit with a widespread cyberattack believed to have been generated from Russia. (The president has said nothing.) And CNN reported that Trump briefly floated the idea of refusing to leave the White House. His staff shot down that scheme. However, it would have been entertaining to watch the former reality TV star frog-marched out of the White House. But Trump will probably leave for Florida over the holiday break and never return to the president’s residence.

But Trump leaves a trail of chaos in his wake. More than 300,000 people are dead from the coronavirus, which he tried to hide. Politico stated Trump loyalists at the Department of Health and Human Services tried to suppress negative information about COVID-19 deaths in the Black community. And even worse, some Trumpists tried to promote the spread of COVID-19 because they believed in the “herd mentality” approach. Dr. Scott Atlas, a kook recruited directly from FOX News, also pushed this idea. Atlas has no background in virology and is a trained radiologist. The Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is a case study in what not to do!

James Clapper called Trump a Russian asset. (Jay Godwin/Flickr)

However, this kind of dysfunctional administration shouldn’t be surprising. Vladimir Putin’s Russia helped Trump get elected (confirmed by the Select Committee on Intelligence’s report) because they knew he was a useful idiot; a buffoon who’d create chaos in the government and tear it apart from the inside. We don’t have the receipts and emails showing he’s a Russian agent, but he sure behaved like one. And this opinion is also shared by James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence. He called Putin “Trump’s handler.”

I’ve always believed Trump was an enemy of the state, who somehow managed to end up running the United States. Here are my reasons why:

Damage to U.S. reputation

The United States is worse off than it was four years ago. According to a 2020 Pew research survey, the country’s reputation has plummeted under Trump. However, the U.S.’s reputation increased in Russia. Russian state media declared, “Trump is ours” and has offered him sanctuary. They loved his work! Trump’s decision to pull out of Syria and abandon our long-time Kurdish allies also benefitted the Russians who ended up taking over American bases. U.S. forces tried to prevent American arms from falling into Russian hands by bombing their bases from the air! The Russians celebrated this action.

“Putin won the lottery! Russia’s unexpected triumph in the Middle East,” said Mikhail Rostovsky in the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, according to The Daily Beast. “Those who were convinced of Trump’s uselessness for Russia ought to think again…Trump’s mistake in Syria is the unexpected ‘lottery win’ that further strengthened Moscow’s position in the Middle East and undermined America’s prestige as a rational political player and a reliable partner.”

Even though Trump is on his way out of the White House and headed to God knows where, Putin is happy. The United States is in chaos, its international reputation is tarnished and the new Biden administration will spend years repairing Trump’s damage. And there’s also the likelihood that the money-hungry Trump will trade secrets for cash. It sounds like Putin got everything he wanted.

Trump weakened American democracy.

Trump’s reign of error also damaged the American political system. The U.S. likes to see itself as a beacon of democracy and claims to send its military around the world to establish democratic governments. But right now, American democracy looks shaky and chaotic. I don’t think many countries look at the current U.S. government and say, “I want some of that.”

Joe Biden won the election, and it’s been certified by the electoral college, but Trump-enabled cultists still refuse to accept the results. They’re convinced Democrats stole the election. However, their comments are so unhinged; they’re bordering on sedition. Trump loyalist Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn(rtd.) recently called on the president to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military to oversee a new vote. And North Carolina state Sen. Bob Steinburg (R) suggested Trump suspend the constitution and remain in power. That’s called a dictatorship!

However, some Republicans have quit in disgust over these antics. Steve Schmidt, who ran Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential election campaign, left the GOP and became an independent. But now he’s joined the Democratic Party.

“At the end of the day, there’s now one pro-democracy political party in the United States of America and that’s the Democratic Party. And I am a member of that party because of that. I’m a single issue voter. I believe in democracy,” said Schmidt on MSNBC.

Trumpism worsened America’s racial divisions

White nationalism was also a major part of Trump’s platform. Make America Great Again really meant make America white again. He elevated neo-Nazis, such as Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and the odious Stephen Miller, to high-level White House positions. Trumpism has also led to a resurgence of neo-Nazi groups such as the Charlottesville protesters who chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” Last weekend, the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group rampaged through Washington, D.C. and vandalized Black Lives Matter signs.

Trump also heightened tensions between the Black community and the police. He previously said that he wanted police to get rough with suspects. But police associations loved Trump because they thought he sanctioned police violence. It’s not surprising that a Minnesota police officer choked George Floyd to death on camera, leading to nationwide protests. However, this strife delighted the Russians, who predicted the U.S.’s imminent collapse from internal divisions. And like Trump, they played an active role in stoking racial division by outsourcing their troll operation to West Africans, according to The Washington Post.

“This past April, a CNN investigation discovered Russian troll farms in Ghana and Nigeria that employed African nationals to post content emphasizing U.S. racial divisions. American policymakers were startled by the fact that Russians had outsourced information operations to West Africa. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said that ‘the potential use of continental cutouts’ to obscure Russia’s involvement ‘represents new and inventive ways to cover their tracks and evade detection,” said The Post.

Making Putin happy

With all this chaos, unrest and blatant racism, many tourists and immigrants decided to skip America. According to The Times, Trump’s trade war cost the U.S. $11 billion in Chinese spending power. But that didn’t bother Trump. He wanted fewer non-white immigrants, even if they had highly-technical skills. In Trump’s mind, non-white immigrants were not welcome in the United States, because they only leached off the welfare system and brought down the national IQ.

However, even though Trump is on his way out of the White House and headed to God knows where, Putin is happy. The United States is in chaos, its international reputation is tarnished and the new Biden administration will spend years repairing Trump’s damage. And there’s also the likelihood that the money-hungry Trump will trade secrets for cash. It sounds like Putin got everything he wanted. You don’t need tanks and missiles to destroy a country when you have an agent, and plenty of helpers, who’ll do the work for you.