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A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

The recent news from ProPublica that a Russian oligarch attended Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebration on a private island in the Bahamas and covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for the lavish affair was not a surprise to anyone familiar with the main thrust of my new book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America. The book chronicles the decade-long covert operation Putin has waged against the United States to sow discord, influence elections (to benefit Trump), and court Trump and his crew. An important fact in the wedding story is that Umar Kremlev, this oh-so generous oligarch, is not just another Russian billionaire who has to make nice with Putin to keep his fortune; he has been a key member of Putin’s security apparatus—truly the inner circle—and became an oligarch (and head of a corrupt international boxing organization) because of that. In essence, a Putin operative infiltrated deep into the Trump clan.

This is not the first time Russia has attempted to squirm its way into Trump Jr.’s world. During the 2016 campaign, Junior received a message from an associate who worked with the son of another Russian oligarch. That contact informed Don Jr. that Moscow was plotting to secretly help Trump and wanted to send an emissary who had dirt on Hillary Clinton to meet with the Trump campaign. Trump Jr. replied, “If it’s what you say I love it.” The meeting soon happened, with Trump Jr., campaign chair Paul Manafort, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner present. When the meeting was revealed—eight months after the election—Trump Jr. first lied about it, saying it was not related to the campaign, and then later claimed the emissary (who was tied to Russian intelligence) provided no useful derogatory information on Clinton.

Trump and his minions have contended that there was no collusion and, thus, no scandal, meaning the whole Russia investigation was a “hoax” and a Deep State “witch hunt” orchestrated to destroy Trump.

What was most important about the meeting was that it signaled to Moscow that the Trump camp was a-okay with Putin meddling in the election and that it made the Trump gang aware that the Kremlin intended to covertly mess in American politics to assist Trump. Still, Trump, Trump Jr., Manafort, and other Trumpers would loudly assert throughout the campaign and in the years afterward that Putin had not interfered. That is, they knowingly lied.

Which brings us to collusion.

Collusion has been the buzzword at the center of the Trump-Russia scandal for 10 years. Trump and his minions have contended that there was no collusion and, thus, no scandal, meaning the whole Russia investigation was a “hoax” and a Deep State “witch hunt” orchestrated to destroy Trump.

Their definition of collusion basically rested on whether Trump or his lieutenants were in the same room with Russian hackers as they pilfered the documents from Democrats that would later be made public by WikiLeaks. No evidence of such collaboration emerged. So, they have vociferously argued ever since, there was no collusion. And, therefore, no scandal.

The issue of collusion, naturally, has come up, as I’ve been doing media interviews about the new book. It has long seemed to me that the meeting Trump Jr. set up and the subsequent denials from him and other Trump players—which echoed and affirmed Putin’s denials of interfering in the election—were a form of collusion. Team Trump was colluding with Putin’s attempted cover-up. Maybe Trump and his lieutenants weren’t involved in the hack-and-leak operation. But they deliberately lied and provided cover for Putin. Smells like collusion.

In the stretch following the 2016 election, Democrats and Trump critics were too fixated on collusion. But it was the complicity, stupid.

As I’ve been discussing all this in media interviews, I’ve made the point that perhaps the better term is complicity. For 10 years, not just in 2016, Putin has been attacking US elections—the book details all this—and throughout that time, Trump has incessantly maintained that Moscow was doing nothing and that all claims otherwise were part of the Deep State’s bogus “Russia, Russia, Russia” conspiracy against him. Consequently, Trump has been complicit in Putin’s ongoing information war against the United States. That’s an act of profound betrayal.

In the stretch following the 2016 election, Democrats and Trump critics were too fixated on collusion. But it was the complicity, stupid.

Now let’s go back to collusion.

My book does have a chapter titled “Collusion,” and it digs into a 966-page bipartisan report on the Russian attack on the 2016 election that was produced by the Senate Intelligence Committee and released in August 2020. This investigation offers the most comprehensive account of what transpired in 2016. One of the most intriguing portions of the report zeroes in on Manafort. (Another very interesting section looks at whether the Kremlin obtained any compromising material on Trump. Read the book for that.)

In the Manafort passages, the committee—led at the time by a Republican senator named Marco Rubio—revealed that while he was chairing the Trump campaign, Manafort was interacting with and passing sensitive internal campaign data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a close business associate who was also a Russian intelligence officer. And, the report noted, Kilimnik had connections to the Russian military intelligence unit that ran the hack-and-leak operation that targeted the Clinton campaign. Moreover, the report noted that committee investigators had uncovered “two pieces of information” that “raise the possibility of Manafort’s potential connection to the hack-and-leak operations.”

It appears there’s a chance that there was indeed collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian operation via Manafort.

The report’s description of this information was redacted, as was much text about Kilimnik. In my reporting for the book, I learned that the redacted portions disclosed that Kilimnik was an agent for the GRU, the Russian intelligence outfit that ran the hack-and-leak attack—a fact buttressing the possibility that Kilimnik was involved in or aware of that operation when he was in communication with Manafort.

Because of all the redactions—the intelligence community did not want to reveal too much of what it knew about the Manafort-Kilimnik connection to protect sources and methods—the public has never learned the full story. It appears there’s a chance that there was indeed collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian operation via Manafort.

In any event, the fact that Trump’s campaign chair was in direct contact with a Russian agent—they communicated through means that left no traces—ought to have triggered a major scandal. Yet this Republican-backed report—which affirmed that Moscow intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump and that Trump actively exploited the Russian attack and “publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia”—had little impact on the public view of the Trump-Russia affair.

It was released during the Covid pandemic in the summertime, when the two political parties were holding their presidential conventions. By then, most of the political-and-media world had moved on from all that Russia business, particularly after the final report of special counsel Robert Mueller noted he had found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia. (He did point out he had amassed plenty of evidence that Trump committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice.)

So Trump and those within MAGA-land could continue to peddle the narrative that collusion was a bogus charge that had been concocted by the Deep State, the media, and nefarious Democrats.

Trump Jr.’s wedding should prompt a reappraisal of the collusion question, as it illuminates what I try to convey in the book: Putin has been running an extensive covert action against the United States for a decade, and Trump and his crew have both colluded and been complicit.

The president’s ratings are in the gutter.

The White House launched “TrumpTV: The Essentials Station” on Monday. The digital streaming service provides a 24/7 rotation of Trump’s rallies, speeches, and announcements, offering the American public another opportunity to tap their omnipresent president directly into their veins.

Donald Trump’s deputy assistant Kaelan Dorr described the need for such a platform on X shortly after its launch, lamenting that “the press, in some cases, reported inaccurately or not at all on the Administration’s many record breaking accomplishments on behalf of all Americans.”

Trump TV is a constant “livestream of the Administration’s greatest hits, unfiltered,” Dorr noted.

The administration’s push for Trump TV is the direct result of Trump attempting to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. The rest of the presidential press pool has ceased live coverage in solidarity with the three outlets as they sue Trump to restore their access.

But even amid a broadcast media blackout, practically nobody has tuned in to see what Trump is up to.

At the time of publication, just 1,700 viewers were watching the president’s YouTube stream. Trump TV offered a smattering of old news, switching from an ancient Trump rally to a Melania Trump speech about the creative uses for AI that she originally delivered in January.

Fourteen hours earlier, Trump TV had launched with around 8,000 viewers, according to The Daily Beast. That’s when it peaked.

About 90 minutes after that, viewership declined to 4,000. By 9 p.m. on Monday, its audience had sunk to 3,000 viewers—a paltry percentage of the channel’s 3,220,000 subscribers.

Trump announced Friday that he was banning MS NOW, CNN, and Politico from the White House, writing on Truth Social that the prohibition was the result of “FAKE NEWS.”

The president’s unprecedented attack on the free press inspired collective action by America’s largest broadcasters, which considered the ban an assault on the First Amendment and an affront to news institutions across the country. By Monday, all the broadcasters in the White House press pool—including NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News—had joined together to suspend coverage of the president and his actions until he reversed course.

By Monday afternoon, Trump’s plan to silence the media had clearly backfired: The absence of any prominent media organizations left Trump without a microphone and without a camera at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the White House lawn, delivering remarks that nobody could hear.

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that communism is somehow the greatest threat facing the United States. Now GOP members are fuming as the president prepares to embrace Chinese President Xi Jinping, leader of the Chinese Communist Party.

A Republican close to the White House told Politico’s Playbook Tuesday that Jinping’s state visit was coming at a time when Trump’s attention was needed elsewhere. 

“I don’t think people really want to see you toasting the Chinese premier,” this person told Politico. “You’re hosting this glamorous state dinner at a time when people are like, ‘Are you focused on me?’”

Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. told Playbook that Xi’s state visit was “just another in a string of examples where Trump’s message and Republicans’ don’t jibe.”

“The in-your-face arguments from Republicans this election cycle is that Democrats want to bring socialism or communism to America,” Marson said. “Trump warmly embracing two of the most outspoken leaders of those ideologies makes it that much harder for the message to resonate with voters.”

That second leader Marson mentioned is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Xi’s state visit comes on the heels of Trump’s visit to Gracie Mansion on Monday.  

Mamdani, a democratic socialist and the city’s first Muslim mayor, has been maligned by Republicans as a sort of boogeyman—but it’s clear that Trump just adores him. Some of the president’s sycophantic followers couldn’t cope.

Self-described proud Islamophobe Laura Loomer was particularly annoyed. 

“I’m pissed off,” she wrote on X. “We work so hard to combat the radical left and the anti-American Islamic jihadists who work to destroy our country everyday. And for what? So they can be rewarded? There is never going to be any accountability. I realized that today. We will never see it.”

“Meeting with communists and jihadists doesn’t energize people,” she wrote in a separate post. 

“Anyway, November is going to be a bust,” she wrote in another. “We tried. But there’s only so much you can do.”

Anthony Constantino, the Republican nominee in upstate New York’s 21st congressional district, is not subtle in his fealty to Donald Trump. Since 2024, the 43-year-old businessman has given the president a larger-than-life statue of himself, erected a “Vote for Trump” sign massive enough to be seen in satellite images, and dropped an album called “Thank You President Trump” that includes a “Baby Shark”–like track in which he mostly just repeats the president’s name.

Constantino poses in front of a “Vote for Trump” sign on the roof of his printing company, Sticker Mule, in Amsterdam, NY.

Shameless? Yes. Effective? Apparently. This past spring, Trump endorsed the paying Mar-a-Lago member over Assemblyman Robert Smullen, a retired Marine colonel backed by the state party. Constantino—who made a fortune through his novelty company Sticker Mule—defeated Smullen by 19 points. He is now favored to replace the retiring incumbent, Rep. Elise Stefanik.

Such a handoff would be the story of the Trump-era GOP in miniature. Stefanik, who was two grades behind Constantino at Albany Academy, went to Harvard before rocketing up the ranks of the Paul Ryan–era Republican Party. In 2014, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, hailed as a paragon of the party’s supposedly moderate future. After Trump took power, Stefanik tacked hard toward MAGA, only to be rewarded with public humiliation when Trump pulled her nomination to be UN ambassador last year.

Constantino, conversely, says he was “sort of a screwup” as a kid. While Ivy League–educated conservatives have tried to wrangle Trumpism into seminar-table coherence, Constantino—a small-time rapper and boxer—channels MAGA’s gleefully offensive id. During his campaign launch held in front of a wall of free turkeys, Constantino labeled Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “perra falsa”—Spanish for fake bitch. He told Gerard Kassar, the head of New York’s Conservative Party, to get “his ass” in a boxing ring, so he could punch him “in the fucking face legally.” In the video for his Zohran Mamdani diss track—e.g., “fuck you bitch,” rapping about the New York mayor’s “boy Osama”—he makes a throat-slitting gesture. In keeping with this thuggish persona, Constantino’s close associates have been accused or found guilty of kidnapping, stealing money from a youth baseball league, and lying to Congress. 

Come January, Constantino could become Congress’ most convincing Trump imitator.  

According to Skidmore College political science professor Bob Turner, “when you talk to longtime professional Republicans” in Constantino’s district, they say things “like, ‘I hate that guy. I’m embarrassed by that guy.’” But just as the national establishment did for Trump, the New York GOP is now backing Constantino after failing to stop him. Come January, Constantino could become the most convincing Trump imitator in a body already teeming with them. 

Constantino was born in 1982 to a prominent family in Amsterdam, a small city about a half-hour northwest of Albany. His father was the founder of a successful local printing company, wrote poetry, and was known for advocating on behalf of Native Americans. He died of cancer when Constantino was 6. 

Constantino was a devoted high-school wrestler. Although he lost his first 30 matches, he credits reaching a regional final by reverse-engineering the training of another local wrestler. Today, he is open about imitating Trump. “This is what smart people do,” he says about the president. “We learn from other smart people.”

After high school, he says he was “semi–kicked out” of Stonehill College and transferred to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he left without graduating to work at the family business. In 2010, he co-founded Sticker Mule with a friend of his late father’s. 

The new company brought hundreds of manufacturing jobs to a region where other blue-collar work had disappeared, offering a path to the kind of respect his father enjoyed. But Constantino was not the type to follow one of his dad’s key business precepts: “Don’t promote controversy.” That became clear as the Sticker Mule CEO emerged on Twitter as an outspoken supporter of Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Over the next few years, Constantino began spending most of his time in Mexico training as a boxer. His campaign biography boasts of the “chiseled physique” he developed after taking up the sport professionally, when, at the age of 39, he won a 2022 bout against an opponent who, according to boxing records, never fought professionally before or since. His final—and only third—professional match was a loss the following year to another fighter making his pro debut, a recovering drug addict and candy vendor who has said he was meant to be “carne de cañón” (cannon fodder).

As he pursued boxing, Constantino was also trying to launch what he marketed as a “happy” social media company where users were required to verify their identities before posting. On the site, called Stimulus, his persona was lighthearted, if juvenile; he made at least three posts about eating soups containing animal penis. That was tame compared to a 2024 attempt at stand-up in a Manhattan bar where Constantino described a scenario in which women supporting Kamala Harris vomited before and after he put his penis in their mouths. “I had the consent forms,” Constantino joked.

Within days of winning in 2024, Trump announced his plan to send Stefanik to the UN. Constantino promptly filed to run for her seat, self-funding his anticipated special election campaign with $2.6 million (he has now loaned his campaign $12 million in total). According to FEC filings, some of
the money went to Drake Ventures, a Florida LLC affiliated with Roger Stone, the former Trump adviser and convicted felon. Other chunks went to Paul
Antonelli, a Sticker Mule employee who was arrested for grand larceny in 2020 after being accused of stealing from an Amsterdam youth baseball league. (A police report states $47,000 went missing over a two-year period, much of it from a concession stand. Antonelli pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.)

When Trump left Stefanik languishing in the House, Constantino retooled for 2026—and grew more aggressive. At a June 2025 campaign event, he insinuated that Kassar may have sent a hit man to murder Antonelli. He alleged that Kassar had told him in late 2025 that “we intend to kill you” and that the Conservative Party would “destroy” him. Constantino added that someone later cut Antonelli’s brake line, suggesting without any clear evidence that Kassar could have been responsible for what he portrayed as a failed murder-for-hire scheme. Kassar later launched an ongoing defamation lawsuit that challenges Constantino’s “wholly false and invented series of events.” Constantino and Antonelli did not respond to requests for comment. 

If Constantino’s allegations sounded like something from GoodFellas, so too did the criminal charges outlined in a police report and court documents against two of his close associates, who were arrested within weeks of his primary victory in connection with the alleged kidnapping and assault of an accountant who also knows the sticker mogul. Matt Moller, the reported victim, says he was one of three friends who attended Constantino’s 2022 wedding. One of the other two, he adds, was Tommy Marcellino—a former MMA fighter who is now accused of abducting and strangling Moller. The second alleged assailant is Ricardo “Porsche Truck Ruk” Henderson, a rapper whom Constantino and affiliated companies have paid more than $500,000 in recent years, according to invoices and emails I reviewed. (Neither of the accused men responded to requests for comment.)

Constantino was not involved in the alleged kidnapping, but it is only the most recent example of people around him being implicated in serious criminal conduct. In late 2025, Constantino used Antonio Brown as a hype man for his Trump album shortly after the former NFL star was extradited from Dubai to face an attempted murder charge in Florida. Jorge Masvidal, another guest star on the record, is a former MMA fighter who pleaded no contest in 2023 to misdemeanor battery after being accused of attacking another UFC fighter outside a Miami restaurant. A third is Jason “Greatness” Jensen, a face-tattooed Sticker Mule brand ambassador who, according to public records, pleaded no contest to aggravated assault in 2008 before reinventing himself as a Christian rapper.

Anthony Constantino answers questions after defeating Assemblyman Robert Smullen in the Republican Party Primary for the 21st Congressional District on Tuesday June 23, 2026.Jim Franco/Albany Times Union/Getty

Constantino’s antics and associations have hurt his standing. In June, the editorial board of the Albany Times Union wrote that it “can’t recall ever meeting a more unsuitable candidate.” An August survey from a local NBC affiliate found that 42 percent of likely voters had a very unfavorable view of Constantino and showed him narrowly trailing Democrat Blake Gendebien, a mild-mannered dairy farmer who lives near the Canadian border. The Sticker Mule CEO again took a page from Trump, saying that it was a “fake poll” and that the FCC should reprimand the station to the “fullest extent possible.” 

A more recent survey touted by Constantino suggested he remains on track to succeed Stefanik. If he does, Constantino has signaled grander ambitions. The word “president” appears only once in his song glazing Trump, at the very end. “Man, I got to say, I love Donald, Donald Trump,” Constantino intones. “Might be president one day, just like Donald, Donald Trump.”

A little over a week ago, President Donald Trump demanded that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil facilities. “Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump said during a state visit to Ireland. “Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel because he’s causing a shortage of diesel. This isn’t done by the Middle East; this is done by what’s…

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Republican Senator John Curtis is demanding an investigation into Donald Trump Jr. after a Russian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Umar Kremlev, bankrolled his wedding party.

In a post on X, Curtis posted a three-page letter he sent to the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, and the committee’s ranking member, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, calling for Trump Jr. to be subpoenaed as part of a larger investigation into his business dealings and relationships with foreign individuals. Curtis also called for the same scrutiny of Hunter Biden.

In the letter, Curtis cited the lavish party Kremlev threw on a private island for Trump Jr., as well as the Trump family’s cryptocurrency ventures, comparing the president’s son to Biden and the myriad Republican-led investigations into Biden’s international business dealings.

“A toaster is a wedding gift. A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else. Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships. We should not unplug it now. ‘Trust us’ was not enough then, and it is not enough now,” Curtis said in the post.

The move is significant in that Republicans have so far avoided addressing the Trump family’s business deals since the 2024 election. President Trump made a whopping $2.2 billion in 2025, most of it from cryptocurrency, and the family is poised to make hundreds of millions more. The Trumps also have stakes in prediction markets and defense companies, willfully committing ethical violations without any action from Congress.

Movie studio Paramount on Monday agreed to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by 12 states, the last big obstacle blocking the company’s $81 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal that would transform the movie industry landscape. In the settlement, which still needs to be approved by a judge, Paramount agreed to terms including a five-year movie production plan and to invest…

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Freedom Fest in Kentucky—headlined by MAGA artist Kid Rock—has been canceled after barely selling any VIP tickets.

The host blamed the cancellation on a lack of enthusiasm from his wealthiest friends, noting that he was only able to sell six VIP tickets (at $1,000 each).

“I am never ever, ever, ever, ever doing this event again,” former Kentucky GOP gubernatorial candidate and event host Eric Deters, who throws the event on his farm, said on Facebook Monday. “When I put together Patriot State Freedom Fest, I put it together with the game plan and the idea that I could pay for it with the VIP sales of $1,000 from these hundred people that I interact with on a regular basis that have money.”

The Freedom Fest began in 2022 and has drawn large crowds in the past, while featuring speakers like Donald Trump Jr., Candace Owens, and Eric Trump. But this year saw a massive drop in VIP ticket sales and general interest, possibly due to Trump’s horrendous approval rating, rising costs tied to the Iran war, or an oversaturation of MAGA events (like that barely watched Republican midterm convention). Either way, Deters is pissed, lashing out at people whom he apparently expected to attend.

“Out of all these people that have money that I interact with, who I do favors for all day long. They ask me for something, I never say no. I never said no to these people,” he said. “None of these people will ever, ever, ever get a favor from me again, ever. Not only will they never get a favor from me again, they do not have Bulldog immunity.” He also lashed out at the media for not adequately covering the event.

This was the last straw for Deters, who has said he’s done throwing the Freedom Fest from now on.

“I’m never gonna do this event. Somebody else can do such an event,” he said. “I’m sorry for all the people that were gonna attend. But I can tell you right now, I feel great relief that I ain’t gonna put this burden all by myself.”