Alexander Vindman: Trump Is Putin's 'Useful Idiot' - by Jeffrey Goldberg

“Authoritarianism is able to take hold not because you have a strong set of leaders who are forcing their way,” he says.  “Truth is a victim in this administration, I think it’s Orwellian—the ultimate goal of this president is to get you to disbelieve what you’ve seen and what you’ve heard. My goal now is to remind people of this.”In his first interview, a key witness in the impeachment trial says Trump goes out of his way to try to please the Russian president. “It’s more about the fact that we can give away our democracy. In Hungary and Turkey today, in Nazi Germany, those folks gave away their democracy, by being complacent.”