For all that can be said about Thursday’s debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump — including about the former’s dismal performance and about the boundless creativity of Trump’s fabrications on almost every topic under the sun — Trump’s curious note about Putin’s “dream” stood out to me:
“Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my — this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream.”
While nothing Trump says should be taken at face value, Heather Cox Richardson’s analysis of that note is worth reading. Political historian Richardson, who remains one of the most perceptive daily commentators on U.S. news, connects Trump’s version of “Putin’s dream” to Trump (and previously Yanukovich) advisor Paul Manafort’s so-called “Mariupol Plan,” cooked up with Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnick — a “‘peace’ plan” Putin purportedly proposed in 2016 to carve off much of Ukraine. The plan is, of course, not so different from Putin’s recently proposed “peace plan” that involves Ukraine giving up what it controls of the four provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, which with Crimea amount to between a fifth and a quarter of the country’s land area.
Trump’s mention of Putin’s “dream” suggested he would happily indulge Putin in enabling its realization.
Leave a Reply