It’s one of the great unanswered questions of the past decade: what the hell could Russia’s dictator president Vladimir Putin have on Donald Trump that would force the American president to consistently behave with such deference and fear, bordering on total submission?
The query was raised anew this past week over the deal suspending fuel import sanctions on Russia for six months to allow for diesel sales at market prices — a surefire boon to the Russian economy. It was done at the behest, naturally, of Trump, who made it even worse by mocking the reaction to it of Ukraine’s courageous leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
When it comes to Putin and Zelensky, Trump always purposefully gets things exactly backwards, pretending it was Russia that was invaded and Ukraine has demonstrated unreasonable aggression while defending its ongoing existence. It’s insane — but it’s also part of Trump’s calculated currying of favor with Putin.
I don’t for a second believe it’s solely about Trump’s respect for a guy who has such a strongman stranglehold on his nation and its people. No, it’s got to be much more personal than that.
Trump has repeatedly, and seemingly without much prompting, behaved in ways that benefit Putin, yet there is no publicly verified evidence that the man is blackmailing him. What makes the question fascinating is that Putin wouldn’t necessarily need photographs, recordings or incriminating documents to exert influence. A relationship built on financial interests, personal flattery, political calculation or mutual advantage could produce some of the same results.
Is it about simple kompromat? It’s an unresolved mystery that raises several plausible theories. And it could be that there’s a little bit of truth to all of them.
Let’s go over them here, one at a time.
1.Financial secrets and business entanglements: Putin could well possess records of financial transactions Trump would rather not see disclosed, including for no-interest loans (read: gifts) and money changing hands for properties that Trump has never paid tax on that both predate and coincide with his presidencies.
It's long been known that Russian buyers purchased properties in Trump-branded developments. And, of course, there was the Donald Trump Jr. private island wedding financed in part by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, a close associate of Putin. One big happy family. That’s just one of what could be multiple embarrassing business arrangements.
2. Embarrassing recordings from Trump’s multiple visits to Moscow: This is the famed direct kompromat theory, in which the 2017 Steele dossier alleged that Russian intelligence possessed sexually compromising info about Trump from his 2013 Moscow visit in particular. We’re talking in part about the famous, though unsubstantiated, pee tape.
We’re talking about secret recordings and photos that Trump could call fake but couldn’t be easily explained away. And let’s just say it’s interesting, to say the least, that Trump has never taken Russia to task about anything, no matter how nasty the allegations. All he’s done is deny it all.
My money is on the hookers and urination having actually occurred.
3. Information about the 2016 election that has never become public: The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. It also identified serious counterintelligence vulnerabilities involving Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his contacts with Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik.
No matter how many times Trump screams “Russia! Russia! Russia! Hoax,” it wasn’t. It was real. Everyone knows it, especially those denying it the loudest.
4. Putin knows something about Trump’s private conversations: Russian intelligence services have extensive experience gathering information about foreign political figures. It’s more than conceivable that Moscow possesses recordings, notes and intelligence reports surrounding conversations involving Trump and his intermediaries.
It's also true that every conversation between Putin and Trump is unusually, disturbingly private — never more so than in 2017 at the Helsinki summit that went on for two hours with only their interpreters in the room and no official record or notes shared.
All Putin would need to do is look Trump straight in the eye to convey, “Remember Donald. Don’t even think about stepping out of line, pal. I own you.”
5. Putin doesn’t need blackmail because flattery is enough: Trump has publicly praised Putin’s strength and leadership. He clearly wants the respect/fear that Putin attracts. All Putin needs to do is toss Trump the occasional “You are a strong leader” while patting him on the head, and Trump is inspired to behave like a good little puppy.
6. Their political interests sometimes overlap: Trump has questioned longstanding assumptions about NATO, claiming the NATO countries have fleeced the U.S. Cooperation or apparent accommodation could arise without coercion. But the safer bet remains coercion.
7. Putin may benefit from Trump’s uncertainty about what Russian intelligence knows, even if no explicit blackmail threat has ever been made: The mere possibility of damaging personal disclosures can create leverage without any specific threat being presented.
It serves Putin’s interests most by his never actually revealing anything but holding it all over Trump’s head with the threat that it could drop at any moment. That’s how a Russian leader winds up with a subservient slave at the head of the United States.
What seems to matter most is that Trump is the most powerful ally a Russian leader could ever hope to have in America, to the extent that Trump represents Putin’s interests on the world stage. It has drawn bewildering reactions from all our allies throughout Europe in particular, both current and former.
But it’s beyond infuriating that Trump deals with Zelensky in such bad faith, always pretending to be neutral in the war with Russia when nothing could be further from the truth. Any way you slice it, our president is on the side of chaos and ultimately evil.
One day it will all come out and we’ll learn why Trump kisses Putin’s butt like he does. But in truth it likely isn’t all that complicated. Putin almost surely has enough on Trump to ruin him a thousand times over.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)