From Useful Idiot to Working Asset

Perhaps our greatest spy novelist of the cold war, John le Carré, talks about what he sees as the appetite for superpower, that still exists in the U.S. and Russia.  He says that what’s shared is the desire for oligarchy, the dismissal of truth, the contempt actually for the electorate, and for the democratic system. That’s common to both of them.While the U.S. has certainly made mistakes, and was not always been pure in its motives and actions, today under Donald Trump something is different. What is it, and how did we get here, and to what extent is the Trump-Russia connection part of what’s changed? Is Putin as Machiavellian as we’ve been led to believe, and have we now gone too far down the rabbit hole for any of this to change?Few understand this better than Malcolm Nance, who back in 2014 was prescient about some of the issues that we’re facing and litigating, on this very day.Malcolm Nance is a former U.S. Navy officer specializing in cryptology. He’s an internationally recognized intelligence, a foreign policy commentator, and a counter terrorism analyst for NBC news and MSNBC and his newest work isMy WhoWhatWhy conversation with Malcom Nance: Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe