PUTIN, THE TRUMP PROJECT AND MAKE AGAIN RUSSIA GREAT, (MARG).

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia and a few of his inner circle sat down at the monthly meeting where the status of “The Trump Project” was being accessed. At this gathering were four of his closest confidants - Igor Sechin, Gennady Timchenko, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladislav Surkov. The latter was currently Putin’s closest confidant, while the former three had been with him since the beginning, in Saint Petersburg. It was in that historical city, in the early 1990’s, where they had all learned how to manipulate the trappings of power and in the process to corruptly accumulate wealth. 

 In the shadow of the disintegration of the Soviet Union they dreamed of returning what was left of the old USSR to its  glory. To coin a phrase the former administrators of the historical town wanted to lead the Make Again Russia Great, (MARG), movement. With the parlous economic state of what was left of the USSR the obvious path to MARG was to weaken America and the Western alliance it led. Donald J. Trump becoming the President of the USA would present Vladimir Putin with the miracle they prayed for and so the “Trump Project”was born.  

THE INNER CIRCLE AND THE TRUMP PROJECT

There were many more that made up those who cloistered with the forever secretive cagey cautious former KGB operative but he rarely held this Indaba with the same company.  All of the inner circle had unique characteristics. They were all billionaires being some of the favored loyal few to benefit from the failure of the Communist State to share the means of production with the proletariat. The profit from the fruits of production was now in their hands and the long suffering proletariat would have to wait for another day to get their share.

They all owed their wealth to Putin with whom they reputedly divied their bounty, making the former Secret Service operative the richest man in the world. They all knew that  their political and financial status depended on their blind loyalty to their leader. They labored under no illusion, that in spite of their decades long comradeship, that he had thick files of “kompromat” on them, which could be utilized at the slightest deviance from the Putin Party line. 

They also all shared one major problem - their billions were meaningless to them if they could only be used in “Mother Russia”. There was a limit to the number of dachas one could buy. And therein lay the problem. The Obama government had seen to it that not only was Russia sanctioned but also their banks, (which Putin controlled) and their oligarchs, (whom Putin controlled). How could they get their billions out and safe into the Western world so they could participate in global capitlaiism? Well there were many ways including purchasing real estate but life had become almost impossible with sanctions. 

“The Trump Project” was designed to MARG while allowing Putin and his oligarchs to become global billionaires. 

TRUMP AND PUTIN - A QUID PRO QU0

In spite of the fact that The President of America, formerly Russia’s nemesis and the leader of the most powerful country in the world, was, to put it politely, “favorable” to the goal that those present aspired to - a feat that only Hollywood could have imagined - there was an air of gloom. The security reports on the unravelling of their operation was presented to the meeting. Putin had to concede that in spite of all their knowledge of the culture, political system and the workings of the United States no one could ever imagined that the consequences of their success would be as devastating as the very Project itself. There had been so many ostensibly unrelated components to their Project such as the extensive social media operation, Wikileaks, the many diverse personnel that they infiltrated and the focus on organizations and events to influence and launder money through. Through extensive research they had read the mood of the country right as the social internet contributions had illustrated. Now all was embarrassingly catalogued in memoranda before the American Congress, indictments by Mueller and media reports. Putin had even taken credit, privately of course, for the Republican legislative victories. They had done their bit to try and discredit the Special Counsel but with all their efforts the position of Russia in America was worsening. 

Trump for his part believed he was still true to his commitment. Starting at the nominating convention the sanctions on Russia were watered down and throughout the campaign he had argued that, “Being friends with Russia was not a bad thing”. The POTUS had after all publicly disagreed with his whole intelligence and security establishment at the international forum in Helsinki and even held an off the floor meeting with Vlad at the G20. His latest announced move to pull his troops out of Syria, leaving the Middle East to Russian influence was very helpful to say the least. (Trump didn’t seem to mind that in the process he could be selling out his sworn ally, Israel). The motive Putin attributed to Trump’s touching commitment to the deal was he was terrified that he would release Russia’s “kompramat”.

However what had happened within America with “The Project" and more fearfully what was about to happen as Mueller puts more and more pieces of the puzzle together would only worsen the situation. The fact was that the only issue that was fully bipartisan in the Senate was that Russia had declared war on America’s democracy by interfering in its Holy Grail - The Presidential Election. In addition the fact that the Democrats could now pursue everything and anything relating to the Trump Project, bothered Putin the most. As each revelation was laid out the antipathy against Putin and his Russia grew stronger and stronger.

PUTIN THINKS OUT ALOUD

“The man is unstable, an idiot”, the Soviet Tzar fumed. “It does not say much for this great big democracy that the man they elected President had been openly flaunting the law for decades and got away with it only to be caught once he became President”. The circle nodded in agreement. 

Putin ranted on, “His world is falling apart and he starts a fight which can only weaken him even further over a f…..ing stupid wall that means nothing. Then as for pulling out of Syria he should know better than me that if there are so many parts to his insane system of government he should have at least pretended to have consulted them first. Now his Minister of Defense who has great support among the Republicans resigns saying he differs with him over Russia. To antagonize his hawks even more he wants to pull out of Afghanistan. The Republicans whom he was supposed to win over on allying with Russia are furious. As the Americans might say, ‘Go figure’”.

More shaking of heads of those assembled as they echoed Putin’s disbelief. 

Putin was far from finished, “Then can you believe it a moron of a Judge can make a fool of him and his whole propaganda machine by forcing his former National Security Advisor to admit that the Mueller FBI didn’t entrap him. Then there is no control whatsoever by this genius over what is dead secret - the deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and the offer to give me a penthouse. It is out there for the world to see. How? Why? He and his dimwit of a lawyer get exposed illegally paying off two women he had affairs with and that brings the house tumbling on his head. Are they all mad? There is no loyalty to that man. His own media blurb leaks as to how he feels and what he is thinking on any given day. He appointed a cretin as Head of the Federal Reserve who is pushing his economy into recession. Then even I know that the shutting of the American Government has deleterious effects on the Administration and he publicly says that he owns the closure. Maybe I should send him copies of our analyses of the American political mind?”

Putin looks down at the pile of reports in front of him. The whole saga is in those files from the beginning to the end. Even the details of Trump’s visits to Moscow that he, Putin, had denied existed. He fingers the latest summaries of what is out there, what is not as yet public and assessments of the damage that all these exposures might incur. 

He breaks the silence by barking out, “Who sanctioned that Butina woman’s enterprise”. There is a fearful stillness as no one could imagine that it could have happened without Putin’s say so. “They obviously have influenced her more than she them. She is about to sing like a canary. Who could have believed her cover story anyway that she was into gun rights. Any fool knows that Russian citizens have no gun rights. What amazes me is that with all her stupidity she got as far she got in the most powerful country in the world”. The tension is slightly relieved, maybe the President didn’t know about this wild escapade.

 “It is out of control”, he concludes. 

 THEY ALL THINK SILENTLY?

There is an uncomfortable lull which not even the closest confidant is prepared to puncture. No one is very happy to be at this post mortem. What had they done to deserve this unpleasant honor? 

What was becoming more and more patently obvious was that as each and every day that passed the chances of sanctions being lifted were becoming more and more remote. They could have been better off with Hillary. She would have just ranted on about human rights, Crimea, Ukraine and the like. They could have done a deal. Maybe? Now anyone who was anyone was not only sanctioned they were being indicted and they dare not travel. And it was going to get worse.

Perhaps they should just finish it off and leak what else they have on Trump? How would that help? They would just have to leave it to Trump to self destruct. They would never understand fully how America worked. Some Presidents seem to have all the power in the world and this one cannot even get money to build a wall. 

Meanwhile there are the problems back home. There is just no Russian economy beyond oil and gas and the bottom was falling out of the oil market. And while the Russians had no history of democracy they certainly had one of revolutions. They looked uneasily at one another. Suddenly the great triumphs of the Trump Project, NATO wobbling and Europe arguing didn’t seem so important now - MARG was becoming a more and more distant reality. 

Putin had thought he had so much in common with Trump. They had both understood that amassing wealth as part of political leadership was an innate right. They both traded on fear. The only problem was no one seemed scared of Trump - not the media, commerce, the Justice Department, the Judiciary and now even some of his own legislators.

 Putin wondered whether if he was down and out his inner circle would sell out on him as they had Trump? Not as easily he reassured himself as unlike Trump he had “looked after” his guys, they all were very comfortable. He was in complete charge of Russia while Trump the buffoon thought his immediate hold on power lay on whether he could build a wall or not.

It was left to Putin to break the day dreaming, “ Any suggestions as to what we should do now?” he enquired. Not surprisingly no one had anything to offer. 

THE HOPE AND THE FEAR

Putin concluded, “Who knows maybe Trump can stop Mueller and get one of his latest appointments to fire him and bury his report. His acting Attorney General has defied the Ethics Committee and will involve himself in the Special Counsel’s probe while Trump’s nominee for the full time job has written a twenty page memorandum attacking the Mueller investigation”.

Medvedev piped up, “Then why are we worried?”.

The cagey stalwart boss wearily ended, “If what we have seen and if our analyses are anything to go by the President will not stop the revelations between him and us. The upshot is that we will be worse off than when we started. The Russian intervention would unify Congress. Trump would be lucky to survive and Congress, one way or another, will rally around the Defense Secretary’s global vision of America, its commitment to its allies and its leadership of NATO which contains most of the old USSR. Maybe Trump should study the Nixon interlude as well as we have."

MARG will just have to be on hold for the movement and all that money will just have to earn interest in Russian roubles.  It could have been worse. At least they had no one to answer to.