There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

After a recommendation by Fox News host K.T. McFarland, a fellow member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Hill joined the Trump administration as Russia advisor. McFarland and National Security Advisor General Flynn encouraged Hill to help Trump navigate his relationship with Putin. Trump was fixated on finishing the nuclear arms deal Reagan had started in the 1980s. This appealed to Hill, who also had a fascination with the same issue.

However, Trump, a man obsessed with the women’s appearance and outward presentation, was not receptive to Hill. The first time they met in the Oval Office, Hill accidentally wore sneakers because of a stressful week with her sick child, something Trump’s daughter Ivanka immediately noticed. The second time they met was far worse: Trump mistook Hill for a secretary, forgot her name, and expressed no interest in her thoughts on his call with Putin regarding the Syrian civil war. Hill, who had been focusing on Putin’s words, detected something sinister in Putin’s tone, but Trump, who thought the call went well, didn’t want to hear it.

McFarland offered Hill a crash course on Trump. For example, Trump didn’t like anyone who took notes because he suspected they’d try to write negative reports about him.

Though Trump and Putin have some alarming commonalities, differences in their backgrounds shaped different leadership styles. While Putin came from a poorer family in St. Petersburg and climbed to power through the system, Trump hailed from a wealthy family with few hardships, believing himself to be an outsider to the system. Putin appealed to the marginalized masses in Russia with a single unifying vision for Russian greatness. Trump also appealed to groups who felt forgotten, but he exploited divisions to gain a following under a message of returning to a mythically perfect past: “Make America Great Again,” which Hill argues was more about Trump’s ego than vision.

These differences in leadership styles and acumen were on full display at the Helsinki conference. Putin offered Trump a mutual interrogation agreement, allowing US intelligence agencies access to some of the most wanted Russian criminals, while also permitting American citizens to be extracted to Russia and subject to their interrogation tactics. Trump thought this was great, not thinking through the drawbacks of this kind of mutuality—something Hill calls a disaster. Hill argues that Trump’s earnest desire to close a nuclear weapons deal with Russia impeded his judgment in his communications with Putin. Hill sympathized with Trump’s desire to negotiate this arms deal—her Uncle Charlie’s question of Russian aggression during the Cold War had launched her own studies in Russia. However, Trump’s lack of knowledge about history, his blinkered trust of the Russian president, and his ignorance and incuriosity led him to make impulsive and naive comments and agreements that later had to be walked back. Trump’s fragile ego shaped many of the decisions that led to his first impeachment hearing involving US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

Hill compares Trump’s psychology to the un-nuanced view of the world held by the Queen of Hearts from Lewis Carroll’s fairytale Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Like the Queen, Trump immediately turned on anyone he perceived as undermining him, without first attempting to fully understand the situation. Officials who wanted to remove Ambassador Yovanovitch from her post for their own political gains told Trump that she was telling the Ukrainians that Trump would be impeached. Trump typically ignored women, especially those who were diplomats and public service, but it was easy to drag anyone into the line of fire by claiming they had insulted Trump. Yovanovitch and Trump were not close, so when Trump’s supporters took aim at her online and Alex Jones’s Infowars featured a conspiracy asserting Yovanovitch was a mole for George Soros, the ambassador became the target of Trump’s frustration. The Soros conspiracy theory, popular among Q-Anon supporters, is a manifestation of antisemitism. The Trump administration was all too happy to use fringe conspiracy theories like this one to create scapegoats.

At the same time, Hill was working on European requests through the State Department. When a much-desired meeting between Trump and Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban, hadn’t occurred, Hill was blamed. Right-wing lobbyist Connie Mack filed a Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) report on her, citing Hill’s studies in Moscow. Hill compares the political climate and conspiracies surrounding her to middle school nastiness but on a grand scale: She received thousands of online threats to harm her and her family. Being a woman didn’t help: The Trump administration was openly hostile toward women, with staffers making crude jokes that any sign of discontent meant a woman overly emotional and menstruating. In this climate, Hill wasn’t surprised when supposedly professional adult colleagues dubbed her “Russia bitch” (262).

2020 was a year marked by crises. Trump’s first impeachment hearing was followed by his second. Racial tensions exploded after the callous murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a police officer who kneeled on his neck. Most devastatingly, the novel coronavirus swept across the globe from Wuhan, China, and ushered in a new pandemic that would kill millions worldwide.

Rather than being united by a common foe (the virus), the United States was pulled apart because Trump downplayed the pandemic and disregarded science as the infection rates and death tolls rose. The pandemic laid bare the inequities of our economic systems and the failings of our social and political institutions, while further limiting opportunities for everyone, especially the most marginalized Americans. Trump, however, was still ruled by his ego. Instead of working with experts, he decided that the head of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was an enemy because he didn’t agree with the rosy picture Trump portrayed—and because Trump worried Fauci’s reasoned and empathetic TV appearance were upstaging him.

Trump responded to his bad electoral chances by positing that the 2020 election would be rigged. After he lost, his supporters stormed the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, to attempt a coup with his encouragement. Trump was falling back on autocratic tactics—like Putin, using supporters and cronies to do his dirty work. Although Trump didn’t have a death grip on the media the same way Putin does with his government-funded TV channels and radio stations, Trump did loom large by mastering social media, dismissing traditional news gatherers as purveyors of alternate facts, and sowing seeds of distrust in information. Hill warns that despite Biden’s electoral victory, American populism is still a threat until we all address its origins by finding pathways to opportunity for everyone.