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Donnie’s World-Class Wrecking Crew

America’s defense walls torn down by Putin’s №1 fanboy

4 min readSep 4, 2025
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We may never have smoking gun evidence, but it’s beginning to look like Russian strongman Vladimir Putin backed and installed President Donald Trump to destroy the country from within. And the evidence is only becoming more glaring.

Trump is a semi-literate buffoon. He doesn’t read, babbles incoherently, and constantly makes decisions that benefit him, not the country. Worse still, his government is full of even worse appointees with shocking judgment, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a drunk, accused rapist, white nationalist, and sexist; conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of Health and Human Services; fellow conspiracy nut Kash Patel, FBI director; and Russophile Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence.

These people were chosen not for their skill or experience. (Gabbard oversees all the intelligence agencies and has no intelligence background!) They were chosen for their loyalty to Trump. Worse, they are systematically tearing apart agencies that oversee national defense and the nation’s health. What could possibly go wrong?

We are witnessing not just ordinary governance, but a systematic purge of institutional knowledge, a hollowing out of oversight, and the elevation of celebrity…

Manny Otiko
Manny Otiko

Written by Manny Otiko

Manny Otiko writes about race, politics and sports. He has been published in Salon and LA Weekly. Follow him at @mannyotiko.bsky.social