Donald Trump Appears to Draw Parallels Between U.S., Vladimir Putin’s Russia
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly says Putin is a killer; president responds ‘You think our country’s so innocent?’
Feb. 4, 2017 10:02 p.m.
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump appeared to draw an equivalence between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the behavior of the U.S. when he responded to a remark about Mr. Putin being a “killer” by saying: “We got a lot of killers—what, you think our country’s so innocent?”
At last, we have a president who openly acknowledges black ops conducted by the deep state.
Mr. Trump does not hit on the truth that often, but when he does, boy is it revealing. During the presidential primary debate in Greenville, South Carolina, Trump accused George W. Bush of lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Here’s how CNN reported that instance of truth telling on February 21, 2016:
“Days after a blowout victory in New Hampshire, the Republican presidential front-runner stood on the debate stage in South Carolina and accused former President George W. Bush of lying about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He also faulted the former president for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that brought down the World Trade Center.
“That’s not keeping us safe,” Trump argued.
“Right away, it was clear that those charges would not sit well with many in this Southern state, home to a large population of military personnel and veterans. The audience in the Greenville auditorium booed the New York businessman, and undecided voters expressed a mixture of disbelief and disdain in the days that followed.
“For any other politician, it could have been a campaign-ending moment. Instead, it underscored Trump’s unique ability to make statements that would sink anyone else but still come out on top. He easily won the South Carolina primary on Saturday, beating the runner-up by about 10 points. And the former president’s brother, Jeb, dropped his bid for the presidency after a disappointing showing.”
Now President Trump explicitly says that the United States government assassinates people who become inconvenient to the state. That is what O’Reilly meant when he called Putin a ‘killer’: someone who personally authorizes hit jobs for political opponents, or who oversees false flag attacks like the series of apartment bombings in three Russian cities in 1999, which killed 293 people, and injured more than a thousand others.
Moreover, Trump knew what O’Reilly meant. Trump dealt with O’Reilly’s question during the election campaign, and he responded in the same way. Our new president believes Putin offers the United States a friendly, mutually beneficial relationship, an offer Trump would like to accept. O’Reilly, someone you expect would be sympathetic to Trump on other counts, cautions him about friendship with a criminal regime. Not surprisingly, since O’Reilly has written about political assassinations almost continuously from 2011 on, he refers to Putin as a killer. That’s how you get ahead in Russian politics. In fact, that is how you advance in all politics, ever since people invented the activity.
Now, do you think Trump would respond to O’Reilly’s question with a counter-question, “You think our country’s so innocent?”, if he did not believe it? No, he would select another line of defense if he thought politics in the United States materially different from politics in Russia. So we want to ask, did Trump run for president knowing he would lead a criminal regime: that is, one that uses assassination and false flag attacks to achieve its aims? We don’t have to verify all the evidence Trump may have considered to reach that conclusion. We just want to have a sense of whether Trump’s conclusion about the criminal nature of our government has an adequate foundation.
Should we be scared we have a strongman in the White House who calls fellow strongman and killer Vladimir Putin a friend? Should Trump’s enemies hire good bodyguards?
Well, the evidence surrounds and even permeates our national life. The deep state arose and committed its first truly open assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963. A notorious false flag attack occurred at sea in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2, 1964. That incident justified eight and a half more years of war in Indochina. Dallas, Tonkin and Vietnam are related, just as 9/11 and the launching of a criminal war against Iraq are related. The Russian apartment bombings, Putin’s rise to power, and the Second Chechen War are related, too. Everyone who understands the way politics is practiced in Russia and the United States knows these things. Trump knows these things.
Should we be scared we have a strongman in the White House who calls fellow strongman and killer Vladimir Putin a friend? Should Trump’s enemies hire good bodyguards? Celebrity apprentice Trump could observe close up how 9/11 turned out in Iraq and Afghanistan, so he may pause a little before he plans some dramatic incident to stoke fear and justify war. He seems to do alright selling fear, security, and aggressive measures for protection with unsettling, small scale terror attacks to propel him. Whatever the source of Americans’ anxieties, we still wonder, on the big questions, whether Trump tells the truth.
I believe he does. Many statements people call “Trump’s lies” are not lies in the normal sense. People typically tell lies to protect themselves and their friends. Trump generally does not try to weasel out of things. People throughout the campaign praised his inclination to “tell it like it is”, and indeed, he seems to say things constantly that a regular politician would avoid for fear of losing votes, or inflicting some other sort of wound he or his party could not recover from. Trump never resorts to polite, safe speech.
If Trump does not care about such things, why would we check up on him any more than we would check up on a storyteller who entertains us around a campfire?
For me, you cannot rely on what Trump says because he is an impulsive egoist. He also employs words with a definite aim – to build himself up, to attack or ridicule someone else, to create fear or resolve. Reality does not matter to sociopaths, so long as they achieve their aims. You can measure sociopathic deceptions against reality, then call these deceptions lies when the measurements do not come out right, but that misses the point. our goal becomes to protect ourselves against falsehood. If someone like Trump uses language instrumentally, who cares about facts as such? He certainly doesn’t. If Trump does not care about truth, why would we check up on him any more than we would check up on a storyteller who entertains us around a campfire?
Having said that, why should we care when Trump says Bush lied about Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, or that our regime commits crimes just as Putin’s does? First of all, because these statements are manifestly true. Second, we should pay attention because these charges are more weighty than Trump’s usual mix of insults and offensive ridicule. Third, they give us some insight into the way Trump’s mind works. That’s important when you deal with a sociopath, as sociopathic behavior does not readily form patterns. Lastly, we ought to pay attention to Trump’s high-level accusations because, in fact, only a person who feels free from political norms and polite limits on honesty would say things like that.
Trump is like the boy who stands in the town square among all the socially conscious townspeople, and points out the king is nude. The president declares, “Of course our intelligence agencies assassinate people they regard as enemies of the state. Of course our leaders lie to justify attacks on foreign nations. Of course we kill people at home to manufacture fear and anger, so they’ll back wars abroad. We’re not innocent. How could we be?” The townspeople tell the little boy to be quiet. Be polite. Significantly, Trump is seventy years old. He’s the king. Many may wish he would stay quiet, but we know at this point he will not. He will continue to say things no one else will say.
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