A large majority of the Republican Party, including many officials who initially viewed Donald Trump with deep skepticism, decided early in Trump’s first term that the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election were the hysterical product of Trump Derangement Syndrome in the Deep State and the media. There was no mystery to solve, no scandal to uncover, in Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin. And yet this strange alliance continues to bedevil American foreign policy.
On Friday afternoon, Trump announced that he had held another call with Putin, and came away once again depicting the Russian dictator as a cherished friend to whom he owes a great deal. “I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Later that day, Trump reemphasized his debt of gratitude. “I want to thank President Putin, to be honest with you. We have massive amounts of oil coming into our country, and it’s diesel, which is what we want. So, thank you,” he told reporters outside the White House.
[Read: Why is Kash Patel planning to visit Russia?]
Many of Trump’s comments make little sense, and these were no exception. But he was using a particular kind of illogic that conflicts with his standard brand of nonsense. Trump typically depicts international trade in starkly mercantilist terms. Exports, in his mind, are a form of profit, and imports are a loss. Trump sees trade deficits as a form of theft, and conceives of a “good deal” as one in which the United States reduces its imports or increases its exports. This holds true of all goods, including oil. “We don’t need their fuel, we don’t need their energy, we don’t need their oil and gas. We don’t need anything that they have,” Trump said dismissively of Canada last year.
Yet when it comes to imports from Russia, Trump inverts his standard accounting methods. He presents Russian oil as a kind of gift, something Putin plans to “supply.” (A more accurate verb to describe this transaction would be sell.)
In reality, diesel fuel exists in a global market, and adding a small amount of Russian diesel into this enormous international supply would have a barely detectable effect upon its price. A more important effect would be on the Russian economy. Economic sanctions have hampered its ability to attract foreign currency, and the Trump-Putin plan would suspend sanctions on Russian diesel exports. Doing so would in fact appear to violate American law, which prohibits importing oil from Russia unless it makes peace with Ukraine, though illegality does not usually deter Trump.
The most immediate outcome of this plan has been to present Ukraine as the cause of economic turmoil and Russia as the innocent victim of Ukrainian warmongering. Trump almost immediately began to praise Putin and assail the Russian dictator’s adversary. Volodymyr Zelensky “could have settled this war many times—many, many times—and he chooses not to,” Trump told reporters on Friday outside the White House. “He wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel, because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world.” Trump’s solution? “I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal. Because they could have made many deals, and for some reason, he never does.”
There is no universally agreed-upon explanation for why Trump has remained so consistently faithful to Putin. One theory holds that Putin masterfully strokes Trump’s ego. Although Trump does respond to flattery, the flaw in this hypothesis is that other leaders have tried, and often failed, to mimic this formula. Europeans have met Trump’s second term with obsequious displays and gifts. Ukraine floated a proposal to rename the Donbas region “Donnyland.” Poland proposed christening a base “Fort Trump.” Yet these countries have remained largely frustrated.
A second theory holds that Trump simply admires dictators. This one contains a bit more truth, as seen by Trump’s swooning over Xi Jinping and even Kim Jong Un. But the dictators running Iran and Venezuela have hardly managed to duplicate the Trump-Putin partnership.
A third theory depicts Trump as merely amoral, driven by transactions and indifferent to moral concerns. Yet he has continued to defer to Putin even as the Russian dictator has undermined Trump’s own standing by aiding Iran in its war with the United States. Meanwhile, Zelensky’s assistance against Iran seems to have bought him no goodwill whatsoever. Trump’s view of the war is moralistic—he simply blames the victim rather than the aggressor. “You don’t start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles,” he said last year of Zelensky.
Explaining the depth of Trump’s identification with Putin may require looking at a possibility that conservatives have been dismissing out of hand for a decade: manipulation and corruption.
During the 2016 campaign, Russia dangled a lucrative deal to develop Trump-branded properties in Russia that would deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in profit with no risk. More recently, The New York Times reported that Trump advisers and Russian officials have floated deals that would enrich Trump’s inner circle as part of ending the war.
Russia has tried to bribe foreign officials, especially by handing out pieces of its resource wealth, in numerous countries. It would be strange if Putin didn’t try to replicate this tried-and-true method in the United States.
[Anne Applebaum: Trump’s message to Ukraine is now crystal clear]
Perhaps the best evidence against corruption is that Trump now has access to so many other sources of wealth that he hardly needs any financial incentive to tilt toward Russia. Yet Putin seems able to bring the American president around to his way of thinking, if not effortlessly (their most recent phone call reportedly consumed an hour and a half) then at least reliably.
There is obviously no investigation at the moment into Putin’s efforts to influence American foreign policy. Instead, incredibly, we have an investigation into the Russia investigation. The Trump administration is working to gin up criminal charges against former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, and other American officials whose crime was to explore whether something fishy was going on between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
My colleagues Jonathan Lemire and Simon Shuster report, “Some of Trump’s closest advisers have privately wondered what Putin has done to so thoroughly enthrall the president.” Perhaps instead of dismissing the people who were trying to shed light on this mystery and then attempting to throw them into prison, these advisers should be taking their concerns seriously.