Surrender summit: the logical conclusion of Trump’s affinity for Putin

On Tuesday, Donald Trump navigated the tricky problems caused by his Monday press conference by reversing course, restating his commitment to the findings of the US Intelligence Community, and, in the process of “clarifying” his previous statements, repeated his original mistake. It was, in other words, a typical Trump performance.

We are now accustomed to the quirks of a president who finds it almost impossible to stick to a script, even when that script is worded extremely carefully to save him from himself. And, in fairness, it all began quite well.

“So I’ll begin by stating that I have full faith and support for America’s great intelligence agencies. Always have. And I felt very strong that while Russia’s actions had no impact at all on the outcome of the election, let me be totally clear in saying that, and I’ve said this many times, I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place.”

Trump’s reading was acceptable, even if it wasn’t verbatim with the text on the page. It’s habitual for Trump to spiral like a jazz musician around a theme. “Always have” and “I’ve said this many times” sounded like the typical exaggerations (“great people”, “great results”, and “achieving great things”) that he often scatters into speeches. And if only he had left it there, he might have been fine. But Trump wouldn’t be Trump without one ad-lib too far. Just as he’d said he believed the findings on the intelligence community, he added a fatal: “Could be other people also. There’s a lot of people out there…”

So, whilst he believes the IC assessment that Russia acted alone when meddling in the US elections, the President also believes it could be the work of other actors, meaning he doesn’t believe the intelligence assessment. All we were missing was an update about the 400-pound genius sitting in bed somewhere…

The performance was meant to clear the air after American networks were filled on Monday with pundits accusing the President of everything up to and including treason. This was meant to give Republicans and their media-friendly network, Fox, a handle on the summit that would enable them to get behind their president. The problem is that Trump’s performance in front of Putin was never going to be resolved so easily. Trump wanted to explain away the entire spectacle of the press conference as if it were just a single misspoken word (“I said ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t'”). Yet as his “clarification” proved, these problems are not accidental.

It’s often said that Trump is little more than presentation or gloss but that’s not entirely true. His current predicament isn’t about the way we can parse the occasional phrase in order to reveal sentiments that would give any moderate Republicans reason to grumble. The Helsinki summit was much more than a single misspoken word. It represented an alliance that makes all kinds of sense.

There is in all of this a misnomer that’s so obvious that too often it’s not worth putting into words. One of the criticisms against the current Republican Party and its leadership is how it refuses to acknowledge Russia as America’s traditional enemy. Yet there is in this an all-too-easy slide into historical generalisations. It’s certainly true that the Republican Party represented the staunchest opponents of the old Soviet Union but Trump’s critics labour under the misconception that Russia is still a communist nation. This is ridiculously obvious to state but easy to overlook.

Whilst it’s certainly a hostile actor, aggressively countering the push eastwards of NATO, playing a destabilising role in the Middle East, and, of course, conducting cyber-espionage against American infrastructure, Russia is something more.

Putin is the supreme gangster-capitalist and, if rumours are correct, the richest individual on the planet. He is a right-wing demagogue, whose strength is couched in popularism made possible by his control of media whereby he demonises immigrants and specifically Muslims whilst celebrating the cult of his own personality. He is everything that Trump himself would wish to be and, by extension, the American president’s most obvious partner on the world stage. It’s why there’s ineffable logic to Trump’s actions.

This is no longer the battle between America and communism but an extension of what Ronald Reagan prophesied when he said that “the West will not contain Communism; it will transcend Communism.” Russia itself has transcended communism. Putin no longer represents the Russia that was for decades the nemesis of America and the Republican Party. In a strange and deeply twisted way, he and his nation represent a victory of the American right.

Trump’s affinity for strong leaders has been well noted yet it also runs the risk of becoming another of the unconsidered clichés used too often to explain his presidency.

Aligning America with Russia makes a deeper strategic sense if America really is what Trump and his voters believe it to be: a nation that has been awakened to the ethnographic dangers of immigration, where white nationalism is the new mainstream voice on the right, and where decades of liberalism are being rolled back.

Putin’s Russia is as much defined by its phobias to gay rights, immigration, and women’s empowerment, as it is by its obsession with wealth, nationhood, and a resurgence of religion in the singular form of the Orthodox Church. It is naive, then, to frame Russia as though it is anathema to the right wing of the Republican Party. In the internal logic of his presidency, Russia might be the closest that Trump has to a sympathetic partner. Helsinki made complete sense. There is nothing surprising about this; merely surprising that it took so long for moderate Republicans to understand why.