MAGA accused of being Putin's puppet by former Trump aide

A man holds a Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) USA 2026 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center, in Grapevine, Texas, U.S., March 28, 2026

Editor's Note: This article was updated to include a response from the White House.

President Donald Trump’s former White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, has an explanation for why the Republican has failed to end the Russia-Ukraine war as promised and is now pulling America out of NATO: He is compromised by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“If Trump is disavowing NATO and breaking an 80 year tradition — something’s wrong,” Scaramucci posted on X on Tuesday. “If Trump is praising Vladimir Putin, whose entire economy is slightly smaller than the state of Texas — something’s wrong. If Trump is disavowing the 1994 defense agreement where we told Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons and we’d protect them — the agreement that got him impeached in his first term — something is wrong.”

After noting that Trump frequently criticizes other world leaders but refrains from doing so about Putin, Scaramucci speculated that it is because Putin “owns” Trump.

“It’s hard to watch as an American but it’s obvious,” Scaramucci wrote. “Why does he own him? That’ll probably come out someday.” He then added that Russia also pays right-leaning podcasters, referring to the 2024 indictment proving that Russia had paid influencers including Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, Benny Johnson, Tayler Hansen and Matt Christiansen.

“Republicans hanging out in Moscow, repeating the same lines,” Scaramucci concluded. “The question isn’t whether something exists. It’s what.”

In response to this article, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said that “Anthony Scaramucci lasted 11 short days in the White House. He makes lightweights look credible.”

Scaramucci is far from alone among critics alleging that Trump is compromised by Russia and that this is helping Putin’s agenda. Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2019, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (who served under a Democrat, President Bill Clinton) claimed that Trump’s pro-Putin rhetoric “is undermining democracies for the sake of separating them from the United States and from each other and it is a new form of using… It’s kind of weaponizing information, and what sometimes is called asymmetrical warfare, in terms of making sure that our alliances are weakened and that the democratic institutions in those countries are under pressure and threat. At the same time, I think that it does work also as a way of expanding Russia’s influence.”

Trump was also found in a report by special counsel Robert Mueller to have worked with Russian allies to spread disinformation about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, worked with accused Russia-tied sources like his then-campaign chair Paul Manafort and his top adviser Roger Stone and his open encouragement of Russia to dig up dirt on Clinton.

Yet Scaramucci’s criticisms of Trump are not limited to his ties to Russia. Earlier this month, he criticized Trump for engaging in business deals that have netted him more than $2 billion since taking office, the first president to so openly and lucratively profit from being in office. Scaramucci posted on X that “it smells terrible and it should be stopped. But we’ve lost our sense of shame. Trump said 2 things: 1. It’s peanuts and not that much money. 2. Nobody cares. That second one is the one that should keep you up at night.” He added, “Hopefully people actually do care. Hopefully they show up in November and send these guys a message.”

Meanwhile, in May Scaramucci bashed Trump’s handling of the economy.

“If Barack Obama had done half of what Trump is doing now, Fox News would have been calling for impeachment,” Scaramucci posted on X. “Trump has no economic philosophy. He spent $8.2 trillion in his first term and he's on pace for $9 to $10 trillion in this one. We're at 100 percent debt to GDP held by investors — 122 percent if you count the Fed's balance sheet.”

On a separate occasion in May, Scaramucci observed that "all my Wall Street buddies voted for him and now they’re regretting the fact," later clarifying that "most of the people are.”

Speaking with this author for Salon in 2018, Scaramucci attributed Trump’s political success to his ability to speak to the economic concerns of ordinary Americans.

“What I saw was in a generation we went from aspirational working class families, like the one I grew up in, to [desperate] working class families,” Scaramucci argued. “What I saw is a decline in wages causing some level of economic asphyxiation for a very large group of people. And so Trump being out there, going into those areas, explaining the policies that he’s going to put in place, and then executing on some of those policies. I mean it’s not me saying, it’s just go look at ‘The Wall Street Journal.’”

From Your Site Articles