Yesterday the President of the United States openly identified himself as a Russian agent. I can think of no other interpretation for his repetition of Putin’s lie that “Ukraine started the war”.
Of course we are not meant to believe the lie — the assertion was ridiculous by design. He knows that we know that he is gaslighting us.
Rather, I think his message to America is this: “By making it clear that I am Putin’s puppet, I am effectively showing that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.”
When I first saw The Manchurian Candidate I had thought it was just a fantasy. Who could have predicted that something like that would actually happen in real life?