What The Lincoln Project Gets Wrong
- john raymond
- May 30
- 2 min read
Donald Trump has been cultivated by Russian interests for decades and has operated as a willing asset of the Kremlin. This is not new. And what also is not new is how persistently people, even Trump’s critics, refuse to understand what that means...
Case and point: The Lincoln Project.
The Lincoln Project’s recent post—“Trump’s finally realizing what the rest of us knew long ago — Putin is playing him like an idiot”—completely misses the point. Trump is not some naïve pawn; he is a strategically useful tool whose every blunder, every delay, and every contradictory word functions as part of a broader disinformation and disruption campaign.
Yes, Trump is an idiot in the classic sense—uninformed, reactive, boastful. But he is not merely a fool being manipulated. He is a willing participant in a long game of asymmetric warfare, where the goal is to destabilize Western alliances, fracture democratic institutions, and spread distrust in liberal systems. Trump’s job isn’t to enact policy. His job is to degrade clarity. And he performs it with theatrical conviction.
His recent Truth Social post claiming Putin is “playing with fire” is not a moment of awakening. It is an act. We have seen this pantomime before: tough talk, no action, and immediate walk-back. He pretends outrage at Putin’s moves while omitting any support for Ukraine. He dramatizes the danger while subtly excusing the aggressor. This is not the language of a man waking up. This is the rhetorical smoke of someone recalibrating his cover—maintaining the illusion of distance from Putin even while continuing to shield him from consequences.
The Lincoln Project, like much of the mainstream commentary class, still clings to a Cold War lens of espionage, where a dupe gets tricked by a handler. But that misses how modern influence works. Trump doesn’t need direct orders to be effective. He doesn’t need to know the Kremlin’s full playbook. He simply needs to perform in ways that serve its goals—and he does, again and again. By downplaying his agency and calling him “played,” the Lincoln Project lets him off the hook.
Worse, it misleads the public. People need to understand that Trump isn’t just a fool; he is a wrecking ball with intent. He is not a victim of Putin’s cunning—he is a channel for it. And calling him an idiot being played just gives him more cover to continue doing damage under the guise of incompetence.
Let’s be clear: this is asymmetric warfare. Trump’s lies, contradictions, and vague threats are not evidence of chaos—they are the method. Confuse the media. Divide the electorate. Undermine rule of law. Give comfort to autocrats. That’s the mission. And Trump executes it with disturbing reliability.
The Lincoln Project is right to sound the alarm. But they are wrong about what we’re looking at. Trump is not the mark. He is the stage manager of America’s disinformation opera, starring himself, written in Moscow, and funded by Kremlin money and our delusions. Until critics stop treating him like a victim of manipulation and start treating him as a co-author of the sabotage, they will continue to play into the very deception they hope to resist.
Comments