To Every Man Who Didn't Believe Hillary's "Putin's Puppet" Claim Because She Was a Woman
- john raymond
- Jun 7
- 3 min read
It is time for a reckoning—not just with Donald Trump, not just with Putin, but with ourselves. With the men, especially those who call themselves “resisters,” “moderates,” or “reasonable critics” of Trump, who nonetheless refused to say the one thing Hillary Clinton said plainly, the one thing she was mocked for saying: That Donald Trump is Putin’s puppet.
She was right. She is right!
Not metaphorically. Not just “aligned with” Russia. Not just soft on Putin. Hillary Clinton said it to his face in a debate, on live television: “You are a puppet.” Trump fumbled. “No puppet, no puppet—you’re the puppet,” he retorted, in the kind of juvenile projection that has become his trademark. And in that moment, the air shifted. She had pierced the veil. She had said aloud what many knew and most refused to admit.
And how did the media respond? How did the “intelligentsia,” the elite men on the left who lecture us about fascism and democracy and the rule of law respond?
They laughed.
They called her shrill. They said she was overplaying her hand. They called it conspiratorial. They fell back into the comfort of their own disbelief. Because she was a woman. Because she dared to name power and corruption while female. Because she had the audacity to not flinch.
Misogyny Has Consequences
It wasn’t just Hillary. Nancy Pelosi warned us again and again that “all roads lead to Putin.” Fiona Hill stood before Congress and warned us that Trump was spreading a fictional narrative—straight from Russian intelligence. Yevgenia Albats, a Russian journalist who has fought disinformation her whole life, said flatly: “Trump was the KGB’s dream.” Marie Yovanovitch, brutally slandered and removed from her post as Ambassador to Ukraine, stood her ground under threat. Stormy Daniels endured public shaming to speak the truth of Trump’s abuses. Cassidy Hutchinson risked everything to testify to January 6th and Trump’s role in it. And who among the media champions gave them the credit they deserved?
Instead, the narrative was sanitized, anonymized, and reframed through the mouths of men who pretended they had just now discovered what women had been saying for years.
You Do Not Get to Call Yourself Brave
If you—media man, centrist pundit, self-branded “thought leader”—are only now starting to say Trump is more than dangerous, but still can’t bring yourself to credit the women who said it early and often, then you are part of the problem.
You do not get to rewrite the history of this era to exclude the women who were vilified for being right. You do not get to pretend you were brave for nodding along with consensus once it became safe. You do not get to hide behind complexity, nuance, and “civility” while the country is being dragged toward fascism by a man whose strings are being pulled from Moscow.
They Were Right, You Were Cowards
They were right. And the rest of you failed. The men who knew better and said nothing. The men who thought Hillary was too ambitious, too cold, too “scripted.” The men who nodded solemnly when Jake Tapper bothsided Putin and Clinton. The men who still need a thousand data points when one courageous woman’s word would can sufficed.
The truth is, Trump’s relationship with Russia wasn’t hidden. It was flaunted. It was paraded onstage. It was the subject of congressional reports, intelligence briefings, and international warnings. And yet, it was women—again and again—who were first to say it without apology.
Not as a theory. As fact.
And now that he is president again—Trump 2.0, fully back in power—you who once scoffed, deflected, and doubted have no excuse left. The warnings are over. The truth is here.
Trump is a Russian asset. Hillary Clinton was right.
So was Pelosi. So was Yovanovitch. So were Daniels and Hutchinson and Hill.
And if you didn’t believe them then—because they were women—you better have the decency to admit it now. And you better find the courage to join them in naming what is still true:
Trump is not just dangerous. He is compromised. And silence, then or now, is complicity.
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