The Manchurian Candidate

   Note: This synopsis is about a remake of the 1962 movie starring Frank Sinatra, but the ridiculous and convoluted details of my story does not duplicate any of the ridiculous and convoluted plot details of the original.

A gaudy debt ridden American businessman with a love for bling and beautiful women hosts a beauty Pageant in Moscow, and is befriended by Russian agents. He is encouraged by them to pursue a political career back in the United States.  With the Russians help he is able to stave off bankruptcy by laundering Russian mafia money into purchases of New York real estate. One of the first things he does upon returning from Russia is to purchase a full page add in major U.S. Newspapers criticizing U.S. foreign policy, essentially calling for the end of U.S. military support for its allies, notably Saudi Arabia and Japan, as well as unspecified others, arguing it is a waste of taxpayer’s money to subsidize the defence of these foreign nations. He considers running for President at this time, but doesn’t follow through. Ten years later he becomes famous by starring in a reality show where he plays a savvy  business tycoon who has a flair for firing people. Ten years after that he re-enters politics by publicizing racist tropes about the first Black President, Barack Obama.  Then, adopting Russian propaganda techniques to spread a firehose of lies and conspiracy theories, he runs for President, and with the help of Russian hacking of his opponents emails, and Russian bots and fake social media accounts, he narrowly wins the election.   Once in power, he is actually hemmed in by the career politicians in his cabinet, who carefully prevent him from making some, but not all, of the bad decisions he intends to make. He is impeached twice, but there is not a sufficient majority to have him banned from running for office again. A year later he loses the next election, but claims he actually won it and foments an insurrection that fails.  Biding his time, he remains in contact with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, and congratulates him on the occasion of his 2022 military invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign nation. After dealing with multiple lawsuits for tax fraud, election fraud, stealing government documents, fomenting a violent insurrection, and sexual molestation, he is given legal immunity by a compliant Supreme Court.  He then goes on to win the following Presidential election, with the help of a huge injection of money from the richest man in the world.  This time, he surrounds himself with yes men and delegates the richest man in the world to downsize his government and make it more vulnerable to massive corruption.  All the while he is having long private phone conversations with Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, a former KGB agent, who is trained in manipulating psychologically vulnerable subjects. 

Then on the last day of February, one month after his second inauguration, he has a meeting in the oval office with Vladimir Zelensky, President of Ukraine, ostensibly about a mineral deal but really about giving Zelensky a public rebuke for rejecting a fake peace deal that, in fact, hands Ukraine over to Putin, the aggressor.  

At this point the Manchurian candidate reveals his real intentions by criticizing Zelensky for hating Putin and not trusting Putin’s word, saying he has known Putin for a long time, and the two of them have both suffered from unfair investigations to do with his first impeachment trial.  The Manchurian Candidate unceremoniously sends Zelensky on his way while he starts the process of abandoning military aid to Ukraine, withdrawing from the Nato Alliance with Western democracies, dropping sanctions against Russia, and establishing military, economic and intelligence ties with Russia.  To be continued.