So, the last week has seen a vast poonami of articles about Donald Trump’s summit in Helsinki – you know, the one where Trump announced that he trusted Vladimir Putin above his own intelligence agencies, then reversed it, then unreversed it and said it was all the media’s fault for reporting it? Ah, what a time to be alive!
But if you were worried at the sight of outlets like Fox News, Brietbart and The Australian demonstrating a hitherto unfamiliar critical tone of the US president’s remarkably idiotic statements and counter statements and counter-counter statements, then worry no more. There’s been one place where the coverage has been downright glowing.
That place is Russia. Mind you, the coverage hasn’t necessarily been glowing in Trump’s specific direction:
#Russia's state TV host:
"It is very bizarre, you can't bash your own country like that – especially when you're the President."
Female host: "When Trump says our relations are bad because of American foolishness and stupidity, he really smells like an agent of the Kremlin." ©️ pic.twitter.com/8fRLrZbUul— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) July 18, 2018
As that tweet indicates, the coverage hasn’t been entirely flattering to Trump so much as celebrating the way that Vladimir Putin ran rings around the gormless jackass with which he was toying.
This insight largely comes via the US-based Russian media analyst Julia Davis – not to be confused with the UK comedian who created and starred in Nighty Night – who has been doing god’s work in watching the Russian news coverage and reporting on what’s being said for we monolingual English speakers.
(According to her LinkedIn she is also a writer, director and stunt double who has worked extensively with Burt Reynolds – which is weird, but a reminder that we all contain multitudes.)
For example: “When Trump says our relations are bad because of American foolishness and stupidity, he really smells like an agent of the Kremlin,” Russian 60 Minutes host Olga Skabeeva announced, while daily broadsheet Izvestia ran a front page which translated as “Trump immediately capitulates: Why the world’s press gave victory to Putin.”
#Russia is showing off Putin's "super weapons" as part of their propaganda strategy to help Trump push the U.S. cooperation with the Kremlin down our throats as something that is inevitable: "concessions or war." Those aren't our only choices, but will be portrayed as such. pic.twitter.com/ytGDLFMANm
— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) July 19, 2018
Politician Konstantin Kosachev told state TV network Rossiya-1 that “I saw two leaders today who can agree with each other,” while state media RIA-Novosti quoted Boris Mezhuyev of the Politanalitika website: “This summit will cause a lot of criticism from the Democratic opposition, maybe even part of the Republicans. Maybe [Trump] will be told that he was not hard enough on Putin, could not get Putin to admit interference in the election, that he did not rigidly defend the American point of view on questions about Syria and Ukraine.”
And to be fair, he was right on the money.
Close-up of Putin's notes shows the following list of topics, from what I can decipher:
1. "Interference" (in quotes) – proposal
2. #Ukraine – new ideas, transit of gas
3. Syria – joint humanitarian efforts pic.twitter.com/KvqiyCTuuW— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) July 16, 2018
State media also made the point – often – before and after the summit that Putin had no intention of making concessions to Trump and that this was about the US accepting that Russia has a right to do what it wants and that it’s time to let nuclear-armed bygones be bygones.
Weirdly enough, the person that seemed to most enthusiastically agree with this perspective outside Russia was Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly, who responded on Sky News to a Facebook post by the parents of three Australian children killed when missiles struck MH17 with the following:
“We can’t fix things that happened in the past. We’ve got to make sure that the relationships between Russia and the US going forward are the best they can possibly be. If that means some things Russia has gotten away with in the past has to be slightly looked over, well I’m sorry, that’s the price that we have to pay to have good relations going forward – nothing is going to bring those three kids back.”
Mmmm, that’s a kind thing to say to a grieving parent – and sounded like it could have scripted been scripted by Putin himself. Good luck with that re-election campaign, Craig!
And it’s tempting to align with the dominant idea of Putin – the ex-KGB operative turned dictator in all but name – as a strategic mastermind, as though getting Donald Trump to do something foolish was some sort challenge. But it’s worth keeping in mind that Putin is very similar to Trump.
He’s a not-especially-well educated, uncosmopolitan leader with a history of making bad political decisions, and whose dumber ideas get glossed over by a compliant media even as he marches his country into economic chaos.
The Kremlin’s support for Trump’s election weren’t part of a genius game of cat and mouse: they were a desperate throw-mud-and-hope-some-sticks firehose attempt to prevent Hillary Clinton being elected to continue the Obama administration’s hardline sanctions against Russia.
It was done in the hope of creating enough domestic noise to make her eventual victory seem compromised. That Trump won was as big a surprise to them as to everyone else.
As Helsinki demonstrated, it’s two inadequate child-men posturing on the world stage. If only they had a few fewer humanity-erasing weapons, we could all ignore them as they so richly deserve.