I defy anybody to say they aren't brothers from different mothers. 
"He has pledged to make his country great again. He says the unsayable, breaking taboos to the delight of his audience. He promises to free the country from an Islamic threat. He has no regard for truth, and fumes at the media, whom he considers lying scum. He plays to the crowds and portrays himself as an ordinary guy, but has a weakness for palaces and female models. European leaders cringe at his sexist jokes. When he emerged as a presidential candidate, the liberals who opposed him took comfort in the fact he would be restrained by the free media, civil society and the legislature, and were proved wrong.
No, he is not Donald Trump, but Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia since 2000. Of course, the similarity between the two men should not be stretched too far: One is an ex-KGB man with deeply ingrained conspiratorial mentality, anointed by his predecessor and backed by Russia’s oligarchs, while the other is an oligarch himself, riding a wave of anti-establishment sentiment.
Well before Trump appeared on the political scene, Putin had turned saying the unsayable into an art form. His emergence as a presidential candidate in 1999 was greeted with incredulity by the media and political experts. His initial support rating barely registered in opinion polls. But following the bombing of several apartment blocks in Moscow in 1999 he pledged on television to catch Chechen terrorists and “wipe them out [while they sat] in the shitter.” Instantly, it broke the barrier between the public and the future president. Sociologists described it as a short-circuit moment.
It is their shared love of doing “deals,” however, that makes Putin and Trump’s convergence so alarming. Unlike any of his Soviet predecessors, who were guided by ideology, Putin is the flesh and blood of 1990s capitalism in Russia, where informal “deals” trampled any kind of legal arrangement. It is their shared love of doing “deals” that makes Putin and Trump’s convergence so alarming. The ability to strike a deal with his opponents, with the media, and with foreign counterparts is the essence of Putin’s regime.
But as the 20th-century history of the Soviet Union and Germany showed, a pact between two populist and nationalist leaders hardly makes the world a safer place. If Trump becomes president, the last thing the world needs, dark humor aside, is for he and Putin to be locked in any kind of embrace.
http://qz.com/725392/vladimir-putin-wrote-donald-trumps-political-playbook-15-years-ago/
"He has pledged to make his country great again. He says the unsayable, breaking taboos to the delight of his audience. He promises to free the country from an Islamic threat. He has no regard for truth, and fumes at the media, whom he considers lying scum. He plays to the crowds and portrays himself as an ordinary guy, but has a weakness for palaces and female models. European leaders cringe at his sexist jokes. When he emerged as a presidential candidate, the liberals who opposed him took comfort in the fact he would be restrained by the free media, civil society and the legislature, and were proved wrong.
No, he is not Donald Trump, but Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia since 2000. Of course, the similarity between the two men should not be stretched too far: One is an ex-KGB man with deeply ingrained conspiratorial mentality, anointed by his predecessor and backed by Russia’s oligarchs, while the other is an oligarch himself, riding a wave of anti-establishment sentiment.
Well before Trump appeared on the political scene, Putin had turned saying the unsayable into an art form. His emergence as a presidential candidate in 1999 was greeted with incredulity by the media and political experts. His initial support rating barely registered in opinion polls. But following the bombing of several apartment blocks in Moscow in 1999 he pledged on television to catch Chechen terrorists and “wipe them out [while they sat] in the shitter.” Instantly, it broke the barrier between the public and the future president. Sociologists described it as a short-circuit moment.
It is their shared love of doing “deals,” however, that makes Putin and Trump’s convergence so alarming. Unlike any of his Soviet predecessors, who were guided by ideology, Putin is the flesh and blood of 1990s capitalism in Russia, where informal “deals” trampled any kind of legal arrangement. It is their shared love of doing “deals” that makes Putin and Trump’s convergence so alarming. The ability to strike a deal with his opponents, with the media, and with foreign counterparts is the essence of Putin’s regime.
But as the 20th-century history of the Soviet Union and Germany showed, a pact between two populist and nationalist leaders hardly makes the world a safer place. If Trump becomes president, the last thing the world needs, dark humor aside, is for he and Putin to be locked in any kind of embrace.
http://qz.com/725392/vladimir-putin-wrote-donald-trumps-political-playbook-15-years-ago/
