I wrote A #TrumpRussia Confession in Plain Sight on November 24, 2017. That’s almost eight years ago. Seven years ago, I wrote Trump’s Moscow Tower Denials Are Impeachable. Almost exactly six years ago I wrote Trump Is Unable to Discharge the Duties of his Office.

Those are just three of the better pieces I’ve written over the last decade making the case that Donald Trump is compromised by Vladimir Putin. Let me add one more, from January 23, 2019: Were the Trump Tower Meeting and the Moscow Tower Related?. Here’s how I concluded that piece:

…there is clear evidence here that [in 2015] the Trump Organization was looking for ways to ingratiate itself with Vladimir Putin in furtherance of getting a deal to build a tower in Moscow. The Russians dangled a deal, got Trump to sign on the dotted line, and then held that over him as they attempted to get him to make commitments should he actually become president. The Magnitsky Act was one of their main targets, but so was undermining the European Union, breaking up NATO, getting America to leave Syria, getting a recognition of their right to Crimea, and sanctions relief.  Trump has pursued all of these things and more since becoming president.

It has been glaringly obvious since 2015 that Trump and Putin are aligned. Yet, Europe appears stunned by this week’s events. So stunned, in fact, that the New York Times reports that “President Emmanuel Macron of France called a second emergency meeting of European allies on Wednesday” in an effort to “recalibrate relations with the United States” now that it appears Trump is “prepared to abandon [America’s] role as a European ally and switch sides to embrace President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.”

Mr. Trump’s remarks late on Tuesday, when he sided fully with Russia’s narrative blaming Ukraine for the war, have now fortified the impression that the United States is prepared to abandon its role as a European ally and switch sides to embrace President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

It was a complete reversal of historic alliances that left many in Europe stunned and fearful.

“What’s happening is very bad. It’s a reversal of the state of the world since 1945,” Jean- Yves Le Drian, a former French foreign minister, said on French radio Wednesday morning.

This emergency meeting was announced prior to Trump making things even more clear on Wednesday:

President Trump on Wednesday deepened his criticism of Ukraine, calling its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “dictator” who took money from the United States to go to war with Russia — a nation that had seized some territory in 2014 before its full-scale invasion three years ago. In a social media post littered with falsehoods, Mr. Trump made no mention of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, or his responsibility for the war.

If anyone was having trouble seeing this coming, Trump’s decision to put an obvious Russian agent in charge of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) should have convinced them.

As I detailed in those earlier pieces, Trump and Putin are part of a wider effort to promote far right parties that oppose democracy and embrace white Christian nationalism. It has been this way from the very beginning, but what has changed is that now Trump is seeking and seems to have obtained the same kind of dictatorial powers that Putin enjoys. Some say his model is Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and it’s not a bad comparison. But Hungary is a minor player on the world stage. Trump’s pivot is infinitely more consequential. On this, at least, many people seem to be clear-eyed.

Rasa Jukneviciene, a former Lithuania defense minister who is now a member of the European Parliament, said it was “hard to understand” the sudden shifts in policy by the United States, the once reliable pillar of Europe’s security for decades. She said she was “wondering what historians will write about the events of this time, say, in five decades.”

“It is already clear that the Euro-Atlantic connection will not be the same as it used to be,” she said. “The stage when European security after World War II was basically guaranteed only by the U.S.A. is over.”

Europe, she added, “is once again facing existential challenges” — akin to those in 1938 after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Britain met Hitler in Munich and agreed to his annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia with a large ethnic German population.

Trump, without the guardrails of his first term in office and with new protections against prosecution granted by the conservative Supreme Court, is freely embracing the global fascist movement I’ve been warning about since December 2016 (see: Trump, Austrian Nazis and Putin, December 12, 2016).

This is why I do not refer to the folks presently in the White House as “the Trump administration.” I reserve that term for the folks who occupied the White House between January 20, 2017 and January 20, 2021. I call the current administation “the fascist regime,” because it is fundamentally different and more menacing than what came before.

People are rightfully concerned about the fascist regime’s domestic activities, but an open American alliance with Russia and far-right Neo-Nazi European parties is even more consequential and dangerous. I wish people had listened to me. I wasn’t writing about it just at my little blog. Most of these pieces were all published at the Washington Monthly, too.

A #Trump Russia Confession in Plain Sight

Why the Moscow Tower Deal is an Impeachable Offense

Trump is Unable to Discharge the Powers and Duties of His Office

A Connection Between the Moscow Tower and the Trump Tower Meeting

The Disturbing Connections Between Trump, Putin and Austrian Neo-Nazis

I told anyone who would listen that this was the reality of the situation and the future we were facing. It didn’t get me famous or rich or a million followers (even if I was briefly internet famous in India). And it didn’t prevent the worst. But I tried.

And I am telling you now that these things will continue until the fascist regime is defeated.