Donald Trump’s Top Ten Giveaways to Vladimir Putin

Alexei Druzhinin/Pool/Prensa Internacional/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The number of pro-Putin positions that Donald Trump has taken has assumed quite remarkable proportions. He:

  1. Wants to reduce America’s commitment to NATO and reorient its activities to the Middle East. This is perhaps Vladmir Putin’s greatest foreign policy desire.
  2. Says America has no moral standing to complain about human and civil rights violations.
  3. Welcomed Russia’s incursion into Syria.
  4. Considers Putin a great leader.
  5. Would consider eliminating sanctions against Russia and recognizing their annexation of Crimea.
  6. Wants to weaken American ties to its allies by insisting that he will walk away from them unless they pay us more for our military protection.
  7. Never mentions Russia in his otherwise endless litany of countries that are taking advantage of us.
  8. Opposes sending arms to Ukraine.
  9. Is pro-Brexit.
  10. Isn’t sure he would defend the Baltics if Russia attacked them.

Have I missed anything? I probably have. It’s hard to keep track.

Many of these are defensible positions on their own. I don’t support sending arms to Ukraine, for example. Plenty of conservatives are pro-Brexit. And plenty of lefties would like to see us reduce our military footprint worldwide.

But even if you personally agree with an item or three on this list, the whole thing adds up to something unprecedented for an American candidate for president. Donald Trump considers America at odds with virtually the entire world. He’s based his entire campaign on this. At various times he’s mentioned China, Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, and the entire Pacific Rim. But never Russia. On the contrary, his list of positions toward Russia is basically Vladimir Putin’s dream foreign policy. For a guy suffering under crippling sanctions, a tanking economy, low oil prices, and a demographic time bomb, Donald Trump is offering him everything he could possibly want. And what does Trump want in return? For Russia—and only for Russia—he wants nothing.

As much as I loathe Putin, I’m not among those who now think Mitt Romney was right when he listed Russia as our #1 geopolitical threat. Conservative fearmongering on the subject leaves me cold. Nonetheless, this list is not a coincidence. There’s something behind the scenes guiding it. But what?

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate