Member-only story
President Krasnov: The Long Con of Donald J. Trump
How Trump’s ego and greed made him the ultimate mark for Russian intelligence
Non-Medium members can read the story here.
The thing about a long con is that it only works if the mark never figures it out.
You don’t sell a man snake oil and leg it; you convince him it’s the paramount elixir of life, and you stay just long enough to watch him evangelize it to the world.
This is the story of how a two-bit New York real estate huckster, perpetually teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, became something far grander: a lifelong Soviet project.
, ex-head of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, a man with firsthand knowledge of KGB recruitment ops, . Given a codename: Krasnov. A convenient patsy. A man whose ego was so gaping you could drive a T-72 tank sideways through it.
They wined him, dined him, provided the ladies of the night, and filled his head with visions of Moscow skyscrapers bearing the Trump name, and then, when he got home, he immediately took out a full-page ad in criticizing NATO and demanding the U.S. withdraw from Japan and South Korea, a perfect echo of Soviet talking points.
