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The Trump-Putin show at G-20 undermines liberal democracy | Trudy Rubin

At Osaka, the president joked with Putin about election interference while the Russian leader told media "the liberal idea has become obsolete."

U.S. President Donald Trump, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin greet each other during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Friday, June 28, 2019.
U.S. President Donald Trump, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin greet each other during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Friday, June 28, 2019.Read moreMikhail Klimentyev / AP

President Trump got trolled by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 world leaders summit in Osaka. He was having so much fun joking with Vladimir, he seemed blissfully unaware.

Just prior to the summit, Putin gave an interview to the Financial Times in which he laid out his belief that the Western order is crumbling.

“The liberal idea has become obsolete [and] has outlived its purpose,” he said bluntly. He has made no secret of his desire to expedite the downfall of the Western order by probing its weak points, and encouraging its divisions.

Judging by Trump’s performance in Osaka, the U.S. president is poised to help him. Wittingly, or unwittingly, the result is the same.

“Don’t meddle in the election," a smirking Trump told a smiling Putin, in front of reporters, wagging a finger at the Russian leader. (Of course, the Mueller Report found that Russia made “multiple systemic efforts” to interfere in the 2016 election).

No bother to Trump. Rather than behave firmly and correctly with the Russian leader, Trump gushed: “It’s a great honor to meet with Putin. A lot of very positive things are going to come out of the relationship.”

Contrast this with Theresa May’s meeting with Putin in Osaka. Unsmiling, she told him Russian efforts to poison former spy Sergei Skripal on British soil “can never be repeated.” Of course, Putin denied any Russian role in the poisoning. But, unlike Trump, May stood firm in the face of his lies.

The issue is much bigger than Russian meddling or assassinations, which are part of a larger pattern.

“Putin talks incessantly about the end of the old U.S.-led unipolar order that didn’t give Russia a role,” says Angela Stent, author of Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest. “He talks about moving into the post-Western order.”

The Russian leader presents himself as the guru of a new “illiberal” governing model that allows elections but curtails or dismantles democratic institutions.

Nationalist populist leaders in Hungary, Italy, France, and elsewhere are looking to Putin; Hungary’s Viktor Orban calls openly for “illiberal democracy.” Meantime, Russian propaganda encourages European voters to move in a populist direction. “Putin is playing the populist card and has been rather successful,” says Stent. “He is trolling [others], maybe more will jump on the bandwagon.”

But Putin has no need to encourage the populist nationalist Trump.

Trump still endorses Putin’s denials of election meddling over the findings of his own intelligence agencies, which undercuts their efforts to block future Russian meddling. This is a gift to the Kremlin that keeps on giving.

Another gift is Trump’s repeated verbal attacks on U.S. media when he meets with autocrats. “Fake news is a great term, isn’t it,” Trump commiserated with Putin, in front of reporters. “You don’t have that problem in Russia.” Of course, the Kremlin controls nearly all TV stations and major media, and pesky Russian reporters are murdered or jailed.

In his Financial Times interview, Putin returns the favor. He cynically promotes the mantra of populists from Trump to Brexiteers to Orban. He cites "the gap between the interests of the elites and the overwhelming majority of the people” in Europe and America. (Never mind that any Russian opposition to the Kremlin elite is eliminated or crushed.)

And, in Trump-esque tones, Putin links the “liberal idea” to unchecked immigration, and migrants who “can kill, plunder, and rape with impunity.” He claims the “liberal idea presupposes that nothing needs to be done."

“So the liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.”

Then Putin goes on to extol “traditional values,” using language similar to onetime Trump strategist Steve Bannon. The Russian leader insists that “traditional values” such as religion “are more important for millions of people than this liberal idea, which, in my opinion, is really ceasing to exist.” Never mind that Putin presides over a regime rife with corruption and open to murder.

Stent says that Putin’s talk of immigration has to do with “reinforcing people questioning their own system. He is certainly speaking to those parts of European Union that are pro-Russian, saying we Russians are going in the right direction.”

But Putin is also playing the American card. Now that the Mueller Report is done, it’s much easier for him to woo Trump with populist nationalist slogans that match the president’s mindset.

Of course, Putin’s definition of “the liberal idea” is deliberately misshapen, ignoring what it stands for: democratic values of tolerance, individual liberty, free courts, free press, and rule of law. Yet Trump doesn’t even notice (or read) Putin’s slurs against the very ideas a U.S. leader is pledged to defend.

Instead, at the G-20, Trump gravitated toward a Russian autocrat who curbs courts, voters, and press in a way the president probably hopes to do - by different methods. No need for bribes or Trump towers for Putin to reel in the American. All he had to do was grin.