Springtime for Putin as Trump embraces Kremlin’s distorted reality

Vladimir Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee that Russian-backed disinformation campaigns backing Brexit and Trump 1.0 have caused an existential crisis in the West, writes Ciaran O'Connor

The division, discord, and disorder dreamed up by Vladimir Putin, left, has come to fruition following the re-election of Donald Trump. File Picture: Evan Vucci/AP

The premise of Mel Brook’s acclaimed 1967 film, The Producers, centres on a plot involving two figures hatching a plan to scam investors by producing a Broadway musical in adoration of Adolf Hitler that would be so bad it was guaranteed to flop. However, the musical fails to fail and they’re left to carry on and act like everything is going according to plan.

Two of the seismic political events of the past decade, the Brexit vote and the campaign of Donald Trump for president of the US in 2016, were expected by many — including some of their architects — to be flops.