Vladimir Putin ignored Fiona Hill, an expert on Russia, when he sat next to him at dinners. Her people put her there because they considered her a “normal” woman, she says, who would not divert attention, so that the cameras would focus only on the Russian leader.
She speaks Russian well and often memorized the conversations of individuals who seemed to forget she was there and then wrote them down, Hill told the Associated Press. If I were a man, you wouldn’t talk like that in front of me, he thought more than once. “But don’t worry, go on, I’m listening.”
Hill figured she wouldn’t be so invisible when she later went to work for another ruler, Donald Trump, as an adviser on Russia. She knew what Putin was thinking, she had written a very well received book about him, but Trump was also not interested in what he could tell her. Like Putin, he ignored her in meeting after meeting and once mistook her for a secretary, calling her “darling” (heaven).
Meanwhile, she kept listening. And he learned to know Trump as well as Putin.
His knowledge of both is reflected in “There Is Nothing for You Here”, a book that has just gone on sale and that, unlike others about the Trump administration, does not focus on scandalous topics. As was the case during his shocking testimony at Trump’s first impeachment trial, the book offers a more sober, and perhaps for that reason, more alarming view of the 45th president of the United States.
The tone will be moderate, but it is terribly sharp. She tells how a diplomat who dedicated her career to understanding and containing the Russian threat came to the conclusion that the worst threat facing the country came from within.
In great detail, he paints the image of a president thirsty for praise and without the slightest interest in governing, an individual so aware of what others said about him that the United States’ relations with other countries depended on how flattering its rulers were. when talking about him.
“From his team and anyone who fell into its orbit, Trump demanded constant attention and adulation,” he writes. Especially in relation to international affairs. “The president’s vanity and fragile self-esteem represented a severe vulnerability.”
Hill says Putin manipulated Trump by giving him or stinging compliments, something that gave more results than dirty maneuvers or blackmail. At his famous press conference in Finland, when Trump appeared to accept what Putin was telling him and not US intelligence assessments regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election, Hill almost lost his patience.
“I wanted to put an end to all of that,” he says in the book. “I considered making a scene or faking a seizure, throwing myself back, over a line of reporters behind me. But it would only have made the show even more humiliating. “
Anyway, he says that he perceived in Trump a certain talent that he does not use well. He speaks the language of the common people, despises the same things, runs without filters, likes the same foods as everyone else and ignores the rules of the elite. While Hillary Clinton sipped champagne with donors, Trump promoted the coal and steel industries. Or at least it gave that impression.
“He clearly knew what people wanted,” Hill told the AP.
That talent is wasted, for Hill. When he could have mobilized people for the good of all, Trump used it to advance his own interests.
Trump’s vanity ruined the meeting with Putin in Helsinki and any possibility of a long-awaited nuclear deal with Russia. The questions he was asked at the press conference “pointed directly to all his insecurities,” he said. Hill believes that, had he admitted that Russia interfered in the elections, it would have been like admitting that his victory had been illegitimate.
Putin knew that the coming criticism would detract from the few compromises he had made with Trump. “As he left the conference,” Hill recounts, “he told his press secretary, as our interpreter would hear, that the press conference had been pure ‘bullshit’.”
Trump admired Putin for his wealth, his power and his fame. She considered him the “ideal strong man.” During his presidency, Trump came to be more like Putin than any other recent American president, Hill says, adding that “sometimes even I was surprised at how obvious the similarities were.”
Another aspect that impressed Trump was the skill with which Putin manipulated the Russian political system to stay in power indefinitely, according to Hill.
Trump resisted admitting his electoral defeat. He spoke of a fraud and this contributed to the takeover of Congress on January 6, when the legislators had to certify the victory of Joe Biden. Biden’s triumph, however, was certified.
Hill worked with the intelligence service from 2006 to 2009 and was highly respected in Washington. During the hearings to decide whether to impeach Trump, Hill was one of the witnesses who did the most damage to the president.
Hill says in the book that he went to work at the White House worried about what Russia was doing, “but I realized that the problem was the United States … and that the Russians were simply exploiting everything.”
He added that Biden is trying to clean up the image of the country abroad, “but he is alone, people do not support him.”
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