Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Russians Are Laughing at the U.S., Not Just at Trump

To many Americans, this is his mess. But to outsiders, it's about America's weakness.

May 19, 2017 at 4:08 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Comedy hour.
Photographer: Mikhail Metzel/TASS via Getty Images

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President Donald Trump was only half wrong when he tweeted last week that "Russia must be laughing up their sleeves watching as the U.S. tears itself apart." Russian officials are laughing quite openly.

QuickTake Vladimir Putin