When Donald Trump first heard on Thursday morning that Vladimir Putin had endorsed Kamala Harris for president, he must have been shattered. Not Putin, too!

After all, polls showed Harris taking the lead in the run up to the November 5 election. And analysts had concluded Trump had no upside and that his only hope lay with turning out his base. The dam that seemed to have held back rebellion against Trump in the Republican Party seemed to be breaking with the latest breach being the announcement this week by former member of the GOP House leadership Liz Cheney that she would now be endorsing Vice President Harris.

And above and beyond all that, Putin was and is, after all, was one of the foundations on which Trump’s base has long been built.

Putin, Trump knew, had effectively bought the Republican Party. That’s why Trump had surrounded himself with an inner circle of Kremlin favorites including his running mate J.D. Vance, RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, and the dim bulb Russophiles in his own family. And now this?

Was Putin too giving up on the GOP?

What if he wanted his money back?

Fortunately for the former president, Putin was just joshing. He could barely keep a straight face when his made his comment about America’s Vice President, especially when he made his snide comment about Harris’ laugh proving that she was doing well.

One less thing to worry about. Or…was it?

As the Department of Justice made clear at a Wednesday press conference and with a flurry of activity this week, the fact that Putin was still pulling the strings for MAGA was a double-edged sword.

With the outcome of the Ukraine war and Trump’s personal freedom hanging in the balance, both Trump and Putin needed each other and a Trump victory in November more than ever. On the other hand, Attorney General Merrick Garland, working in close coordination with the the U.S. intelligence community and other executive branch agencies, appeared to be taking a much more aggressive stance to call out and stop Russian election interference than it had in 2016 and 2020.

Perhaps that is because of the criticism of the U.S. government........

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