Broadly, they share the same goals, as in the total destruction of Western Democratic society.

Or rather, this is Putins goal, and has been for several decades. Trump himself has no real goals other than ‘being’ in power, and is in this sense a limited kind of cypher (although I argue he is a very poor/ extremely predictable cypher, it just occurs along different axis than policy). If Putin provides a pathway to power for Trump, then they are allies. If Putin was in anyway a barrier to power for Trump, he would drop him.

There is of course, very reasonably worthy speculation on the exact nature of the covert aspects of the Trump/ Putin relationship. MSNBC jerked off their viewership for almost 3 years in this regard and came up with basically nada-enchilada. Nothing truly came of any of the ‘leaks’ or otherwise. That being said, the Democrats in that time period worked their asses off to make sure that any investigation into foreign influence over the Trump campaign was fundamentally hampered from the beginning. It seemed like the Democrats were interested in making a show of it, but in proper Democratic fashion, refused to fully commit to something meaningful, and it all ended up being a big nothing burger. We do know that the kremlin worked their tails off to support the Trump campaign in 2015/ 16. We know that the specific leaks they made of the DNC effectively cheating to ensure Bernie didn’t win came from Russian sources. We also know that the DNC did not deny any of the fuckery they were conducting, so what was leaked likley happened. However, the Democratic investigation into any kind of formal relationship (which was the investigatory equivalent to building a lego set wearing oven mitts), ended up being mostly a show. That all being said, if we consider the overt aspects of how Trump supports Putin, and if we map Trumps typical actions and behavior to the situation, its almost assured that there is a there there, even if the Democrats worked their asses off to ensure we would fail to find it. Its very clear that the kremlin and Putin heavily favored Trump in the very very early period of his time as a candidate in 2015. The did engage in an influence campaign that effectively borne the modern white nationalist movement. Many of us watched this happen via r/TheDonald. These efforts lead directly to things like truth.social, the current state of the Republican party, the collapse of the BLM movement in late 2020, however, to the best of my knowledge, its all vectors pointing in basically the same direction. Few if any direct links are visible. If they exist, they’ve been well hidden or intentionally ignored.

So this brings up the overt aspects of the Trump/ Putin relationship. Trump has repeatedly shown unwavering support for the individual Putin, as this seemed to have been the approach he used to almost all of his foreign policy. Its all about relationships flowing through ‘him’. Trump isn’t making a relationship for the US and Russia by working with Putin, its a personal relationship Trump shares with Putin, and it just so happens that the US and Russia get to ride in the back seats. You can see this same pattern repeated through almost all of Putins relationships, the sets of world leaders I would say he was on ‘good’ relationship terms with were Putin, Kim Jon-Un, Bolsonaro, and the Saudis. Trump is very transactional in all his relationships; because in his approach all statecraft has to ‘flow’ through him, the result is that for these groups to have a relationship with the US (ie, Trump), they would need to enrich Trump in some way. See billion dollar loans etc to the Trump family, there is much one this. This can tie back into the covert aspects of how Trump does business. We shouldn’t expect him to do anything for anyone where he isn’t personally being enriched. Its very clearly this is the only way he does business.

As much as Trump is a cypher around policy, he isn’t so much of a cypher on business and statecraft. Its very clear through his behavior that Trump will adopt whatever policies lead to him being personally enriched, and will only adopt those policies in-which he is personally enriched. Trump is highly predictable in this regard; he has almost no subtly here. Because of this its reasonable to assume he is or has been personally enriched in some manner by Putin/ Russian oligarchs. He just doesn’t do relationships otherwise, and is likely to take a counter position if he isn’t being enriched. He’s incredibly consistent in his behavior in this regard.

I think the biggest question in the room that remains un-answered for me is:

“Is and has Trump been acting as a foreign agent for Russia (likely starting well before 2015), and if so why?”

Its a question worth bringing up, simply because Trump is so markedly consistent in the transactional nature of all of his relationships, and yet for this one particular Trump/ Putin thing, he actions practically and apparently orthogonal to all of ways he engages otherwise. He’s extremely consistent in his behavior, predictable to a laughable fault. So why this one? Why bend over for Putin?

I think if Trump saw Putin as a pathway to power, this would all make more sense, but also, Putin failed to get Trump into power in 2020, the way he was able to use social and mainstream media in 2016. Yet Putin still seems to hold the reigns. Its definitely worth speculating on.