America is back

My antipathy toward Russian president Vladimir Putin is nothing new. He murdered my neighbor. To be sure, Dawn Sturgess was someone I never met and didnโ€™t know, but for me she became a personal symbol of all the innocent victims of evil. She died from Novichok poisoning, the only person to actually die from that binary nerve agent when Putin employed it on two occasions to retaliate against what his paranoid fancy deemed โ€œenemies of the state.โ€

The first time it happened was in 2018 when Putin sent two of his goons to murder Russian defector Sergei Skripal, then living in the lovely cathedral city of Salisbury, England, eight miles from my home. Putinโ€™s goons used Novichok. Mr. Skirpal and his daughter were grievously injured but survived. Only Ms. Sturgess, an innocent bystander, died. She was accidentally poisoned when her boyfriend found a Novichok-ladened perfume bottle and gave it to Ms. Sturgess as a present just 1000 metres from where I live.

The second time was 20 August 2020, when Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok. He too survived and his name came up in Wednesdayโ€™s summit meeting between President Joe Biden and the international thug and murderer Vladimir Putin. Putin refused to even use Navalnyโ€™s name. Mr. Navalny is currently languishing in a Moscow prison cell.

There can be little doubt that this meeting with the President will be used in Russia as a propaganda ploy to burnish Putinโ€™s image. Photos of the worldโ€™s most overrated gangster shaking hands with Biden will be splashed across Russian TV, newspapers and official websites. There may have been no G8, but Putin got his very own personal G2, or so the narrative will go in Russian and rightwing American media alike.

It is a measure of how Donald Trumpโ€™s own poison has spread like Novichok through Republican neighbourhoods that conservatives today remain, like Trump, soft on Russia. One can still recall the โ€œIโ€™d rather be a Russian than a Democratโ€ t-shirts proudly worn by Trump-licking cretins at his Nuremberg-style rallies. This attitude toward one of Americaโ€™s deadliest enemies still prevails. It is Trumpism at its most loathsome.

But make no mistake, brothers and sisters, no matter how often it is repeated in the press and even by our very own side, the Geneva summit was not a win for Putin. Nobody knows it better than the gangster himself. He has lost his greatest ally and thereby any real and meaningful grip on America. Trump was in awe of Putin. Putin was everything Trump wanted to be: powerful, untouchable, immune to criticism and arguably the worldโ€™s first trillionaire. President Biden deals with Putin because of the reins of power Putin holds. But he has no illusions about the man, no envy, no secret admiration, nothing but a deep-seated loathing and contempt for everything Putin represents.

So, again, make no mistake, this was not a loss for America. The Geneva summit symbolised a loss for Putin. No longer is American power held hostage to fortune by a deranged narcissist. President Biden drew a line in the sand in Geneva, a line between America and torture, America and oppression of free speech, America and cyber attacks. For all his smiles and posing for pictures Putin has had to make one giant climb down โ€” and he knows it. Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, America is back. And stay safe.

This is the fight of our lives. Donald Trump and his unelected henchmen are actively trying to destroy our government, our democracy, and our way of life. We only have one choice, and that's to fight back as loudly and aggressively as possible.
To that end, Palmer Report is expanding. We're bulking up our editorial and research staff and leaving no stone unturned on the editorial front and activism front. I'm asking you to help me build Palmer Report into what it needs to be. Please click here to donate whatever you can to this effort. Our future and our way of life depend on it.