A Quote by Malcolm Wrightson Nance
Trump wants to be an autocrat, he does want to be a Vladimir Putin-style ruler. His chief strategic advisor, Steve Bannon, is a follower of Alexander Dugin. Dugin believes liberal democracy should be destroyed and it should be destroyed from the right, and an alliance of autocracy should form between the United States, Europe and Russia, in order to confront Islam.
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Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has embarked on a systematic challenge to the West. The goal is to weaken the bonds between Europe and the United States and among E.U. members, undermine NATO's solidarity, and strengthen Russia's strategic position in its immediate neighborhood and beyond.
There seems to be a passive alliance between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and that's unprecedented in its form and dangerous in its content, because Russia is our most dangerous geopolitical opponent because of the desires that they have in the Middle East and because of their desire to break up Europe. And in the United States, we spent a lot of blood and a lot of treasure trying to keep Europe intact and democratic, and trying to keep the Middle East from being only influenced by people who are massive fans of [Syrian President] Assad and massive fans of the Iranians.
There is the apocalyptic influence in the Trumpean presidency: The world is destroyed in order to be purified and renewed in the ideal way that is projected by a Steve Bannon. And there is a sense of that when Trump says we'll make America great again, because he says it's been destroyed, he will remake it. So there is an apocalyptic suggestion, but I don't think it's at the very heart of his presidency.
In Donald Trump, you have somebody who praises Vladimir Putin all the time. America should really wonder about a President Trump, who had a campaign manager with ties to Putin, pro- Putin elements in the Ukraine, who had to be fired for that reason. They should wonder - when Donald Trump is sitting down with Vladimir Putin, is it going to be America's bottom line or is it going to be Donald Trump's bottom line that he's going to be worried about with all of his business dealings?
We know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up [Vladimir] Putin, to support Putin, whether it's saying that NATO wouldn't come to the rescue of allies if they were invaded, talking about removing sanctions from Russian officials after they were imposed by the United States and Europe together, because of Russia's aggressiveness in Crimea and Ukraine, his praise for Putin which is I think quite remarkable.
Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist, appears to imagine an alliance between Trump, Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage. Call it the populist international, a fraternal association of the nationalist right, binding people who want borders, across borders.
If there ever was a time for a cool, rational and unemotional series of responses on the part of people in Europe, it is now. One reason is that Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Trump are very similar: They are macho types, they are bullies - and they want the same thing: to weaken the EU, albeit for different reasons. Trump, for his part, is a protectionist of the first order, and he wants to make his vision work. He shows no interest in competition with others, but aims to go back to the 1930s.
Russia remains an adversary to the United States. We have some overlapping interests. It would be better if our relationship was better. But our relationship is not good right now because of Vladimir Putin. There are steps that I think that we should be taking that we should have taken under the Obama administration. For instance, providing defensive weaponry to Ukraine. I encourage the President and the administration to take a look at those steps.
Vladimir Putin hates America, he wants to hurt us. Suddenly Vladimir Putin is a good guy, Russia is okay, no it's not. Russia is evil, Russia is our enemy.
I call upon Donald Trump to rescind the appointment that he made of Stephen Bannon. A president of the United States should not have a racist at his side, unacceptable.
There are people who think that Trump's base was created by Steve Bannon - they are Alt-Right white nationalists and so forth - and that if Bannon ever turned on Trump, that everybody that voted for Trump would abandon Trump if Bannon leaves. I think that's just so much BS, I can't tell you, and so does people who voted for Trump.
America should really wonder about a President Trump, who had a campaign manager with ties to Putin, pro-putin elements in the Ukraine who had to be fired for that reason. They should wonder when Donald Trump is sitting down with Vladimir Putin, is it going to be America's bottom line, or is it going to be Donald Trump's bottom line he's going to be worried about with all of his business dealings. This would be solved if Donald Trump would release his tax returns as he's told the American public that he would do.
Trump wants to be the first American tsar. With his hero worship of Putin, his admiration for the apparent omnipotence of the Kremlin, schoolboyish crush on Putin's gangster swagger and his contempt for democracy, Trump wants to rule with his family, taking decisions purely because he's right about everything like a tsar.
A liberal is a person who believes that water can be made to run uphill. A conservative is someone who believes everybody should pay for his water. I'm somewhere in between: I believe water should be free, but that water flows downhill.
To equate Vladimir Putin and the United States of America, as Donald Trump was asked, you know, I guess it was Bill O'Reilly who said, "But Putin is a killer." And he basically said, "So are we." That moral equivalency is a contradiction of everything the United States has ever stood for in the 20th and 21st century.
We know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin, whether it's saying that NATO wouldn't come to the rescue of allies if they were invaded, talking about removing sanctions from Russian officials after they were imposed by the United States and Europe together, because of Russia's aggressiveness in Crimea and Ukraine, his praise for Putin which is I think quite remarkable.
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