No. of Recommendations: 25
In normal times, this would be a disqualifying embarrassment:
And yet, although more than 80 senators from both parties have co-sponsored a bill to impose stronger sanctions against Russia, Trump has refused to back it, thus stalling it. Meanwhile, Benedict Smith of The Telegraph today covered State Department acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs Darren Beattie, who dismantled the office that countered disinformation from Russia, China, and Iran. In 2021, Smith notes, Beattie married a Russian national whose uncle has ties to Putin.
Beattie was dismissed from the first Trump administration after attending a white nationalist rally. He has attacked the United States as the “globalist American empire” and said that Putin should infiltrate western institutions to fight “woke” ideology. In 2021, Beattie wrote that the “position [of the U.S.] in the global order [is] rapidly deteriorating” and that he looked forward to its “prestige and power” collapsing. Praising Putin as “brave and strong,” he said that Putin had “done more to advance conservative positions in the US than any Republican” and that “just about every Western institution would improve in quality if it were directly infiltrated and controlled by Putin.”
Beattie also wrote: “NATO is a far worse threat to the health, liberty, freedom, and flourishing of American citizens than Russia and China combined.”Heather Cox Richardson
Substack: June 3, 2025 - by Heather Cox RichardsonThere have been dozens of “Russians falling out of Trump’s tree” over the past 10 years. The evidence is overwhelming, and not all of it circumstantial.
To those still doubting the connection, I ask:
“How come a couple of Russians always seem to fall out of the Trump tree whenever anyone shakes it?”
