You Are Surprised by Trump and Putin Because You Don’t Understand That They Are Terrorists
- john raymond
- May 24
- 3 min read
The greatest trick played by authoritarian terrorists like Trump and his master in the Kremlin is not that they hide their intent — it is that they bank on your decency. They rely on your unwillingness to believe in their sustained malevolence.
They count on your instinct to rationalize, to assume that somewhere behind the madness, there must be misunderstanding — and not just pure, unadulterated malice. This is the foundational asymmetry in today’s war for truth and power: you are surprised by evil because you are good — because you don’t think like them. Because you can’t understand their terrorist ways.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are not conventional political actors. They are terrorists. They are agents of destabilization who use your own moral code against you. In any asymmetric conflict, the stronger side is not the one with the most weapons; it is the one willing to do what the other side cannot even imagine.
And so while the West, rooted in Enlightenment ideals and constitutional norms, seeks compromise and process, men like Trump and Putin thrive on betrayal, deception, and subversion. They commit acts of violence and terrorism to achieve their ends. One of them uses his army against Ukrainian civilians, the other attacks immigrants with agencies like ICE.
The American public — and indeed the world — struggles to comprehend Trump’s loyalty to Putin not because the evidence is unclear, but because the conclusion is too grotesque for the average person to accept. Why would a U.S. president actively aid a foreign adversary when that adversary is in the process of terrorizes Ukraine? Why would he undermine NATO, defame America’s intelligence agencies, and praise a criminal like Putin? Why would he attack elections, education, science, and the press?
The answer lies in asymmetric logic. Trump does these things because they weaken the West and serve Putin’s interests. That is the objective. The chaos is not collateral — that is the very goal of these men: to instill fear in their targets.
Most people cannot fathom this level of premeditated sabotage and murder, they reach for easier stories: perhaps he’s just narcissistic, or erratic, or misunderstood. Perhaps the Harvard incident is about his son. Perhaps his admiration of Putin is just macho bravado. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that his instincts always align with Russian goals.
These stories comfort. But they are wrong.
The truth is that Putin and Trump operate from a different moral architecture — one built not on empathy, but on dominance; not on truth, but on narrative control; not on patriotism, but on fear and terror.
You think they might actually love their countries. They don’t. They love what their countries can do for them. They love how national identity can be weaponized to terrorizes their enemies. They love how their murderous attacks cover theft, how their lies generate loyalty, and how their terrorist acts cows those who would stand against them.
And you are the ultimate target, but you don’t even know it.
You are at war even thought you still believe in norms. They are not bound by those. You believe in evidence. They believe in fear and aggression. You believe in decency. They believe in murder, death, and terror.
This is why Trump’s attacks education, justice, voting, international cooperation. It is not mere cultural grievances or partisan excess. For his master in the Kremlin, he attempts to dismantle the West — one terrible act at a time.
You are seeing Putin’s playbook executed by an American terrorist. Remember January, 6th, 2021? So know that Trump is not the master strategist; he is the junior partner in this asymmetric war Putin is waging against us.
To those who still feel baffled by the brazenness of it all, let this be your reckoning: you are not weak for having believed in good. But you are vulnerable if you do not now recognize the relentless attacks for the terrorism that they are. The age of naive balance is over. This is what asymmetric war looks like in the modern age.
And in this war, your goodness must become wisdom. Not blind trust, but lucid vigilance. Not fairness to the unfair, but courage to confront what you now know: Trump and Putin are not playing fair, they are playing to terrorize and to win.
They are not confused. They are not misguided. They are committed to your undoing. And they will use terrorist acts against you and against others to achieve their aims.
And unless you can commit just as fiercely to the defense of truth, of law, of knowledge, and of the better angels of our civilization — fear will buckle you and they will win.
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