HARD TO LOOK SMALLER THAN WHEN YOU'RE DEPENDENT ON DONALD:

Vladimir Putin has never looked smaller. 

When the big moment in Geneva finally came, the Russian leader faced the cameras after his shorter-than-expected private meetings with President Joe Biden, and the often-shirtless Russian bear looked and sounded, well, weak. The legendary master of hours-long press appearances before packed houses of fawning Moscow apparatchiks instead played to a half-empty room of COVID-distanced reporters in Switzerland. He spoke with the soft tones and empty tropes of a fading autocrat defiant at the walls of reality closing in around him. His schtick was boring, his message tired, and his talking points worn out. 

Geneva wasn't the disinformation victory Biden's opponents feared it would be. It was a rerun of a million Putin appearances we've seen before. The only man Putin made look feeble was himself. His speech was rambling, off-topic, and filled with confusing and nonsensical misdirections and blatant lies. He looked thoroughly disconnected from his own myth. The cunning power once attributed to him seemed tiny compared to how actual power is measured. He was a man standing alone. In other words, Putin looked positively Trumpian. 

It's no coincidence that Putin has but one prominent supporter in the West: private citizen Donald Trump, which means very little, now.

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