How Many Democracies Must Fall Before We Admit Trump and Putin Want the Same Thing?

by | Jan 13, 2026 | Opinions & Commentary

Image: The Hartmann Report

How Many Democracies Must Fall Before We Admit Trump and Putin Want the Same Thing?

by | Jan 13, 2026 | Opinions & Commentary

Image: The Hartmann Report

Trump and the hard-right billionaires who made him president appear to be betting that things will work out for them as well as it did for Putin.

Republished with permission from Thom Hartmann

This past week, Donald Trump demanded that the Pentagon produce an invasion plan for Greenland, an action that would have world-changing consequences to the benefit of Putin and the detriment of Europe, democracy, and America. He followed that by suggesting that Marco Rubio should be the next president of Cuba, the same way Putin had promised his generals and oligarchs that they could have Ukraine.

Step-by-step it appears that Donald Trump is trying to turn America into Russia. We saw the latest and most gruesome example this weekend as Kristi Noem—who shot her puppy in the face and then bragged about it—went on national TV to defend Jonathan Ross shooting Nicole Good in the face for being a “fuckin’ bitch.”

What’s becoming increasingly clear to Americans—which is why so many millions were in the streets this weekend—is that Trump is trying to use ICE as his own private version of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a secret, unchallengeable police force loyal to him rather than the law, whose job is to terrify and pacify the population so they won’t object to having their pockets picked and their freedom taken.

And his threats against Greenland are designed to break up NATO, fulfilling Putin’s deepest desire, which could ultimately lead to the disintegration of the Atlantic alliance and eventually to the military domination of Europe by Russia.

Both Putin and Trump appear to want the thorn in their sides of the example of a democratic Europe to fail, thus making the world safe for looter-mentality strongman autocracies.

I used to think that Trump always did whatever Putin told him to, during both his administrations and even before, because Putin was blackmailing him or dangling billion-dollar Trump Hotel Moscow opportunities in front of him.

While both of those options are still pretty likely, increasingly I’m seeing that Trump is doing what Putin suggests because he wants to be like Putin. And he wants America to be like Russia.

These two men are deeply damaged psychopaths who never matured emotionally because of the psychological trauma of their childhoods.

They think alike, as do most dictators in history, men who feel fundamentally insecure and get their feeling of safety by dominating others. Abusers who were abused and now inflict abuse.

  • As a result, they both delight in killing people via their militaries.
  • They get high by terrorizing people with their secret police and militias.
  • They both hate and fear a free and open press and any sort of legislative or judicial power that may constrain them.
  • They both have corruptly made billions from their political positions, both use public monies to shower wealth and opportunity on their friends, and both wield the police and judicial powers of their nations to punish their enemies. Trump’s most recent is Jerome Powell.

Other dictators throughout history have shared these same characteristics. Hitler was an abused, unwanted child, much like Trump and Putin. Saddam Hussein, Benito Mussolini, and Francisco Franco were all the victims of violent alcoholic fathers who beat them and their mothers, growing up in severely dysfunctional families.

Historian Brian Junkermeier notes that, “Stalin’s father was so violent, that on more than one occasion, he physically abused Stalin to the point where he would have blood in his urine for several days.” All of these men grew up to be abusers, not just of their family members but of their entire nations.

Most Americans, not being psychopaths who survived cruel childhoods, don’t understand and can’t identify with these impulses. But it’s a safe bet that many of the people who’re enthusiastically answering the ICE recruiting call to “reclaim our nation” from Black and brown people and democracy-loving liberals also share Trump’s and Putin’s propensity for violence.

After all, it wasn’t until Nicole Good told Jonathan Ross that she wasn’t mad with him and was leaving—a statement that she was in control and was leaving her abuser, the exact moment when most abusive husbands who kill their wives take that final step—that he fired three times into her head and called her a “fuckin’ bitch.” It’s a classic abuser’s move, particularly against women.

Meanwhile, a handful of emotionally stunted rightwing billionaires who are democracy-skeptical are right there with Trump, using their financial power to promote autocracy and oligarchy. Many have had their worldview twisted by the power their own wealth gives them.

Robert Caro once noted:

“Power doesn’t corrupt. Power reveals. When a man is climbing, when he needs votes, when he needs allies, he is careful. When he has power, he no longer needs to be careful—and then you see who he really is.”

In that, he’s echoing Lord Acton’s famous 1887 observation:

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Donald Trump, the billionaires he surrounds himself with (13 in his cabinet, over a hundred others as major donors), and the police-state toadies like Miller, Noem, Vance, Homan, Patel, Bavino, etc. are—based on observable behaviors and statements—almost universally opposed to democracy.

They’re trying to normalize turning America into an oligarchy with the First Family making billions in their first dozen months and their secret police openly killing people in the street and then blaming their victims on national television.

The danger with this is that oligarchy, as I point out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class, is a transitional form of government that rarely lasts more than a generation or two. It’s so unstable because when the people realize the oligarchs are ripping them off and essentially stealing the nation’s wealth for themselves, they tend to rise up and loudly object.

That’s what we’re seeing with the No Kings and other protests here in America.

  • Average Americans know that when modern GOP-driven Reaganomics started in 1981 fully two-thirds of us had a good, middle-class life with a single paycheck but today it takes two paychecks to barely reach that level, which is why the middle class has collapsed down to fewer than half of us.
  • They know that the top 1% has extracted
  • They know that when Reagan came into office a home
  • They know their parents
  • They know that healthcare and health insurance used to be affordable when hospitals and health insurance companies were required to be nonprofits, and are now a massive trillion-dollar annual wealth-extraction scheme that’s making people like

So, when the morbidly rich seize power and rip off the working class, history shows that people rise up against the new oligarchy, leaving Trump and his billionaires with two choices.

  1. They can, like they did in the face of FDR’s overwhelming popularity and success with the New Deal, simply retire from politics and just go back to making money and running their businesses (1933-1981).
  2. Or they can, like they did in Russia two decades ago (and are doing today in numerous other countries including Iran and Venezuela), come down on the protestors with an iron fist, a steel-heeled boot (to paraphrase Grover Cleveland), led by state power and a brutal secret police and intelligence force.

Trump and the hard-right billionaires who made him president appear to be betting option number two will work out for them as well as it did for Putin.

It’s up to us and the politicians we’ve elected to represent us to make sure they don’t succeed and our nation returns to the rule of law.

History tells us how this moment will end if We the People hesitate.

Autocrats like Trump don’t stop because they suddenly find a conscience; they stop when institutions push back, when laws are enforced by judges and the military refuse illegal orders, and when ordinary people refuse to be intimidated into silence.

Russia didn’t fall into tyranny overnight. It slid there step by step, excuse by excuse, “reasonable step away from law and order” by reasonable step, until the police and military were no longer servants of the law but enforcers of loyalty, and regime-aligned billionaires became untouchable partners in plunder.

America is standing at that same fork in the road right now.

Either we insist—loudly, relentlessly, and electorally—that no president is above the law, that no secret police may operate without accountability, that no billionaire may buy immunity, and that democracy is not optional…or we allow fear, exhaustion, and cynicism to finish the job Trump has begun.

This is quite literally a battle over whether the United States remains a democratic constitutional republic or becomes another cautionary tale taught to future generations who inevitably and naïvely ask how a free people could have let it happen.

The choice is still ours, at least for the moment. But history makes one thing clear: once the jackboot is fully laced, it rarely comes off without blood.

Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann, one of America’s leading public intellectuals and the country’s #1 progressive talk show host, writes fresh content six days a week. The Monday-Friday “Daily Take” articles are free to all, while paid subscribers receive a Saturday summary of the week’s news and, on Sunday, a chapter excerpt from one of his books.

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