Trump vs Putin? Time to Be 'Scared'

[DonViejo]

Global Politico talks Russia, Russia, Russia with journalist Julia Ioffe.

By SUSAN B. GLASSER April 09, 2018

In an early morning tweet exactly one year and 77 days into his presidency, Donald Trump on Sunday finally criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin by name. It took a chemical weapons attack in Syria by Putin’s ally (“Animal Assad,” in Trumpian twitter-speak) and gruesome pictures of dead children to prompt the criticism. But the belated rebuke of Putin was short and cryptic enough that it seemed to underscore the strange mystery of why Trump, while allowing his government to pursue an increasingly confrontational series of policies aimed at countering Russia, has never publicly disavowed his oft-stated admiration for the strongman leader who ordered his spies to intervene in the U.S. election on Trump’s behalf.

Tweet or no tweet, as Trump now contemplates a retaliatory strike on Putin’s Syrian partner, it’s more clear than ever that Russia remains the signal foreign policy dilemma of the Trump presidency – the issue on which the president has split, repeatedly, with top advisers like his now-booted secretary of state and national security adviser. Just a few days ago, Trump spoke once again, if a bit plaintively, about his desire to get along with Putin even as his administration was putting out a tough new round of sanctions hitting Putin’s inner circle. And of course there’s the matter of that Russian election intervention – and the still ongoing investigations of whether Trump or his campaign team knew about it.

I talked Russia, Russia, Russia for this week’s Global Politico with the journalist Julia Ioffe, a Russia-born reporter who is one of the few to have covered both Putin’s Moscow and Trump’s Washington. We covered everything from why she thinks Russia is just as much Arrested Development as it is The Americans, to what Washington consistently gets wrong about it, to why Putin has been so successful at playing four straight American presidents.

“I’m very scared,” Ioffe tells me of the brewing confrontation between the two blustery leaders. “The reason I’m scared is because… in the Cold War there were kind of protocols and rules developed and lines of communication, and there were just—the way things were done. … Now … you have two guys, Trump and Putin, who are both painted into a corner, strategically, both at home and geopolitically, who are very prideful. Both very kind of emotional knee-jerk decision makers, to an extent. And I worry that they’re both going to start clawing their way out of their respective corners and that that’s going to lead to a lot of collateral damage.”

more + podcast of interview:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/09/julia-ioffe-global-politico-tktk-217835

[Heartstrings]

1. Scared? Now?

I've been "scared" since the chain of command left Barack Obama's head and hands...haven't had a decent nights sleep since that day.

[Bluepinky]

2. Same with me. The last 14 months have been unsettling and downright scary at times.

[WhiteTara]

4. I know.

I haven't felt like this since the coup of 2000.

[smirkymonkey]

3. Julia Ioffe is a very credible journalist, particularly on the subject of Russian and Russian

politics. She's not prone to hyperbole and has often downplayed Putin's power. The fact that she is worried is very unsettling.

[BadGimp]

5. I'm worried too...

[moondust]

6. Megalomaniac cage match!

Cage match! Cage match! Cage match! Cage match! Cage match!