Fiona Hill, a nobody to Trump and Putin, was spotted with the two of them

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WASHINGTON (AP) Vladimir Putin paid little attention to Fiona Hill, a most important U.S. expert on Russia, when she sat next to him at dinners. Putins ’people put her there by design, choosing a nondescript woman, as she put it, so the Russian president had no competition for attention.

Fluent in Russian, he often so carefully conversed with men who seemed to forget he was there and wrote everything down later, he recalled in an interview with the Associated Press. Hey, if I were a guy, you wouldn’t speak like this in front of me, he remembered thinking. But go ahead. I’m listening.

Hill hopes it won’t be the same unseen as he later works for another world leader, Donald Trump, as his adviser to Russia at the White House. He saw inside Putins ’head, written a book that identified about him, but Trump also disliked his advice. He ignored her at meeting after meeting, sometimes mistaken him for secretary and called her darlin.

However, again, he was listening. He reads Trump like he read Putin.

The result is There Is Nothing for You Here, his book out last week. Unlike other authors from the Trump administration, he is not obsessed with scandal. Similar to his measured but disturbing testimony to Trumps ’first impeachment, the book offers a more sober, and thus perhaps more alarming, picture of the 45th president.

If the tone of the Hills is suppressed, it will perish a thousand reductions. It puts out how a career focused on understanding and managing Russia’s threat crashed into its revelation that America’s greatest threat came from within.

In fly-on-the-wall detail, he described a president with a generous appetite for praise and almost no taste in managing a man who was overwhelmed by what others said about him that the United States had relations with other countries. rose or fell in accordance with how good the foreign leaders were at what they said.

From his staff and everyone who has come into his orbit, Trump demands continued attention and adulation, he writes. Particularly in international affairs, Presidents are vain and fragile self-confidence is a point of extreme weakness.

Hill described Putin manipulating Trump by offering or withholding compliments, a maneuver he said was more effective on this president than getting the dirt and blackmailing him. At their joint news conference in Finland, when it appeared that Trump sided with Putin in his own intelligence agencies about Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, Hill almost lost it.

I want to end the whole thing, he writes. I thought about throwing a fit or getting a seizure and putting myself back in the row of journalists behind me. But it will only add to the embarrassing scene.

Yet with Trump he sees a rare if finally wasted talent. He spoke the language of many average people, humiliated the same things, operated without a filter, liked the same food and happily cut the tedious standards of the elite. While Hillary Clinton sipped champagne on donors, Trump was there outside building coal and steel jobs no matter the impression.

He clearly has a feeling for what people want, he told the AP. He can carry on the conversation even if he is unable to walk the walk in having their experiences. But he understood it.

But that skill was wasted, in his sight. Where it could have been used to mobilize people for good, it was instead only used in the self -service Me the People as a chapter title puts it.

Trumps also lost sight of the futility of his meeting in Helsinki with Putin and any chances for a hoped -for arms control deal with Russia. The conference questions went to the heart of his insecurity, Hill wrote. If Trump agreed that Russia interfered with the election for him, in his mind he might as well have said that I was illegal.

It was clear to Putin that the resulting backlash would weaken even the vague promises he and Trump made. Heading out the door from the conference, Hill writes, he told his press secretary, at the hearing of our interpreter, that the press conference was nonsense.

Trump admires Putin for his wealth, power and fame, seeing him, in words in the Hills, as the ultimate badass. During his presidency, Trump resembled Russia’s autocratic and populist leader more than he resembled America’s recent presidents, he writes, and Sometimes I’m even surprised at how obvious the resemblance is.

Putins ’ability to manipulate Russia’s political system to potentially stay in power indefinitely also made an impression. Trump saw that and said what was there to dislike about that kind of situation? Hill told AP.

Trump was impeachable by the House in late 2019 in an attempt to use his leverage in Ukraine to harm Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent, among the first in his efforts to stay in office by unconventional way, until the January 6 uprising in The capital of a mob he was told to fight like hell.

Hill served as national intelligence officer for Russia from early 2006 to late 2009 and was respected on Washington boards, but only at impeachment hearings introduced him to the country. He became one of the most damaging witnesses against the president he served, who stopped his defense by testifying that he sent his representatives to Ukraine on a domestic political activity unrelated to national security policy.

He began his testimony by describing his impossible journey as the son of a coal miner from a poor town in the north-east of England to the White House. He also explained his desire to serve in a country that offered me opportunities I would never have experienced in England.

Much of his new book expands on that personal journey, a story told with humor and self -kindness. Along the way, the Hill the Brookings Institution scholar weaves into a study of the changing societies he witnessed over decades as a child in Britain, a student and researcher in Russia and finally as a citizen of the United States. .

The changes in all three countries are noticeable, due in part to the destruction of heavy industry. The result he calls a crisis of opportunity and the rise of populist leaders like Putin, Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have been able to tap into the fears and grievances of feeling left behind.

He said he entered the White House worried about what Russia was doing and came out, realizing in full view of it all, that the real problem was the United States … and was only taking advantage of all Russians.

Hill called Russia a cautious story, America’s Ghost of Christmas Future, if the U.S. is not able to heal political divisions.

Coming from a more civilized form of politics, President Joe Biden is trying to unite the country and advance its reputation abroad, he said, but in a way, a kind of man standing alone and the people are not being pulled behind him.

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AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.

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