Trump isn't really so much a Benedict Arnold as he is a Quisling.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

Arnold was an army officer who switched sides, and was planning on turning over a valuable city to the enemy - probably at least in part for money and because he thought he had been treated unfairly by the army.

Quisling, on the other hand, was a long-time sympathizer with a hostile foreign power that illegitimately installed him as the head of his country's government, which he then turned over - lock, stock and barrel - to the hostile country.

Arnold defected; Quisling was executed.

[exboyfil]

1. Quisling is the best description

I been thinking about whether running the old Reagan ad about the bear would be useful.

[uponit7771]

2. K&R, Traitor Tot is a collaborator

[RandomAccess]

3. Or you could go for Russian Oligarch

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. The difference is that while the oligarchs become rich because of Putin's support

(which is true of Trump, somewhat), Trump has become our head of government as the result of having been illegitimately installed as such by Putin - just as the Nazis made Quisling Norway's Prime Minister, and then Quisling's government aided and abetted Hitler's occupation of Norway. This is exactly what Trump has done or is trying to do, but on a cyber level rather than by means of a physical invasion and occupation.

Norway had a very effective and determined resistance movement. I hope we do, too.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Maybe, but it seems to me he has invented his own category...

or perhaps he just goes back to the old Robber Barons.

Unlike them, though, he managed to run for office instead of just buying politicians.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Quisling's treason was ideological; Trump's is probably purely egomaniacal.

The result is pretty much the same, though.

[Aristus]

7. Benedict Arnold was a brave soldier and a gifted field commander.

Quisling was an opportunistic, paper-pushing weasel.

'Quisling' is a better epithet for Trump than 'Benedict Arnold'.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. I agree. Trump is much more like Quisling than like Arnold in many respects.

A post-war psych evaluation of Quisling sounds familiar, too:

The Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung described Quisling as a mini-Hitler with a CMT (chosenness-myth-trauma) complex, or alternatively, megalo-paranoia, more often diagnosed in modern times as narcissistic personality disorder. He was "well installed in his personality," but unable to gain a following among his own people as the population did not provide a mirror for Quisling's ideology. In short, he was "a dictator and a clown on the wrong stage with the wrong script." As quoted by Dahl, psychiatrist Professor Gabriel Langfeldt stated Quisling's ultimate philosophical goals "fitted the classic description of the paranoid megalomaniac more exactly than any other case [he had] ever encountered."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidkun_Quisling