Putin                   Trump  

There is an idiom truism saying that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but nevertheless that certainly doesn’t apply when it comes to the ‘elected’ leaders of certain countries does it, eh? No, and that applies in modern times to both Russia and unfortunately, now the United States of America as well, doesn’t it?

While it might have taken Vladimir Putin, a former head of the Russian intelligence service, nearly a full 20 years of without question running his country, either as either President or Prime Minister [thwarting its constitution in the process], to revert his nation’s recovering country into a disgusting and despicable one, it has taken Donald Trump only 2 years to achieve a somewhat similar disgusting fate for his, hasn’t it?

[President Putin has the evil look about him and President Trump can equally match him, can’t he?]

Some would say that a county’s people shouldn’t he judged on the actions of their leader, but that criteria cannot be applied when the leader has been elected rather than having seized power, surely? [Oh yes, Putin is deemed to have ‘stolen’ all his victories, but certainly the US punters got exactly what they had voted for, didn’t they?].

Well, of course President Putin has done the most so far to drag his already corrupt country into the gutter as he had had more time to do so, hasn’t he? Yep, and its descent into the abys was inevitable the moment Boris Yeltsin selected Putin to be his chosen successor.

Here are just some of the evil things that Vladimir Putin has perpetrated in the name of his country:

• with short shrift all Putin’s potential enemies were eliminated, others’ assets were purloined, the press was neutralised with suspect journalists done-away-with, and indeed that has been since the fate the political opposition in Russia, to boot?
• used the power of draconian anti-democratic laws, arrests and assassinations to lose the democratic reforms of predecessor Boris Yeltsin

• Putin befriends the elite criminals, in mutually profitable relationships mixes with criminals, and exercises power by using criminal gangsters

• disgustingly, state agents exploit their own criminal opportunities in an increasingly controlled way and Putin has allowed organised crime to prosper, it goes with the grain of his system, you see?

• Putin has orchestrated riots to destabilise neighbouring states and ongoingly has conducted mass state sponsored cyber-attacks around the globe

• he ordered the invasion and continuing occupation of parts of neighbouring Georgia in 2008

• back-in 2006, British naturalised Russian defector and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London with State radioactive polonium 210, and the perpetrator given a parliamentary seat by Putin as his get-out-of-jail-card

• in 2014 he oversaw the most corrupt games in Olympic antiquity with the worst doping scandal in history

• Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine and illegally annex Crimea in 2014, so stole a massive swath of Ukrainian territory, and continues to destabilise Eastern Ukraine, where fighting rages on, all with some 10,000 dead

• the disgusting downing over eastern Ukraine of a civilian Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 with the loss of 298 innocent civilian lives, using a Russian missile occurred in 2014.

• the Russian military was dispatched to Syria in 2015, shored up the regime of Bashar Assad and committed countless atrocities, still conducting devastating airstrikes, even bombing a United Nations aid convoy and targeting hospitals [ some ¼ million civilians murdered & 5M refugees, 6M displaced, 14M requiring humanitarian assistance (the whole nation?)]

• without much doubt Putin ordered a cyber and propaganda attack to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election to undermine public faith in the American democratic process, while false stories were posted on Facebook reaching 140 million Americans, and his hackers stole thousands of emails from Democratic leaders and leaked them. (Similar attacks have since occurred in Germany, France and the Netherlands)

• he is selling weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan and banned oil to North Korea, while providing sanctuary to a rogue’s gallery of cyber criminals, dispatches fighter aircraft that harass U.S. military jets in Syria and NATO aircraft over the Baltic, and sends submarines to prowl threatening close to crucial Atlantic undersea cables carrying 97% of global communications

• just this summer Putin sent his GRU military team of assassins to eliminate, using an illegal military grade nerve agent poison, British citizen and Russian ex-double agent spy Sergei Skripal together with his daughter Julia in Salisbury – they were saved but another innocent woman became an unintended victim and died horribly

• his vile actions have resulted in the Western response of massive sanctions that are crippling the poor of his country – but with his own stolen untold riches why should he give a damn, eh?

 

Don’t be in any doubt will you, but Trump has taken a leaf out of Putin’s book when taking over the levers of power in America.

Trump has aggressively set about to:

• neutralise and discredit the press, disclaiming every exposure as fake news, destroying as best he can journalists’ established reputations, and side-lining any political opponents and even being at war with members of his own party.

• by-pass the checks and balances inherent in the American constitutional, ignoring the need to consult Congress about laws and issuing Presidential decrees in its place, abusing his power and ignoring the law, and of course terminating those who get in his way [like the Secretary of State, FBI director, FBI deputy director, the first, then second national security advisor, Chief strategist, Chief economic adviser, US ambassador], though not by Putin’s means – but doubtless he would if he thought he could get away with it, eh?

• Trump appoints criminals to high office [first national security advisor (guilty)], employs criminals to hide his dirty exploits [personal attorney & fixer (guilty)], run things [former campaign manager (guilty), campaign foreign policy adviser (guilty), campaign aide (guilty), aides’ Dutch lawyer (guilty)], or support him [member of the House of Representatives (indicted), a second member of the House of Representatives (arrested)]. Then there are 12 Russian intelligence officers indicted for information warfare against the U.S [now back in Russia]

• his charitable (?) foundation [directors — himself, sons Eric and Donald Jr. and daughter Ivanka] is being sued by the NY attorney general for violation over a decade of state and federal charities law

• encourage violence [2016 campaign rallies] and he has even been accused in federal court of incitement to riot (didn’t stick of course). Trump public utterings include “I’d like to punch him in the face” [in front of a crowd of supporters, after a protester was removed]; “Maybe he should have been roughed up” [regarding a protester who indeed was ejected by a jostling, kicking and punching Trump mob]; “Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt each other anymore” [complaining that protesters are ejected easily as they realize that there are no consequences to protesting anymore[; “I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will” [on giving way to a protestor]; “The audience hit back. That’s what we need a little bit more of” [about a protestor he accused of violent behaviour]; “If you do (hurt him), I’ll defend you in court, don’t worry about it” [about a protestor he wanted out]; “I’ll beat the crap out of you” [about someone had rushed toward the stage in an aggressive manner]; “Knock the crap out of him, would you? I promise you, I will pay your legal fees” [how to deal with a tomato throwing protestor]

• failed to condemn the alt-right racist white supremacist riots in Charlottesville

 

One can always predict the inevitable degeneration of a country with a system sliding towards shabby oblivion, when its regime enables itself to take control of the judiciary, can’t one? Well Trump showed his colours on that front with his latest despicable act played-out last week, when he had forced through the lifetime appointment of a Supreme Court judge whose suitability and candidature had been seriously called into question. Trump now has firmly under his limitless control a most influential judge in the highest court in the land – a man who now owes him BIG TIME and Trump is exactly the kind of man to make sure the man does his bidding, isn’t he?

Trump not only has sworn-in his new selection but has had the audacity to ‘apologise on behalf of the entire Nation to him and his family for their terrible pain and suffering in his selection validation’ and furthermore Trump claimed that those accusing the man were liars and that he has been “proved innocent under scrutiny” – A MASSIVE UNTRUTH on both counts that is worthy of the Adolf Hitler propaganda technique of THE BIG LIE [use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone ‘could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously’]. The credible respected woman who blew the whistle on this all, passed a lie detector test but the learned judge didn’t take one, eh?

Now, this judge was accused of drunken sexual assault by three women in his youth, so just the kind of man that Trump, a self-admitted sexual abuser of women, would want as a top line judge, eh?

This appointment has become a major divisive political issue with seemingly even Republican women in acceptance of allowing men’s sexual disrespect of their ‘gender’, eh?

Not only that, but this follows-on in the footsteps of Trump’s full-throated endorsement last year of an alleged serial sexual predator [that included a 14-year-old girl victim] in a Senate race (he lost), which sent a clear message to women everywhere that he doesn’t believe that credible allegations of molesting women are ‘disqualifying’.

Apart from the above, Trump can’t yet match Putin’s most extreme destructive exploits, but what other things has he been up to since January 20, 2017?

• issues noxious tweets that undermines the power and grandeur of the presidency

• immediately signed an executive order halting all refugee arrivals, banned travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries [Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen], and refugees from Syria barred indefinitely [order successfully challenged in court (partial)]

• acted in isolation in granting a undeserved pardon to a former Arizona sheriff for a criminal contempt conviction in a racial-profiling case

• announced the end of the DACA program that gave protection to some ¾ million young undocumented immigrants [stalled by legal actions but now requires Congress intervention to survive]

• has recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, with relocation of the US Embassy there – provoking worldwide condemnation as that country is in breach of international law in the sequestration and occupancy of others’ land

• withdrawn the US from the Paris climate accord, showing that the USA doesn’t give a fig about the future of the planet and the human race if business can make a quick buck

• installing conservative judges who will preside for decades

• empowered al-Qaida in Syria, by forging a de facto alliance with Russia and Iran to defeat the Islamic State, Trump is driving Sunni Arabs into the waiting arms of al-Qaida – which is preparing to replace the Islamic State and is much more dangerous

• fired the FBI director for investigating Russia links, leading directly to the ongoing Special counsel probe, now hanging over the Trump presidency like the Sword of Damocles

• attacked and undermined the FBI and the intelligence community when those in the FBI, the Justice Department and the CIA are good, decent and honourable patriots deserving of respect

• risked nuclear war in making dire threats against rogue state North Korea but then negotiated directly with its despot leader (and lost)

• stands suspect of being complicit in Russian interference in the presidential campaign, and of subsequent appeasing Putin, saying that he believes Putin and not his own intelligence operations

• his administration has ‘slow-walked’ implementation of tough, new sanctions against Russia passed overwhelmingly by Congress last summer.

• . shamed the US worldwide in issuing an executive order enacting FORCED separation of immigrant children from their families at the border and jailing the adults, then face with protests he changed it to detain them ALL instead

• Trump has lately started an ‘unwinnable’ but potentially devastating trade war with China, Canada, Mexico and EU

 

THERE YOU GO – HARDLY A WORTHY RECORD FOR AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT, that makes America great, do you think?

 

[While authoritarian, oppressive, punitive and expansionist ‘Vladimir Putin’ doesn’t need to give a damn about public support or polls or image in other countries, ‘Donald Trump’ most certainly does and his administration is haemorrhaging support, with his approval dropping to 35 percent, and internationally his confidence rating is rock bottom (7% Spain, 9% France, 10% Germany)]