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Trump outdoes Orwell in role as Moscow's Agent Orange by Richard Wolffe
Trump outdoes Orwell in role as Moscow's Agent Orange
Richard Wolffe
Can we be sure that two and two still equal four after the US president’s abject abandonment of truth in service of Russia?
Key moments from the Trump-Putin press conference - video
The best disinformation and psy-ops campaigns are supposed to leave you dazed and confused, unable to discern truth from fiction, friend from foe, right from wrong. So those who watched Donald Trump’s extraordinary press conference alongside Vladimir Putin might well be feeling nauseous, several hours later. Listening to Trump’s responses about Russian acts of aggression, it was hard to know who was playing the role of the American president. His performance was so nakedly, brazenly pro-Russian, you had to wonder what ranks higher on the Trumpian scale of stupidity: the president’s own intellect or his dim view of ours.
George Orwell conjured up a totalitarian regime where Ignorance Is Strength, but he surely never conceived of this. How can we know that two and two make four, or that the DNC isn’t responsible for its own hacking, or that Vladimir Putin isn’t a bigger American friend than the entire European Union and Nato alliance? As Trump explained so clearly, when he talks about Russia as a rival, he really means it as a compliment, no matter what your lying ears have told you. So you may have heard him tell CBS that Russia is a “foe in certain respects”. But you obviously heard wrong. Right? “Well, actually I called him a competitor,” said Trump, flicking the gaslight on and off. “And a good competitor he is. And I think the word ‘competitor’ is a compliment.”
Whatever you say, comrade.
The man pretending to be the American president spent most of his time posing in what purported to be a press conference. He pouted and thrust his chin out in the style made famous by Benito Mussolini. He pensively nodded like Pablo Escobar in Narcos on Netflix.
It was hard to see Putin’s facial expression because his skin has been stretched so tight across his skull. Besides, underneath all that plastic surgery, there’s the face of “an intelligence officer”, as he reminded us all.
. . . .
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/16/trump-putin-orwell-moscow-agent-orange