M. Gessen

Is Trump like that?

Is Trump the lead actor, the star of a TV show in his own mind?

What do you think?

Fight, fight, fight.

There was a moment in his first term where he had a meeting with Vladimir Putin, and he'd been told by his own intelligence officials that Putin had intervened and messed around with the 2016 election.

And at the press conference afterwards, Trump disavowed his own

his own security people.

So I've spoken to President Putin.

He assures me he did nothing of the kind, and I believe him.

I used to think, and I think a lot of people used to think, that Putin had something on Trump, some compromising information.

And then I think to myself, what could he possibly tell the world about Trump that would embarrass him?

So why the love for Putin?

He was in Putin's movie.

He's in Putin's movie now.

There's another strange dynamic in the Trump administration.

There's up is down, black is white, that kind of misinformation that goes on.

There were 900 million people at his inauguration, and ingesting bleach is a great way to get rid of COVID-19.

You describe his regime as practising a kind of, quote, militant incompetence.

Like a deliberative process of government, you mean?

All those people he hated when he was a property developer.