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We are helping everyone who wants to hurt us. That is the genius of the Trump administration.
Here’s one example. Trump bombed Iran. In response, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, putting pressure on global oil supply. To ease the pressure, Trump lifted sanctions on both Russian and Iranian oil. The lifting of sanctions has eased Russia’s budget crunch while Russia provides Iran with intelligence and drones to target US troops and other US assets. Iran, too, is getting a windfall from oil sales, about $14 billion, and using that money to fight a war against the US. Iran has also started collecting tolls to allow some vessels to pass through the strait. Some vessels have paid up to $2 million to pass. They pay in Chinese currency to avoid US sanctions. So Iran gets money, and China becomes the go-to currency.
(Quick side note: Psst, Iran. May I suggest an app to allow vessels to pay the toll? You can call it the AyaTOLLapp. Call me, I’m available for consultations. You can pay me in yuan.)
Russia is also using that money to hit Ukraine harder. But weapons manufactured in the US that were meant for Ukraine and paid for by Europe will now go to the US instead, so it can defend itself from Iranian attacks guided by Russia. So Ukraine will have fewer weapons to hit Russia which is helping Iran hit the US.
We should care the president of the United States is helping those who are killing Americans. In fact, we used to call people who kill Americans terrorists and we fought an entire war over it. As I wrote for The Bulwark:
But Trump maintains his soft spot for Putin.
Here’s another example. Hungary will have a pivotal election next month that will determine whether Hungary can return from the brink of dictatorship and tilt back toward the European Union and democracy, or whether it will go full monty into the arms of Russia and autocracy.
I know Hungarian elections may seem obscure and irrelevant to many people, but Hungary under Viktor Orban has played an integral role in Russia’s destabilization activities in Europe and the US. It is also an example of the path the US is taking toward autocracy.
Orban has cracked down on the free press, closed universities, and overseen other major repression of civil society. He has been running massive election intimidation campaigns that go beyond vote-buying. Some individuals have expressed fear they will be denied medical care if they don’t vote for Orban’s party. One political opponent dropped his bid after the government’s child services agency threatened to take his children away. Remember these examples when Trump threatens to stop medicare payments to blue states or directs the Justice Department to investigate his opponents.
Orban has put up roadblocks for western aid to Ukraine, shared sensitive EU information directly with Russia and criminally charged with espionage the investigative journalist who uncovered that, provided an easy entryway for Russian intelligence officers and their proxies to enter Europe to carry out sabotage and other destabilization efforts, and acted as middleman for funding many of those operations, as I wrote about here.
Trump endorsed Orban during a CPAC conference this week, stating that Orban had “shown the entire world what’s possible when you defend your borders, your culture, your heritage, your sovereignty and your values. …I hope he wins, and I hope he wins big.”
The sovereignty line is a good one, since Orban has allowed Russia to interfere in Hungary’s elections. I’ve never understood how nationalist and sovereignist leaders justify receiving help from a country that demands their nation and their sovereignty in return.
JD Vance will be in Budapest for the Hungarian election, another sign of Trump’s open support for Orban. It also looks likely Trump will send members of his Board of Peace—made up of non-democratic countries that willingly paid Trump a billion dollars each—to serve as “election observers.” That sounds fair.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, has been assisting Orban’s campaign, too. Putin endorsed a plan by the Social Design Agency (SDA), a sanctioned Russian company known for helping influence US and other elections. For more on the Social Design Agency, see Class 19: Project Good Old USA.
The Russian plan paints Orban as the only one who can protect Hungary’s sovereignty (there’s that word again) and calling his opponent a puppet of Brussels. The Russian information operation has also painted Ukrainians as a threat to Hungary and exploited tensions between Hungary and Ukraine. To help fuel this, Hungary arrested seven Ukrainians earlier this month as they were moving gold bars and tens of millions of dollars and euros belonging to the government of Ukraine from Austria to Ukraine. The arrested Ukrainians were injected with a relaxant, a move that one of the Ukrainians likened to a KGB method. Hungary held them and the money to blackmail Ukraine.
As part of the operation to help Orban’s reelection, Russian intelligence officers considered staging an attempted assassination of Orban to help stir up his supporters.
In a report prepared for the SVR’s Active Measures Department, Russian intelligence officers wrote, “Such an incident will shift the perception of the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one, where the key themes will become state security and the stability and defense of the political system.”
The Trump administration is endorsing all this. Of course, Trump has implemented similar methods at home and the Kremlin also ran operations to help him get elected. As the Russia Report written by Special Counsel Robert Mueller (who passed away earlier this month) said, “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” Russian interference in elections (both in Europe and the US) has only gotten bolder and more widespread since then. And while Trump is running many of his own plays to influence this year’s US election in his favor, we can bet Russia will be assisting. (If Polymarket or Kalshi is taking those bets, let me know!)
When the Country Serves the President
It’s no surprise that these guys get along. Trump, Putin, and Orban all believe the country is there to serve them, not the other way around. A document dump related to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents revealed that Trump used highly classified information to help his business. He stole documents so sensitive that only six people in the entire government had access to them. Six!
Trump even had a then-23-year-old aide scan some of the documents onto her laptop and upload them to the cloud. Normally I would worry that Russia, Iran, China, or North Korea might hack that cloud and steal the sensitive information, but they don’t have to jump through those hoops. Trump has been known to just tweet intelligence out or share it with the Russians directly in the Oval Office. The new documents suggest he shared a classified map with individuals on a private flight to his golf course in New Jersey. So no need for hacking. Just offer to do business with him, or heck just go golf with him, and he’ll share it all.
Trump only cares about Trump. He does not serve the United States, but rather sees the United States as a tool to serve him and his family. Let’s demand more of our president. Click here to find a No Kings rally near you!
A roundup of things you should be reading
Fulton County’s Battle for Ballots: A Primer (Lawfare)
Trump Has Made a Fundamental Miscalculation about Iran (NYT)
The Difficulty of Getting Iran’s Nuclear Materials (NYT)
$500 and a trip abroad: How recruits end up in Russian sabotage training camps (Politico)
Just Security has launched WHAT JUST HAPPENED? as well as a litigation tracker to help readers keep up with the chaos
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
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