Putin Has Succeeded in Hurting Our Country

The cyber-attacks that took place prior to our last presidential election were part of a carefully orchestrated and well-coordinated plan conducted by Maestro Vladimir Putin to wreak havoc in our country and it certainly worked. To be clear, Putin is a despot and former KGB head who rules via tyranny and violence. He has an estimated net worth of $200 billion, which was not accrued by being a nice, honorable guy.

Vladimir Putin is toxic. When he and president Obama were in the same room together in 2016 at the G20 summit in China, Obama’s distaste for Putin so was evident it looked as if he was going to pass a kidney stone. Obama described the meeting as “candid, blunt and businesslike,” but he also cited “gaps of trust” between Russia and the U.S., particularly regarding cyber-security issues.

Obama’s concerns were not unfounded. Robert Mueller has currently indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 32 people (26 of them Russian nationals) and 3 companies, many of them cyber-related crimes. Call me crazy, but Paul Manafort has plead guilty and made a deal, yet many Republicans seem to think that this will not affect Donald Trump. Alan Dershowitz, until now a vociferous defender of Trump called it “a very bad day for the Trump administration.”

According to the Cold War Museum, “The main duties of the KGB were to gather intelligence in other nations, conduct counterintelligence, maintain the secret police, the KGB military corps and the border guards, suppress internal resistance, and conduct electronic espionage. The KGB also enforced Soviet morals and promoted Soviet ideology with propaganda.”

Putin has continued that mission, not just in our country, but recently in the United Kingdom as well. Two Russian intelligence officers just attempted to murder a former agent in London with nerve gas, and despite massive evidence against them, Putin has claimed they were there to visit a cathedral.

Despite Putin’s appalling history and ongoing atrocious behavior, Donald Trump chose to have a private closed-door meeting with him. Trump has spoken negatively about almost everyone, including the Pope, but he’s never said a bad thing about Putin. At a rally this summer, Trump said, “You know what? Putin's fine. He’s fine. We’re all fine. We’re people.”

It’s enough to make one believe that — well — Trump could be involved with the Russians. I will of course wait for Robert Mueller’s findings before calling Donald Trump guilty, but I believe that Putin has succeeded in hurting our country.

America is divided culturally and socially and much of it is the fault of Donald Trump’s divisive behavior. Donald Trump thrives on chaos and disruption, not governing from the Oval Office but rather from Twitter, where his petty, childlike behavior is not a secret, but clearly displayed for the entire world to see. Trump believes that a robust economy exempts him from habitual lying and blatant dishonesty, which have always been his modus operandi.

It’s clear that as a leader Donald Trump is hopelessly out of his league and rather than wanting to learn and grow, he becomes more myopic with daily displays of incompetence on television, Twitter and in books. Perhaps Trump — more than any of us — realizes how near we are to the end. The closer we get, the more his hysteria and bad behavior mounts.

Rob Taub has enjoyed an eclectic career in film, television, radio, and journalism. He has interviewed everyone from pop stars to presidents and he has written more than 250 articles for People Magazine, FoxNews.com, SI/Cauldron, The Huffington Post, and Thrive Global. Rob is a respected Diabetes Advocate and Obesity Ambassador, writing and speaking regularly about Type 2 diabetes and health. Follow him on Twitter @robmtaub or at www.RobTaub.com. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.