“Bad Bromance” – what is Putin on Trump?

Is Donald Trump controlled by Moscow? Is he in debt of gratitude to Vladimir Putin? Or is Trump’s attitude towards the Russian leader just an expression of an admiration for Autocrater?

Whether Trump is actually sitting in Putin’s knee – and if so why – is a mystery. But there are clues.

The conclusion aroused amazement: Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an impact campaign with the aim of undermining confidence in American democracy and blackening Democrat’s candidate Hillary Clinton.

“We also believe that Putin and the Russian government have developed a clear preference for incoming President Trump,” CIA, the FBI and Swedish Agency for National Security (NSA) in the report released in January 2017, two weeks before Trump took the White House for the first time.

Since then it has been eight years. But despite several investigations by US authorities – everything from the Ministry of Justice and the FBI to Congress – Trump’s and Putin’s relationship is still a mystery. As far as is known, no one knows about Putin “has” something on Trump – a hold or compromising information, what the Russians usually call “compromise”.

“Everything we have so far are more questions, more evidence, more situations that point to very serious questions about Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia and specifically with Vladimir Putin,” former FBI manager Andrew McCabe told the magazine Foreign Policy in October.

– None of these questions have ever been answered. Probably because a thorough and legitimate investigation has never been made.

“Bad bromance”

Already in the 1990s, Trump’s links were talked about to Russia. The property magnate’s business went bad – and what saved the ship was investments from rocky Russians and former Soviets, including oligarchs near Putin. In 2018, Trump’s long -lasting architect Alan Lapidus told Foreign Policy that “all money came from Russia”.

“His involvement with Russia was deeper than he admitted,” he said of Trump.

The relationship between Trump and Putin is like a “bad bromance” between two alpha males, NBC News wrote 2016. By, on, by, on. They talk, they don’t talk. It’s a bit unclear, “complicated”.

Then it had been three years since Trump for the first time publicly expressed admiration for Putin.

“Do you think Putin comes to the Miss Universum competition in Moscow in November? If so, does he become my new best friend? ”Trump tweeted, 2013.

A year later, also on the then Twitter (today X): “I think Putin will continue to rebuild the Russian Empire.”

Trump: Putin is Slug

The years that followed, before Trump was elected US president in 2016, both men raised each other diligently. Tributes to the other flowed via social media and in various interviews.

“He is very flamboyant man, without a doubt talented,” said Putin 2015.

The relationship is said to have continued to flourish after Trump left the White House in 2021. According to The Washington post-journalist Bob Woodward’s book “War” from last year, they talked to each other at least seven times between 2021 and 2024. At one point Trump is said to have asked a co-worker to leave the room so he could have a “private telephone call.

Two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Putin just ordered what he himself beautified “Peace -paying forces” to Russian -backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, Trump described the Russian leader as “slug” and “smart”.

– Putin says that a large part of Ukraine is now independent. How smart isn’t that? He will go in and preserve peace. We could do the same at our southern border, Trump said in the right pod “The Clay Travis and Buck Sixteen Show”.

Rumors of women

Rumors about Putin’s plausible hold on Trump are long -lived. They are about everything from business loans to secret recordings – to compromising women’s visits to Russian hotel rooms. In a Senate Report from 2020, on Russian influence on the 2016 US election, there are several outputs about Trump’s relationships with women in Moscow.

It is clear that for decades, Trump has been obsessed with the idea of ​​building a Trump Tower in Moscow, plans that have not yet been realized. Already in 1987 he described the vision in his book “The Art of the Deal”: “A large luxury hotel right across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government”.

It is quite possible that the “Bromance” between Trump and Putin is not as complicated as it is believed, assessors notes. Perhaps it is simply Trump’s admiration for autocratic leaders – and their money – who speaks. The president himself has told himself positively to anyone who opens the wallet. As he described the relationship with the Saudis in 2015:

– Saudi Arabia, I agree with them all. They buy apartments from me. They spend 40 million (dollars), 50 million. Should I dislike them?