The Russian and American presidents speaking in unison marks a diplomatic shift, and a grotesque symphony of shared authoritarian delusion. The phrase, “telling the same lies,” betrays the rot that metastasized through the Trump administration with clinical precision. Under Trump, the United States ceased functioning as a democratic bulwark. It became a willing host for Russian psychological operations, a blabbering parrot of Kremlin narratives, and a degraded echo chamber for conspiracy-fueled statecraft. Trump did not simply align with Putin; he mirrored him, admired him, groveled before him. Every fawning gesture, every lie-laced tweet, every slurred dismissal of NATO or mockery of European allies eroded not just alliances but truth itself. What unfolded was not a shift in policy—it was a defection from principle.
The collapse of the international order didn’t happen in secret backrooms or at the hands of foreign saboteurs. It took place on camera, in plain sight, with an orange-faced charlatan gleefully swinging the wrecking ball. Trump degraded the presidency into a personal grievance circus, where truth existed only when it suited his narcissistic pathology and foreign policy was outsourced to oligarch whims. His administration became a carnival of gaslighting, corruption, and disinformation—the very traits that define Putin’s rule. The synchrony between the two was not incidental. It was engineered, welcomed, and performed for maximum propaganda effect.
Cadwalla’s observation captures the existential dread of the moment with tragic precision. It is already later than we think because Trump wasn’t a hiccup in history. He was a metastasis. He gave cover to autocrats, disemboweled trust in democratic institutions, and transformed the White House into a staging ground for information warfare. Every time he praised Putin, questioned U.S. intelligence agencies, or regurgitated Kremlin codewords, he moved the clock closer to midnight. This was not strategy. This was treason dressed in a red hat and wrapped in cheap slogans.
The consequences will stretch far beyond his term. The damage is generational. The scaffolding of democratic cooperation now creaks under the weight of what Trump cheered into being—chaos, doubt, and tyranny repackaged as patriotism. He sold the soul of the republic for a photo op with a dictator, and millions applauded. The collapse was not inevitable. It was televised. And it was Trump who lit the fuse and begged for more matches.
We See What Others Cannot
