As we observed here last week, the Russian national sport isn’t football. It’s chess. That’s a game where the guy who can think not just two moves but ten moves ahead wins every time. And watching Tucker Carlson interview Vladimir Putin, then traipse around Russian supermarkets and subway stations goofily raving about their cleanliness, brought that truth painfully home.

Tucker Carlson is the most important journalist in America. He’s smart, courageous, principled, and he got played by Putin. Carlson didn’t grow up playing chess, as Putin doubtless did — literally and figuratively, when he trained for the KGB.

Putin Killed Alexei Navalny Solely to Hurt Tucker Carlson and Trump

That’s why Putin chose the days after Carlson’s friendly interview with him and his broadcasts praising Russia to assassinate Alexei Navalny (who was already sick and in prison, and no threat to Putin at all). In order to humiliate Carlson and hurt Donald Trump.

Because Putin doesn’t want Donald Trump to win. You need to step back for a second and think about that. It’s not what our captive media want you to think. It’s not what the War Party conservatives over at National Review and the Wall Street Journal can even begin to conceive. (They’re still playing tic-tac-toe.) But what if it’s true?

Let’s make the case, so you can consider it.

Putin Doesn’t Want Good Relations with a Strong America

We’re supposed to believe that Putin favors Trump, because (according to MSNBC) Trump’s a Russian asset and a quasi-fascist himself. Or because (according to the War Party) Trump’s a foolish isolationist who wants to abandon Europe. Or even because (according to many serious, smart conservatives) Putin prefers to face a more restrained and rational United States that will make a deal with him, dividing Ukraine and de-escalating tensions.

That might have been what Putin wanted in 2016. Certainly he was willing to settle for that. While Trump was trying to govern (despite the Deep State constantly striving to nullify his election with lies about Russian collusion) Putin didn’t dare to try invading Ukraine. Or openly ally with China. Trump’s America was strong and getting stronger. Just remember his triumphant State of the Union address in 2020, before the COVID panic was trotted out to cripple us.

We still controlled that strategic hellhole Afghanistan, with almost no ongoing American casualties. Our southern border was closed. Our economy was booming, and our military getting stronger — not yet ravaged by COVID dictates, transgender madness, and political purges of Christians. The U.S. was building up our East European allies, and imposing stiff sanctions for Russian misbehavior.

That wasn’t the best-case scenario for a nationalist dictator who’d like to make Russia stronger at the expense of its neighbors and rivals. But Putin could live with it, as the U.S. lived with a stagnant but stable USSR throughout the 1970s. We called it “Détente.”

If Trump were to somehow be permitted to win the next election, he would strive to quickly restore the old balance of power. He’d stop gutting our military, make a hard-nosed deal over Ukraine, seal our borders, and rebuild our economy.

Putin Wants to Watch America Burn, and the Democrats Are the Gasoline

But what if Putin could get a much, much better outcome, from his own point of view? What if he could avenge an aching grudge, pay back the United States and the West for encouraging what he has called the “greatest tragedy” of the 20^th century, the collapse of the USSR and its empire?

What if Putin sees that the U.S. is currently headed toward a similar systemic collapse, brought on by the irrational and Utopian policies of our elites? Why would he want to stop that? He blames the U.S. for encouraging the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev, in part by our military escalation under Reagan which the Soviets could not match. He blames us for funding Solidarity in Poland, and supporting human rights activists who called out the hypocrisy of Soviet claims to support “freedom” and “justice.”

Putin further blames us for falsely promising not to expand NATO eastward, which was the price Gorbachev asked for letting the Warsaw Pact dissolve peacefully.

Putin Watches Us Destroy Ourselves

Why would Putin not want revenge? There’s an old, cynical saying: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Well, the U.S. is making vast strategic blunder after blunder under the Democrats. The moment they swept back into open control of the government, the Taliban felt empowered to take back Afghanistan, and with it $90 billion in U.S. military equipment. The Taliban, you might not remember, has been an open ally of China (now Putin’s ally) since they signed an agreement on a quite historic day: September 11, 2001. That’s right, while the towers were burning.

Putin felt empowered to outright invade Ukraine — something he never dared to try while Trump was in office. His forces there are prevailing, at a price he can afford. Our economic sanctions basically backfired, since Russia can sell its fuel to a wide array of non-Western (BRICS) countries, and even form them into an anti-Western bloc, aligned with China.

Putin Wants Us to Waste Our Billions in Ukraine

What about all that Ukraine aid? Isn’t Putin afraid of that? What if he isn’t? Putin knows something few of our media are courageous enough to admit: Without U.S. troops on the ground, Ukraine is doomed. It won’t regain an inch of its old territory with the depleted forces it has, and no Europeans are going to put soldiers in to help it. So every dollar the U.S. sends to Ukraine is essentially burned in a bonfire. Putin is happy to see us burn more billions there, as Henry Kissinger was happy to see the Soviets waste more soldiers’ lives in Afghanistan. Putin is willing to trade Russian soldiers to incinerate U.S. billions.

There’s an even bigger possibility for ruining the U.S. hidden here: If conservatives succeed in stripping out Ukraine funding, Democrats and War Party Republicans might try to use the “Repo Act” to steal the Russian funds the U.S. has already frozen and give them to Ukraine.

Nothing would suit Putin better, since if the U.S. did that we would immediately lose our status as the global “reserve currency,” as the place where rich foreigners can safely park their money. (Putin even mentioned this prospect, laughing scornfully, during his Tucker Carlson interview.) If our Congress is willing to outright seize foreign money to fund our wars, foreigners will put their money elsewhere. Such a mass exodus of cash could collapse our already fragile economy. We would have squandered 200+ years of goodwill with foreign investors, for cash that we’d quickly incinerate in a war that can’t be won. See Steve Bannon’s warning about that catastrophe below at the 35-minute mark.

Meanwhile our borders are open, and Chinese or Islamist agents can pour in along with all the future welfare cases and loyal Democrat voters. Eight million so far in just three years, who will prove almost impossible ever to deport. Count on it, even a triumphantly re-elected Trump won’t be able to remove 1 million of those people. Democrat judges will cripple him with court orders, our Deep State will try to impeach him again, and our churches will echo the media in calling his actions to enforce our laws a “genocide.”

The U.S. is tearing itself apart and destroying its own system of government, as the USSR did under Mikhail Gorbachev. And Putin is laughing at us all.

Next time we’ll explore the profound, disturbing parallels between the Soviet crack-up in 1990-91 and the American collapse we’re witnessing now.

Jason Jones is a film producer, author, activist, popular podcast host, and human rights worker. He is president of the Human-Rights Education and Relief Organization (H.E.R.O.), known for its two main programs, the Vulnerable People Project and Movie to Movement. He was the first recipient of the East Turkistan Order of Friend- ship Medal for his advocacy of the Uyghur people. Jones was an executive producer of Bella and an associate producer of The Stoning of Soraya M. His humanitarian efforts have aided millions in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and the Ukraine, as well as pregnancy centers and women’s shelters throughout North America. Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream and the host of The Jason Jones Show. He is also the author of three books, The Race to Save Our Century, The World Is on Fire, and his latest book The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset. His latest film, Divided Hearts of America, is available on Amazon Prime.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His upcoming book is No Second Amendment, No First.