When studying the surreal fealty paid by Trump and the entire Republican apparatus toward Vladimir Putin since before 2015, one thing becomes incredibly clear: Putin is Trump’s boss. Trump is Putin’s little bitch. This much is obvious from all the actions we have seen from Trump during the 2016 campaign, and every single day since. Most importantly of all, Trump has lowered America’s shield in order to let Putin’s sword gouge us, and never dared raise the shield again since. Time and again the Trump team has been given ample opportunity to prove otherwise, and not once have they taken the chance to do the right thing. Today’s Trump/Russia story is not the least surprising to anyone paying attention. The Russian bounty on the heads of US troops in Afghanistan was of course openly condoned by the Trump administration, which to date has tried to pretend that the intelligence isn’t fully verified, and more importantly elicited no retaliatory economic, diplomatic or military action as every other previous US Commanders in Chief would have taken long ago. But one doesn’t do that to one’s boss! BountyGate is simply the latest episode in a string of chronicles where Russia has asserted its utter dominance over this White House- strikingly, to the detriment of Donald Trump’s own political survival, and the freedom of many of his comrades who have ended up indicted and/or in jail in order to protect the honor of Mother Russia. All sides involved must have known this arrangement would be a short squeeze- get it while the going’s good- because it’s only a matter of days now before the conspiracy comes out of the bag.

None of this outrage is any longer interesting or even debatable. The reality of what happened behind the scenes must now be discussed and understood in detail by the American people in order to deal with it. Which leads to the most pressing follow-up question: why? Why did this guy decide to be the first president in American history to turn vassal to a foreign dictator with nothing but ill intentions toward us, whose outlook was known to be forged by hatred towards America during the Cold War when he was KGB boss? There are multiple reasons for this historic level of treason, but the media hasn’t covered this nearly enough. These factors too are exceedingly obvious, and even out in the open for all to see. Regardless of what happens from here, this coup of 2016-2020 has been and always will be the crowning glory of Putin’s career- for no foreign leader has ever pulled on America’s marionette strings quite this successfully before. In no particular order here is why this happened:

(1) Kompromat, Comrade! Due to my Indian background, I know more than your average cozy bear about bribery and extortion. In India these rise to the level of art form. There may or may not be a pee pee tape, where several Russian hookers urinated on Trump or on his Moscow Ritz Carlton hotel room bed while he watched- as a video camera in the wall recorded it all. The man is certainly a sick enough sexual deviant with legendarily poor dick control, and Moscow has enough such history, to make the story highly credible. But this recording wouldn’t even be necessary to compromise Trump’s sorry ass. All that would be needed is something much simpler than that: Putin and his minions already know exactly what they did to help Trump win in 2016, and exactly what illicit favors Trump has been doing for them in return. All Putin has to do is say the word, and it ALL comes crashing down at the snap of a finger. Imagine that amount of power hanging over your head…it almost makes me feel bad. No wonder Putin has Trump by his balls! Putin is the only thing standing between the entire Trump family of grifters and a lifetime for all of them rotting in jail. NOW the world makes sense…

(2) The Rubles. If there is one thing that Trump worships as much as Putin, that would be money. And the Russian dictator, unlike Trump, has REAL money- estimated to be in the multiples of billions of dollars of holdings. All Putin has had to do to continue buying Trump’s loyalty in case he starts wavering, is keep feeding him little doggie treats every now and again, like any good lap dog. Putin has authorized through his vast network of oligarchs and cronies, loans and grants through Russian banks, purchases of properties from the Trump family in New York and Florida at absurdly above-market rates to launder money, and dangled projects such as the Moscow Miss Universe pageant, which happened, and Trump Tower Moscow, which did not because of the presidential campaign, probably meant to be picked up once Trump lost, or at some point after his presidency. This is a match made in heaven: Russians always did business like this anyway, and so did the Trump organization, a shell company that cooks its books as a matter of course. And people wonder why he doesn’t want to share his taxes, his bank accounts, or other holdings. It’s riddled with tax fraud and insurance fraud, among other types of fraudulent fraud.

(3) White Supremacy, Spaseeboh! There is not much in common ideologically or policy-wise between the modern GOP and the Russian dictatorship, but they do intersect in one very, very important way. Both are led by some misguided sense that white people are superior to others, and their position in the world needs to be protected artificially using the levers of government power. It’s actually ironic, considering how repulsively ugly these people are, that they think of themselves as anything more than the white trash that they are. But white supremacy will always make for strange bedfellows. [MAGA = PRAVDA]

And… that’s it! That’s all there is to it! Trump, his family, and friends committed high treason against the United States of America at the very highest level possible, for a pee tape maybe, a buck, and a white power secret handshake. There is nothing even mildly profound about how all of this went down, except for how dumb most Americans are to not have seen these basic events unfolding before our very eyes. To give credit where it’s due, we had several visionaries connect the dots such as Seth Abramson, Malcolm Nance, and David Corn, who have written extensively on all this and much more. But not enough of us paid attention in the dizzying swirl of fake news, reality television, sports, true crime podcasts, social media and various other noise.

This sad episode in American history that we are today living through should cause all of us who bore witness to these high crimes and misdemeanors a great deal of shame for the rest of our lives, or at least for those of us who have any capacity for shame. Which is clearly not enough of us.

The American eagle will be sharpening her talons soon, as she did after Pearl Harbor and 9/11, and I wonder how did that go for our enemies? What comes next is the part I will most relish about all of this: justice and revenge against Putin and his bitch for what they did.

Mahanth S. Joishy is Editor of usindiamonitor