His other theory was that Mr. Trump sees himself as a sort of superhero who would forge a strong bond<br />with Mr. Putin “to show he has the ability to do things that no other president has been able to do.”<br />And this is a Republican who hopes to do business with the Trump administration<br />These are the techniques that Mr. Putin used to great effect in his first years in power,<br />and they are very much the same tactics and clash-of-civilizations ideology being deployed by Mr. Trump today.<br />Like Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan today, Mr. Putin’s version of making Russia great again wasn’t particularly ideological,<br />but its gauzy patriotic nationalism basically summed up the Putin plan for making a weakened and demoralized superpower feel better about itself.<br />Since the inauguration, we have accumulated some hard facts, too: Both Mr. Trump’s rhetoric<br />and actions as president bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Mr. Putin during his first years consolidating power.<br />And that, too, may be part of what Mr. Trump, another unlikely president still so insecure about his rise to the White House<br />that he constantly brings up his election, sees in Mr. Putin and authoritarian rulers like him.<br />We are four weeks into Donald J. Trump’s presidency,<br />and Mr. Putin, in power 17 years and not going anywhere anytime soon, is everywhere in American politics.
