What did Donald Trump do today?

He forced the removal of an anti-Putin Congressman as chair of an intelligence oversight committee.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-LA) has been chair of the House Intelligence Committee since Republicans gained a majority in 2018. He is a conservative Republican who has generally been in Trump's good graces. Turner defended Trump when the stolen classified documents scandal erupted, calling it "more like a bookkeeping issue than it is a national security threat," and helped walk back Trump's ominous declaration that there would be a "bloodbath" if he weren't re-elected.

But Turner is also staunchly pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine, and has spoken out against the propaganda efforts of the Putin regime. Today, he told reporters that he was being forced out of his chairmanship of the intelligence committee by Speaker Mike Johnson, on orders from Trump.

After the news broke, Johnson insisted to reporters that Turner's ouster was "not a President Trump decision," but he had already told Turner privately that the reason was because of "concerns from Mar-a-Lago."

The United States is a military ally of Ukraine and Russia is a hostile foreign power, but Trump's personal loyalties and sentiments have long run in the opposite direction. He was elected in 2016 in part due to Russian interference in the election, has been financially dependent on Russian oligarchs to keep his real estate investment solvent. Trump tried to blackmail the government of Ukraine during his first term by threatening to withhold urgent military aid unless they too tried to influence the 2020 election by opening a fake investigation into his likely opponent Joe Biden, for which he was impeached. He has recently suggested that he would force Ukraine to accept a peace settlement on Russian terms.

Trump's purge of Turner is not the only pro-Russia move he has made recently. His nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has been an open advocate for the Putin regime in American politics. She has boosted discredited Russian propaganda about Ukrainian bioweapon research, defended the Putin regime's decision to invade on the grounds that Ukraine was too friendly with the United States, and met secretly with Russian allies. Her potential elevation to the nation's top intelligence post has been enthusiastically trumpeted as a win by Russian state media.

Why does this matter?

• America's loyalties don't change just because the president feels obligated to the dictator of hostile country.
  
  
• Congress is supposed to be a co-equal branch of government, not the president's personal Politburo.

• There's no difference between a president who really is the puppet of an enemy nation, and one who simply always does what an enemy nation would want.