by Noah Your Saturday Cartoon: I chose the above cartoon because it explains a lot and does it simply. The way I see it, Vladimir Putin saw Donald Trump as venal and easy to groom, a traitor to America, supremely corrupt, and stupid enough to be a useful tool and/or idiot. The mistake Putin made may have been one of underestimating the extent of his Manchurian asset's stupidity. If Trump had won in 2020, no doubt he would have pulled the U.S. out of NATO, thus giving Russia the freedom to run amok unchecked over the entirety of Europe. Why else would Trump have tried so hard to weaken the U.S. and NATO during his term? Given the context of Trump's nonstop attempts to appease Putin, there's no other logical way to see it. When Trump lost, Putin, a man almost as unstable as his pupil, blew his stack and decided to embrace his own well-nurtured terrorist proclivities and be seen for all time as this decade's bin Laden. The horror is multiplied when you realize that a whole political party and several right wing propaganda outlets rolled out their red carpet and backed him, at least until that ideal began to turn on them and backfire. They did so knowing that Putin had aided their Dear Leader's election and they did so through two impeachments. No matter what, the likes of Moscow Mitch McConnovich and Marjorie Traitor Greene wanted their guy in control and they kept him in control when they had the opportunity to cast him out. Had Trump won the 2020 election, they would be right there by Putin's side even today, no matter how many hospitals he deliberately bombed and how many pregnant women died of shrapnel in the streets of Ukraine's cities. It's all just legitimate political discourse, you know.