It is no secret that Vanity Fair is not exactly fond of President Donald Trump. However, what is surprising is how they have taken their dislike for Trump to such an extreme that their articles are coming off as if they are just angrily heckling him from the sidelines. An example of this is their May 26 article about the attitude of the Russian people towards Trump. It could have made for an interesting story but author Peter Savodnik ruined his credibility with cheap shots at Trump that sound as if they were hurled by a drunken heckler enraged that his home team Democrats lost the election.
Hey Trump! You know what? You're just uneducated and don't know stuff! That pretty much sums up Savodnik's heckle that set the tone for his article. Perhaps he had a point somewhere later in his story but after that cheap shot, why bother to believe anything he writes? He's compared to Vladimir Zhirinovsky (who decades ago, was compared to Pat Buchanan), who Savodnik describes as a "half-Jewish, quasi-fascist nutbag." But at least he knows his place, as a populist-nationalist "court jester," unlike Trump:
When smart, educated, liberal-ish Russians in Moscow and St. Petersburg think of Donald Trump, they’re reminded of Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Except, they’re quick to note, Zhirinovsky is educated. He was an undergraduate degree at the prestigious Moscow State University, where he studied in the Turkish Studies Department in the Institute of Asian and African Studies. Later, after serving with the Army in the Caucasus, he obtained a law degree. This is another way of saying: Zhirik knows things, including what his role is.
Trump does not know things, and this is what flummoxes and frightens smart Russians—the Russians who follow international politics at Meduza.io and Dozhd.ru, the subset of would-be Westernizers waiting for the next glasnost.
Donald Trump is not educated? How do you graduate from the Wharton School of Finance without being educated? As to not knowing things, Trump apparently knew more than the pundits who declared there was no way he could win the 2016 Presidential election which turned out to be the greatest political upset in American history.
This is where Savodnik's elitist bitterness about Hillary losing comes out: "Zhirinovsky knows he's not supposed to be in charge. Trump has no idea he has no idea. Thoughtful Russians, in other words, view Trump the way many thoughtful people who voted for Clinton last year, on the left and the right, think of Trump -- dangerously out of his depth."
