Trump The Gangster's New Clothes

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So a better literary parallel might be Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Goldfinger, in which the evil Auric Goldfinger attempts to stage his theft from Fort Knox with the help of a group of American mafia bosses, one of whom is the gloriously named Pussy Galore. Quite apart from the fact that her name aptly fits Trump's own“Access Hollywood tape” description of the masculine benefits of stardom, Fleming's storyline of gangsters helping gangsters more nearly matches the way in which Trump and Putin are conspiring together to kill Ukrainians and steal Ukrainian territory. But it would be pure fantasy to believe that Natalie Harp will prove a real-life Pussy Galore, prepared to foil her boss's dastardly schemes. Alas.

The Goldfinger parallel otherwise fits quite well: In Fleming's book, after all, Auric Goldfinger is revealed to be a cheat at golf and cards and to lust after gold in all its forms; in the end he is exposed as incompetent. Where it doesn't work is that in the Putin-Trump alliance the clever one is Putin, not Trump: Trump more resembles the vulgar, greedy New Jersey mafia bosses in Fleming's fictional creation than the sophisticated super-villain. Nonetheless we can hope that the eventual comeuppance will match that of the ultimately doomed and unsuccessful Goldfinger, even if we don't have either a James Bond or a Pussy Galore to rely upon to bring it about.

It is not enough, however, to find gruesome parallels for this real-life disaster. The consequences of the active alliance with Russia's war criminals that Donald Trump and his more Goldfingeresque partner, Elon Musk, have now made explicit is being seen in a tragic rise in the daily death rate of civilians in Ukrainian cities. The excellent Phillips O'Brien explained in his Substack newsletter yesterday how it is the deliberate slowdown of Musk's Starling/Starshield services for the Ukrainian military that is having the biggest effect.

As O'Brien says, both Musk and Trump are strangely reluctant to take responsibility for what they are doing as this deadly alliance with Russia is politically unpopular in the United States. The real mystery is why they have decided to dial up their support for Putin now, just three weeks before the mid-terms.

O'Brien's theory, that the reason must be that Putin's situation is getting desperate and he needs the support, is an appealing one though not entirely convincing. It is true that Russian forces are losing territory in the land war, and taking an even more terrible toll of casualties than before. But the damage Russia has been able to do to Ukraine's energy and other infrastructure through its missile and drone attacks has also been substantial, with Ukraine's air defenses already depleted thanks to the shortage of Patriot missile interceptors.

Moreover, the plot looks about to thicken. A report in the Wall Street Journal on October 18th seems to confirm an idea that had already been rumored: that Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping may hold a trilateral summit soon, most likely on November 18th and 19th on the occasion of the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum) meeting due to be held in Shenzhen. (If my gift link to the WSJ doesn't work, Heather Cox Richardson has also written about it in her Substack today.)