Because Putin’s Collapse Is Trump’s Collapse...

john raymond
Aug 22
2 min read

The Conventional Wisdom—And Its Failure

By conventional political logic, Donald Trump should now be distancing himself from Vladimir Putin.

Trump claims to admire only winners. He reveres power, mocks weakness, and publicly cultivates the image of the man who discards subordinates as soon as they become liabilities.

Mainstream analysts, even those hostile to him, insist that Trump is simply “transactional”—he uses allies until they can no longer serve him.

If that caricature were true, then at this moment—with Putin weakened, the Russian economy collapsing, and Ukraine demonstrating battlefield superiority—we would see Trump cutting ties, minimizing exposure, and seeking new strongmen to flatter.

We, however, see no such thing.

The Doubling Down

Instead, we see the opposite. At a recent White House press conference, Trump flaunted a signed photo from Putin, a literal token of Kremlin favor.

At the Alaska summit, he offered concessions that mirror Putin’s war aims.

On Truth Social, he insists that Ukraine is losing—a falsehood drawn directly from the Kremlin’s narrative machine.

Far from abandoning a sinking ship, Trump is doubling down on the man and the regime that now appears most vulnerable.

The True Explanation

Why does this divergence exist? Pillar One—regime security—is the prime directive.

Clearly, Trump’s survival and Putin’s survival are bound together. Putin falls, Trump falls.

This is not mere ideological sympathy from Trump; it is structural dependence.

The Kremlin cultivated Trump across four decades, binding him through kompromat, financial lifelines, and political sponsorship. The result is not the cartoonish “deal maker” the press imagines but a captured asset.

Transactional analysis misses the transnational reality: Trump’s “transactions” have never been free choices, but obligations enforced by Moscow’s intelligence state.

The Subservience to the FSB

Not once in Trump’s career do we see him acting for another without self-benefit—until Putin. That exception is the key. What looks like affinity for Putin in fact reveals subservience.

The FSB holds the strings, and Trump has always danced to its tune. What is presented as “admiration for strongmen” is in fact obedience to his handler.

The signed photo is not a curiosity; it is a signal. It reminds the world, and Trump himself, of the chain of command.

Implications for Americans

This reality must shatter illusions. Trump is not flailing alone. His flailing is synchronized with Putin’s own decline.

As Russia implodes under sanctions, strikes, and military defeat, Trump lashes out at American institutions, at allies, at truth itself—not to save America, but to save himself by saving the man to whom his fate is tied.

Americans must understand: the survival of their democracy is threatened because their president’s own political survival is linked to a foreign autocrat’s sinking regime.