Russia’s established autocrat is in his darkest period since he took office in the Kremlin, including when the war began in Ukraine.
Russian territory is being systematically hit, lines at gas stations are a common sight in a country that is floating in fuel. The Russian economy is suffocating, Putin’s army is obviously losing its momentum on the front, grassroots’ discontent is increasingly difficult to hide although the regime is increasingly paranoid, and the risk of illegally annexed Crimea returning to Ukraine at some point has never been greater since March 2014.
And yet, as Putin sinks naturally, a Romanian politician devoid of a moral compass, scruples an image of fragile patriotism struggles and loudly projects an image of communal virility.
The politician is Diana Șoșoacă and she’s an MEP although her behavior resembles the time when humans lived in caves and makes the European Parliament look like a zoo. She is also the pro-Russian propagandist who projects the image of a Kremlin as the command center of the Garden of Eden.
Her last two odes to Putin will go down in the history books: one right in front of the bloody dictator, in St. Petersburg, the other on the streets of Moscow.
The budding autocrat, housed in the White House, is also living, like his counterpart barricaded in the Kremlin, the same kind of experience: his darkest period as president, including his first, not just his second term.
Donald Trump, then: a political leader who has collapsed in the polls, alienated by US allies, seen more and more seriously as a man with problems, personal, economic and the social demolition of the world’s poorest states, a generator of hyper-corruption, complicit with Putin, a mouse towards Xi, trigger of the world’s biggest energy crisis, a war that America quickly lost, but which, on top of that, will strengthen a criminal Iranian regime in the long run and shape the Middle East into something even more problematic than it was.
And yet, as Trump sinks, there is also a Romanian politician who is extending a helping hand, it’s not a hand strong enough to be of help or to be even noticed by the beneficiary.
His name is Nicușor Dan, and he’s the president of Romania, and is incapable of even managing the pollical crisis at home, but is acting as Superman for his most famous counterpart.
How else could the odes the Romanian president made to Donald Trump be interpreted for Newsmax, considered an influential conservative media channel?
Of course, some (although I would dare to say that there are fewer and fewer) will be tempted to see here a presidential masterstroke in the art of strategic PR.
I would have been willing to agree with them at least partially if Nicușor Dan had limited himself to praising (which is absolutely legitimate and factually correct) the Romania-US Strategic Partnership and fighting to strengthen the partnership between America and Europe, especially at a time when Donald Trump is sabotaging it.
However, the President of Romania made several mistakes to add to his list: he told Trump that Romanians seem to like him more than the polls reveal; kissed up to the American leader at a time when the tendency, among the leaders intimidated by Trump, is to change the board, ignoring the Trumpist cannonball and finally defending himself offensively (in fact, everyone’s experiences, accumulated especially in the last six months, have also shown that Donald Trump is more impressed by the strength of the other than by the reverences of the shy; because he is like a shark – he smells blood).
And it should also be noted that Nicușor Dan’s editorial debut in the conservative American press comes soon after the Romanian Presidential Administration signed a PR contract with American lobbyists, one of those mentioned in the contract being, as Mediafax notes, a constant presence in Newsmax shows.
In other words, not only do we praise an unpraiseworthy individual from the highest level, but we also pay to praise him.
The context reminds us of Traian Basescu, president from 2004-2014 in his historic electoral debate with rival Adrian Năstase when rhetorically asked: “What have the Romanians done that to have to choose between two former communists”
What a curse that, at a moment when Russia has produced its worst leader in the past 50 years and America its worst in 250 years, two high-level Romanians—both ill-suited to their offices—should be so eager to praise them.
