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Calculated Connections, Calculated Chaos: Trump, Putin, and the Methodical Sabotage of America

  • Writer: Eric Anders
    Eric Anders
  • Mar 25
  • 21 min read

The Trump-Putin Nexus: A Partnership in Crime

From day one, the warning signs were blaring. Donald Trump’s entanglements with Russian money and influence were never a “hoax” or a mere sideshow – they were the main event. Those of us who chronicled Trump’s rise have long kept an I-told-you-so file of all the damning connections that pundits shrugged off. Trump’s own son admitted back in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of [Trump’s] assets” and that “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia” (“We Can Engineer It”: Trump Associate Bragged About Using Deal with Putin to Help Win Election | Vanity Fair). In other words, the Kremlin’s cash was already propping up the House of Trump years before his presidential ambitions. Far from being some blundering oaf or a reality-TV clown accidentally stumbling into power, Trump has been an active collaborator in a calculated scheme – with Vladimir Putin as his benefactor – to undermine American democracy and the Western-led international order for their gain.



Make no mistake: this is not incompetence or insanity at work. It’s a cold, methodical plot. Trump’s chaotic style – the lies, the norm-breaking, the economic havoc – is a feature, not a bug. It provides cover for a breathtaking level of corruption and subversion. The truth, laid bare by investigative reporters and yes, even a few government inquiries, is that Trump has for decades knowingly laundered money for Russian oligarchs and relied on Putin’s regime to bail out his business failures (Here's why Trump colludes with Putin! | Peter Tatchell Foundation) (Mueller news: Trump’s longstanding ties to the Russian mob | Vox). In return, he’s delivered political favors and policy chaos that benefit Putin’s kleptocratic, authoritarian agenda. This is calculated treachery. And so far, both Trump and Putin are literally getting away with it – laughing all the way to the bank and the bunker while the American people and our allies pay the price.

Trump’s Money Laundering Web: Dirty Cash from Moscow

Follow the money, and the picture becomes crystal clear. Trump’s real estate empire – from glitzy condos to sketchy hotel deals – has long served as a laundry mat for dirty Russian cash. By the 1990s, Trump had driven his Atlantic City casinos into the ground and burned his bridges with U.S. banks. Desperate for funding, he turned to precisely the kinds of shady figures no legitimate businessman would touch: Soviet-born gangsters, Kremlin-connected oligarchs, and their networks of illicit wealth (Here's why Trump colludes with Putin! | Peter Tatchell Foundation) (Here's why Trump colludes with Putin! | Peter Tatchell Foundation). As a result, Trump-branded properties became a magnet for suspicious cash transactions. An astonishing 1,300 Trump condo sales were all-cash purchases by anonymous shell companies, exactly the kind of deals that anti-money-laundering experts flag as red flags (Mueller news: Trump’s longstanding ties to the Russian mob | Vox). These transactions – totaling over $1.5 billion – weren’t coincidental one-offs; they made up a huge chunk of Trump’s business. It’s “quite hard to argue” he didn’t know what was going on (Mueller news: Trump’s longstanding ties to the Russian mob | Vox). In fact, it stretches credulity past the breaking point. This was deliberate.

Consider a few of the most brazen examples of Trump’s calculated connections with dirty Russian money:

I could go on (trust me). There’s the 1984 incident of a Russian mobster buying five Trump Tower condos in cash, literally right after meeting Trump – those condos were later seized by the feds as laundered mob money (Mueller news: Trump’s longstanding ties to the Russian mob | Vox). There’s the wave of Russian buyers in Trump’s Panama project, and the strange flow of funds around Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland. The point is, Trump’s fortune owed to dirty foreign money. Russian oligarchs essentially functioned as Trump’s piggy bank, keeping his bankrupt business empire on life support (Here's why Trump colludes with Putin! | Peter Tatchell Foundation) (Here's why Trump colludes with Putin! | Peter Tatchell Foundation). And they weren’t doing it out of charity or because they loved his “art of the deal” shtick – they did it because it paid off for them, too. Trump was their useful idiot, providing a shiny veneer of legitimacy for crooks to park their illicit wealth. It was a symbiotic relationship: he got to play the successful tycoon on “The Apprentice,” while their stolen rubles and shady dollars got laundered through luxury condos and casinos. Win-win – except for law and order, of course.

Putin’s Patronage: From Russia with Love (and Leverage)

Trump’s ties to Russia aren’t just about money; they’re about political power. Vladimir Putin recognized long ago that Trump was the perfect horse to bet on – someone whose greed and ego made him easy to manipulate. Putin’s regime and its oligarch enablers didn’t just funnel money to Trump; they cultivated him as an asset. As a former KGB operative, Putin runs a playbook of recruiting influential foreigners, and Trump was on his radar over 30 years ago (Mueller news: Trump’s longstanding ties to the Russian mob | Vox). Soviet diplomats in the 1980s flattered Trump’s vanity and dangled business in Moscow (Mueller news: Trump’s longstanding ties to the Russian mob | Vox). Russian mobsters in New York curried favor and bailed him out of debt (Mueller news: Trump’s longstanding ties to the Russian mob | Vox) (Mueller news: Trump’s longstanding ties to the Russian mob | Vox). By the time Trump launched his presidential bid, the Kremlin had essentially groomed him: he was financially beholden and psychologically primed to dance to Putin’s tune.

So when Trump ran for president in 2015-2016, Putin seized the opportunity. Russia’s interference in the 2016 election wasn’t some rogue operation – it was a coordinated effort to install their man in the Oval Office. And Trump welcomed the help. His campaign didn’t just blissfully benefit from Russian hacking and propaganda; they actively tried to collaborate. Remember the Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin lawyer promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton? That was top campaign brass (Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort) jumping at the chance to work with Putin’s emissaries. Remember Trump on the campaign trail literally asking Russia to hack Clinton’s emails on live TV? Not exactly subtle. And what do you know – that same day, Russian hackers tried for the first time to break into Clinton’s servers. Coincidence? Please.

The most egregious example of Trump’s collusion with Putin’s agenda came via one of Trump’s old fixers, Felix Sater – a convicted felon and mafioso who worked closely with Trump on real estate deals. In late 2015, as Trump surged in the GOP polls, Sater was back-channeling to the Kremlin to get a secret Trump Tower Moscow project off the ground and boost Trump’s electoral chances. In emails later exposed, Sater practically drooled at the prospect of delivering the White House to Putin. “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote to Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, in November 2015 (“We Can Engineer It”: Trump Associate Bragged About Using Deal with Putin to Help Win Election | Vanity Fair). He bragged about how he had arranged for Ivanka Trump to sit in Putin’s private chair in the Kremlin. “Buddy, our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater gushed, “I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this” (“We Can Engineer It”: Trump Associate Bragged About Using Deal with Putin to Help Win Election | Vanity Fair). This is not some fringe conspiracy theory – these are Sater’s own words, reported in The New York Times. Putin had a full team in place ready to support Trump, and Trump’s inner circle knew it and encouraged it.

And support him Putin did. Russian military intelligence hacked the Democrats and leaked stolen emails to damage Clinton. Kremlin-linked trolls flooded American social media with propaganda to help Trump. Russian oligarchs (the same guys whose wallets Trump had been fattening) poured dark money into political networks (remember the NRA’s mysteriously huge pro-Trump spending? Much of it traced back to Russian sources). Putin’s fingerprints were all over Trump’s victory. A member of Russia’s parliament even stood up on election night to declare, “Trump’s victory is a victory for Russia!” (Mueller news: Trump’s longstanding ties to the Russian mob | Vox) (Mueller news: Trump’s longstanding ties to the Russian mob | Vox). No kidding. They had installed their preferred candidate – a man compromised by financial and personal ties to Moscow – as the most powerful person in the world.

For Putin, this was the bargain of the century. In Trump, he got a U.S. president who would echo Kremlin talking points and weaken Western alliances from within. Trump dutifully sowed doubt about NATO (calling it “obsolete”) and even threatened not to defend NATO countries unless they paid up, a stance that thrilled Moscow (Trump says he would encourage Russia to 'do whatever the hell ...). He publicly sided with Putin over his own intelligence agencies, absurdly claiming he believed Putin’s denial of election meddling. He tried to unilaterally lift sanctions on Russia (only Congress stopped him). He fawned over Putin at every opportunity, giving the former KGB thug the legitimacy and deference reserved for respected world leaders. In effect, Trump became Putin’s mouthpiece and advocate inside the G7 and even within the Oval Office.

Let’s be very clear: Trump’s subservience to Putin was not about “respect between strong leaders” or some realpolitik strategy. It was payback. It was the quid pro quo for years of illicit Russian support. Putin helped Trump build his wealth and win power; Trump would help Putin rebuild a new Russian empire and undermine the democratic world. This was – and remains – a dark alliance between a wannabe autocrat in America and an actual autocrat in Moscow, working in concert to advance their interests at the expense of the American people. Call it what it is: betrayal. Treasonous, if you ask me.

Mueller’s Limited Probe: A Half-Finished Investigation

When Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel in 2017, many of us hoped the full Trump-Russia story would finally come to light. Here was a by-the-book former FBI director tasked with investigating the ties between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin’s election attack. We waited with bated breath for the “Mueller Time” moment – the big reveal of conspiracy or compromise. And we waited... and waited. In the end, Mueller’s report, while confirming plenty of damning contacts and lies (and indicting a slew of Trump associates), pulled its punches. It stopped short of connecting all the dots, especially when it came to Trump’s decades of dubious Russian dealings. The investigation, frankly, did not go far enough – not nearly.

Why? In part because Mueller interpreted his mandate narrowly and was hamstrung by the Justice Department’s own limits. Astoundingly, Mueller never dug into Trump’s finances or business history with Russia – even though any detective with a clue could see the money trail was the key to understanding the whole plot. According to reporting after the fact, the Justice Department actually blocked Mueller from exploring Trump’s longstanding Russian financial ties (Throwing the books at Trump - Washington Examiner). Mueller focused on the explicit 2016 election interference and whether there was a criminal conspiracy in campaign contacts. By doing so, he ignored the elephant in the room: Trump’s “decades-long personal and business ties to Russia”, which some FBI counterintelligence officials believed posed a national security threat (Throwing the books at Trump - Washington Examiner). In other words, Mueller’s team knew there was a much deeper story – but they stayed in their lane, perhaps constrained by higher-ups or by Mueller’s own conservative approach.

What’s worse, Mueller shied away from steps that might have blown the case wide open. He never subpoenaed Trump’s personal bank records or tax returns – basic documents that almost surely would have revealed streams of Russian-sourced cash and shady shell transactions. He never forced Trump to sit for an interview (letting him submit laughable written answers instead). As legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted, Mueller was too respectful of the rules and norms that the Trump crew was gleefully trampling (Throwing the books at Trump - Washington Examiner). These oversights were “the most revealing, and defining, failures” of Mueller’s investigation (Throwing the books at Trump - Washington Examiner). By tiptoeing around Trump’s finances and hesitating to confront the president directly, Mueller left the juiciest fruits hanging untouched.

The result? Mueller documented an extraordinary volume of contacts between Team Trump and Russians, and a massive Russian effort to elect Trump – effectively establishing that the campaign welcomed and benefited from an attack by a hostile foreign power. He even detailed ten instances of Trump potentially obstructing justice to hinder the investigation. But because Mueller didn’t explicitly say “Collusion!” or indict Trump for a criminal conspiracy (under the incredibly high bar of proof required), Trump falsely claimed “total exoneration.” The truth – that Mueller found extensive evidence of cooperation and lied about it repeatedly – got lost in the fog. And crucially, Mueller’s refusal to “follow the money” meant the American public never got a full accounting of Trump’s dirty dealings with Russia (Throwing the books at Trump - Washington Examiner). The deep financial compromise – the decades of money laundering we reviewed above – remained officially unexposed by the government’s highest-profile investigation. It was a glaring omission, and Putin and Trump both exploited it.

Mueller, constrained and perhaps over-cautious, handed off a half-finished job. It fell to others – journalists, congressional probes, and future investigators – to connect those last dots. And indeed, subsequent reports (like the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan 1,000-page tome in 2020) did outline much of what Mueller didn’t: that Trump’s campaign manager was literally sharing internal polling data with a Russian spy during the election, that Trump was secretly pursuing a lucrative Moscow tower deal even as he denied any business in Russia, and so on. But by then, the narrative battle had been lost. Trump and his enablers muddied the waters enough to escape accountability in the short term. Mueller, sadly, let them off the hook by not going for the jugular. He should have exposed the full Trump-Russia nexus – the kompromat, the money pipeline, the quid pro quo. Instead, we got a partial tale with a muted climax.

“Calculated Chaos”: Sabotaging America by Design

One of the great myths of the Trump era is that the turmoil he unleashed – the trade wars, the government shutdowns, the alienation of allies, the assault on our institutions – was just the product of incompetence, impulsiveness, or even mental instability. Pundits love to psychoanalyze Trump as a toddler throwing tantrums or a narcissist in over his head. But what if the chaos was intentional? What if the damage to the U.S. and Western economies was calculated, a strategic goal rather than an accidental side effect? When you view Trump’s presidency through the lens of his Putin alliance, his seemingly erratic economic and foreign policies snap into focus as part of a sinister strategy. Trump wasn’t bumbling cluelessly – he was sabotaging American power and global stability on purpose, to serve both his own financial interests and Putin’s geopolitical aims.

Look at Trump’s so-called economic “policies.” He sparked needless trade conflicts that hurt American farmers, manufacturers, and consumers, while benefiting hostile regimes. For instance, his tariff war with our allies and China drove China to seek soybeans and other farm goods from Russia and elsewhere, bolstering foreign competitors at U.S. expense. His tariff chaos also rattled global markets and injected uncertainty into the world economy – exactly what you’d do if you wanted to weaken the West’s economic cohesion. Trump didn’t stop there. He actively antagonized the European Union – cheering for Brexit, slapping tariffs on European steel and aluminum, and badmouthing EU leaders. Who benefits from a fractured Europe? Putin, of course, whose divide-and-conquer strategy aims to break European unity. Trump also repeatedly threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO, the cornerstone of Western security, essentially giving Putin the greatest gift imaginable (Trump says he would encourage Russia to 'do whatever the hell ...). Undermining NATO economically and militarily has been a Kremlin dream for decades – Trump was ready to gift-wrap it. (Thankfully, cooler heads in his administration and Congress stymied the worst of these impulses, but the mere fact an American president talked about ditching NATO or letting it decay was a win for Moscow).

Domestically, Trump’s economic sabotage was equally brazen. He exploded the federal deficit with a trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich (himself included), then later toyed with defaulting on the national debt during standoffs with Congress – a move that would have triggered a global financial crisis. He shut down the government for the longest period in U.S. history over a futile border wall demand, idling hundreds of thousands of workers and sapping economic growth. He installed shameless cronies and dismantled expertise in key agencies, hollowing out the very institutions that keep our economy and security stable. At times it seemed like he wanted to weaken America: he undercut the FBI and CIA (to discredit the Russia investigation), bashed the Federal Reserve for not bending to his whims, and even peddled wild conspiracies that undercut confidence in U.S. elections and the dollar. All of this chaos wasn’t just narcissistic venting; it consistently aligned with Russia’s objective of eroding the pillars of U.S. strength – our stable economy, our alliances, our faith in democratic institutions.

Critics often ask: was Trump a wannabe dictator, or just a moron? But this is a false dichotomy. The evidence points to Trump as a witting participant in a broader authoritarian project. His actions – however buffoonish in presentation – followed a coherent pattern of sabotaging the post-WWII liberal order. He fiercely attacked NATO and the EU (music to Putin’s ears). He praised and emulated autocrats while insulting democratic allies. He worked to make America more chaotic and internally divided, undermining our global standing. This is the method in his madness. Trump’s loyalties lie not with American ideals or prosperity, but with himself and those who can enrich and empower him. And that means Putin. Every outrageous economic or foreign policy move Trump made, you can draw a line connecting it to Putin’s interests or to Trump’s own corrupt profits. Often, those lines overlap.

Take energy policy: Trump worked to weaken America’s clean energy competitiveness (pulling out of the Paris climate accord, trying to revive coal) – moves that ultimately help Russia, a petro-state reliant on oil and gas exports, and hurt the U.S. in the emerging clean energy economy. Or take the COVID-19 debacle: Trump’s deliberate downplaying and mismanagement of the pandemic devastated the U.S. economy and killed over a million Americans, while Russia exploited the chaos with disinformation and hacking of vaccine research. It’s hard to say Trump intended to help Russia there, but his wilful sabotage of America’s pandemic response certainly fit his pattern of scorning expert advice and causing maximum damage – again raising the question of whether this was gross incompetence or cold calculation to create chaos (from which he could try to grab more power or at least distract from his failures).

The bottom line: Trump’s wrecking-ball presidency served Putin’s agenda at virtually every turn. The chaos was not random; it was strategic. As I wrote in a previous column, it was “Calculated Chaos” – designed to soften up the U.S. and the West, making us weaker, poorer, and less able to stand up to tyrants like Putin (Throwing the books at Trump - Washington Examiner) (Trump says he would encourage Russia to 'do whatever the hell ...). And let’s not forget Trump’s attempted self-coup after he lost the 2020 election – inciting an insurrection to cling to power. That was the capstone of his authoritarian project. It failed (this time), but it further tore at America’s democratic fabric – a dream outcome for Putin. An America that distrusts its own elections, that is at war with itself, is an America sidelined on the world stage. Trump delivered that division on a silver platter.

The Authoritarian Alliance Continues

It’s tempting to sigh with relief that Trump is out of office (for now) and that Putin’s meddling in 2016 is old news. But this story is far from over. Both Trump and Putin are still very much at large, getting away with their crimes, and plotting their next moves. Trump survived two impeachments and numerous scandals without ever facing real legal consequences (as of this writing, his day of criminal reckoning has yet to fully materialize on the Russia front, although other indictments are finally circling him). He’s even running for president again, still spouting the same lies and still openly admiring Putin. Meanwhile, Putin is literally getting away with murder – in Ukraine, in Syria, and in the shadowy cyberwar against democracies. Far from being punished for 2016, Putin faced a slap on the wrist (a few sanctions here and there), and Trump fought even those minimal measures tooth and nail. Both men saw that they could push the envelope even further. Putin doubled down, invading Ukraine in 2022, confident that a fractured West (thanks in part to Trumpism) wouldn’t stop him. Trump, for his part, praised Putin’s invasion as “genius” – confirming yet again where his allegiances lie.

The tragic reality is that the Trump-Putin nexus – this unholy alliance of kleptocracy and autocracy – remains a dire threat to America and the world. They have different styles: Putin operates in the shadows with poison and proxy armies, Trump blusters on TV and rallies a cult-like base. But they share a common goal: to enrich themselves and entrench their power by destroying the foundations of liberal democracy. They feed off each other. Putin uses Trumpist disinformation to weaken America; Trump and his acolytes cheer on Putin’s assaults on the global order. It’s a tag team of tyranny.

And accountability still eludes them. Mueller’s narrow probe didn’t get the full truth out (Throwing the books at Trump - Washington Examiner). Congress, hamstrung by partisanship and fear, never truly held Trump to account – Senate Republicans let him off the hook despite overwhelming evidence of abuse and misconduct. Internationally, responses to Putin’s crimes (from election interference to war crimes) have been too timid. So these two bandits proceed essentially undeterred. Each time they escape justice, they become more emboldened. Trump learned that he could welcome foreign help, obstruct investigations, profiteer off the presidency, and even inspire a violent coup attempt – all without paying a serious price. Putin learned that the free world was so divided and craven that he could annex territory and attack democracies and still get invited to summits or have his oil money welcomed. Impunity has only encouraged their worst instincts.

If we do not confront the reality of this partnership and the scope of their project, we are doomed to repeat 2016, or something even worse. The next Trump (or Trump himself) could very well succeed in fully dismantling American democracy from within. The next Putin gambit might not stop at a hacked election or a regional war. We are dealing with men who have no limit to their ambition or depravity, held in check only by our willingness to fight back.

The evidence is all there, for anyone willing to see: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have been working hand in hand, openly and in secret, to advance a broader authoritarian agenda. It’s an agenda that transcends borders – a sort of autocrats’ united front against the ideals of democracy, transparency, and rule of law. Trump wasn’t “just joking” when he asked Russia to intervene in our election, and he isn’t “just whining” when he undermines trust in our voting and justice systems. It’s premeditated. Putin isn’t “just defending Russia” when he bombs hospitals or poisons dissidents abroad; he’s sending a message that international norms mean nothing compared to might and ruthlessness.

In this broader context, Trump’s assault on American institutions and Putin’s assault on the world order are two fronts in the same war. It’s a war against liberal democracy – against the idea that governments should serve the people rather than the rulers. Trump and Putin have proven to be loyal allies in this war, each using their own methods of calculated chaos to weaken the defenses of free societies.

Conclusion: Exposing the Calculated Conspiracy

It’s long past time to put to rest the comforting delusions about Donald Trump. He is not a bumbling fool accidentally causing havoc. He is not a “poorly advised” outsider who blundered into the arms of Russian operatives. He is an active, willing agent of his own greed and Putin’s malign influence. The pattern of behavior – from money laundering to political collusion to policy sabotage – is too consistent to chalk up to chance or incompetence. Trump has methodically sold out America’s interests for his personal gain and for the benefit of a hostile foreign leader who helped install him in power. That is the very definition of betrayal.

Likewise, Vladimir Putin is not a misunderstood nationalist or a chess-playing genius operating in a vacuum. He found a collaborator in Trump, and together they nearly pulled off one of the greatest heists in history: the subversion of the American presidency to serve an authoritarian foreign power. While Putin bankrolls war and instability abroad, Trump was (and aspires to be again) sabotaging democracy from within. It’s a pincer movement against the free world.

The calculated connections between Trump and Russia’s dirty money laid the groundwork. The calculated chaos Trump unleashed as president was the execution of the plan. And the calculated cover-up – the failed Mueller probe, the endless lies – has so far shielded them from full accountability. But history hasn’t written its final chapter on this cabal. We the people, armed with knowledge of the facts, can expose the full truth. We can demand justice and push our institutions to hold traitors to account, no matter how powerful. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to ensure that a aspiring tyrant like Trump and a foreign dictator like Putin do not get to keep laughing at our expense.

America nearly fell for good in this racket. We teetered on the edge of losing everything – our democratic norms, our security, our role as a leader of the free world. That fate was not averted by accident, but by the slimmest of margins and the courage of a few. We might not be so lucky next time. The only way to prevent the next Trump-Putin plot is to confront the last one head on. We must drag their crimes into the sunlight and call them what they are.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have conspired – yes, conspired – in an assault on the American people and the international order. They have done so repeatedly, knowingly, and with impunity. This was an authoritarian power-play, not a series of random blunders. We ignore or downplay this reality at our peril. The evidence is overwhelming (and I’ve only scratched the surface here). The task now is to act on it. Justice demands that we hold these men accountable, and vigilance demands that we never let such calculated betrayal get this far again.

The hour is late, but the truth remains our best weapon. It’s time to use it. The Trump-Russia nexus can no longer be dismissed or diminished – it must be exposed in full, and remembered as a cautionary tale of how fragile democracy can be when corrupted from within. If we fail to do that, Trump and Putin – and others like them – will be back to finish what they started. And next time, they just might succeed.

Let’s make sure there is no next time. The American experiment, and the future of the free world, depend on it.

Never again. Not on our watch.

 
 
 

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