Russian Apprentice: Trump, America’s wannabe Putin, meets the real deal

Vladimir Putin and his apprentice Donald Trump will meet for the first time — that we know of — on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, this week. And never before has a meeting between two heads of state felt more like the climax of a long-distance love that dare not speak its name.

The mental foreplay between the two men has been so interminable, so filled with fanboy tweets and hints of a deeper, mysterious bond that violates most geopolitical norms and possibly key passages of the Constitution, that it’s difficult not to fantasize about the first encounter — or at least the first handshake — between the two men, despite the obvious risks of nausea.

Apparently, neither can Trump.

“Trump has talked for months about meeting Putin,” Thomas Graham, managing director at Kissinger Associates, told Politico’s Michael Crowley, who reports that “national security experts and Russia hawks inside the Trump administration” fear the president “might be too eager to please his strong-willed Russian counterpart.”

Despite Trump’s giddiness, he reportedly has “no specific agenda” for the meeting, according to his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster.

But that’s not what The Guardian’s Julian Borger has heard. “National Security Council staff have been tasked with proposing ‘deliverables’ for the first Trump-Putin encounter, including the return of two diplomatic compounds Russians were ordered to vacate by the Obama administration in response to Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election," he reported. “It is not clear what Putin would be asked to give in return.”

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It’s not clear?

Even after our four major intelligence agencies determined that Russia orchestrated cyberattacks to help elect Trump? Even after Trump invited Russia's foreign minister and ambassador into the Oval Office to celebrate firing that “nut job” James Comey to take off the “great pressure” he faces “because of Russia”?

Then again, nothing is clear — including whether we can ever hope to have fair democratic elections again and why that doesn’t seem to bother the president of the United States.

Trump could hate the idea of Russia investigations because it taints his win or could expose ancillary corruption beyond all the televised collusion.

Some suggest Trump has been “turned” by Russian intelligence. It’s possible he’s more "turned on" by the idea of being our American Putin, especially given reports that the Russian autocrat could be the richest human being ever to live.

Maybe Trump will surprise us. Anyone who underestimated him has ended up as disappointed as some of the creditors who offered him loans for his casinos, or Hillary Clinton. Maybe the president will head into this meeting not just as Putin’s equal, but as a man who commands 19 aircraft carriers to Putin’s one. Maybe instead of ignoring election hacking, he’ll confront the issue directly.

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Or the conversation could go like this.

“The fake media ... I mean the fraudulent media ... I’m calling them the fraudulent media now because that doesn’t make anyone think of that fraud suit I settled for $25 million,” Trump says. “Anyway, the fraudulent media say I won’t bring up the elections and the hacking and that fake news.”

“Hackers, they are artists,” Putin says. “Who can hope to contain a patriotically minded individual from trying to fight against people who say bad things or vote bad things about Russia?”

“Exactly. It could have been a 900-pound kid in New Jersey, where I have a beautiful golf course, the best. You have to visit it.”

“Is that the one with the fake Civil War monument? A beautiful touch.”

“That’s Virginia. Anyway, you know me, Vladimir, so well, probably better than anyone. Anybody who hits me, we're gonna hit them 10 times harder,” Trump says. “More than 20 of our states’ election systems were hacked, I’m not saying who did it, but they were hacked. If that could happen again, maybe we’ll see about watering down those sanctions.”

“I cannot see a reason it cannot happen again, especially if the critics will say it did anyway.”

“Critics,” Trump says, turning new shades of tangerine.

“Critics,” Putin says. “They love to be imaginative. They should focus on reality. Perhaps then they would not fall out of so many windows.”

“Exactly. I always say that. Don’t I always say that, Reince? That’s Reince. He holds my phone. Anyway, when I was in WWE and you were in the KGB, we learned the same thing. People believe what they need to believe, or they don’t believe and that’s fine.”

“Exactly. A toast?” Putin asks. “To us?”

“Absolutely. Reince, get the Trump Vodka.”

Jason Sattler, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a columnist for The National Memo. Follow him on Twitter @LOLGOP.

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