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Anne Applebaum:Don't forget those smiling images of Trump and the Russians
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/dont-forget-those-smiling-images-of-trump-and-the-russians/2017/05/11/ea26a204-3651-11e7-b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html?The pictures from the Oval Office on Wednesday — published by a Tass photographer, as no U.S. media were present — are jolly and good-humored. President Trump, who fired his FBI director a day earlier, is grinning for the cameras and shaking hands with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. They, too, smile and laugh, relishing the many ironies of the moment. . . .
. . . In Stalin’s day, people were tortured to get them to confess to crimes they had not committed. Nowadays they are often tortured as a form of extortion: If their families pay up, the torture stops. Dadin’s wife, Anastasia Zotova — she was in London meeting with human rights organizations — also told me that some prisoners are forced to work for prison guards and their families (another tradition handed down from the Gulag). It is fitting, somehow, that in Putin’s Russia, people torture for money and not ideology.
. . .
What is the connection between those stories (on torture of Russian dissidents) and the photographs in the Oval Office? There isn’t one. Neither Trump, nor Lavrov, nor Kislyak is remotely interested in the fate of Dadin or Dmitriev, if they have even heard of them, which seems unlikely. Nor are any of them much interested in the fate of Dan Heyman, the West Virginia reporter arrested recently for persistent questioning of Tom Price, the health and human services secretary. Due process, rule of law, all of the dull rules and procedures that deliver justice are uninteresting to men who believe in personalized power unconstrained by traditions, institutions or constitutions. Look at how pleased they were to see one another — and compare those pictures with Trump’s stiff and awkward news conferences with democratic leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel or Britain’s Theresa May.
I know that investigations should continue, but let’s be clear: Russia would have needed no inducements or collusion to support Trump’s election campaign. His personality is the kind they understand, his cynicism and his dishonesty are familiar, his greed is the same as their greed. Above all, his lack of respect for the law is their lack of respect for the law. Trump fired the FBI director to get him off his television screen; Russian police lock up dissidents to get them out of public view. No, it’s not the same thing. But it’s not that different either.
. . . In Stalin’s day, people were tortured to get them to confess to crimes they had not committed. Nowadays they are often tortured as a form of extortion: If their families pay up, the torture stops. Dadin’s wife, Anastasia Zotova — she was in London meeting with human rights organizations — also told me that some prisoners are forced to work for prison guards and their families (another tradition handed down from the Gulag). It is fitting, somehow, that in Putin’s Russia, people torture for money and not ideology.
. . .
What is the connection between those stories (on torture of Russian dissidents) and the photographs in the Oval Office? There isn’t one. Neither Trump, nor Lavrov, nor Kislyak is remotely interested in the fate of Dadin or Dmitriev, if they have even heard of them, which seems unlikely. Nor are any of them much interested in the fate of Dan Heyman, the West Virginia reporter arrested recently for persistent questioning of Tom Price, the health and human services secretary. Due process, rule of law, all of the dull rules and procedures that deliver justice are uninteresting to men who believe in personalized power unconstrained by traditions, institutions or constitutions. Look at how pleased they were to see one another — and compare those pictures with Trump’s stiff and awkward news conferences with democratic leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel or Britain’s Theresa May.
I know that investigations should continue, but let’s be clear: Russia would have needed no inducements or collusion to support Trump’s election campaign. His personality is the kind they understand, his cynicism and his dishonesty are familiar, his greed is the same as their greed. Above all, his lack of respect for the law is their lack of respect for the law. Trump fired the FBI director to get him off his television screen; Russian police lock up dissidents to get them out of public view. No, it’s not the same thing. But it’s not that different either.
1 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
I especially liked the point about how stiff he was with democratic world leaders, but these men are his people.
