The Russian Army’s official clothing boutique in Moscow is marking the inauguration of Donald Trump by extending a 10 percent discount to all American citizens and employees of the U.S. Embassy. The store offers a full line of chic patriotic gear, including a T-shirt depicting a Russian soldier with a huge gun peeking out of a Christmas tree, a blue camo-print tie, and a leather bomber jacket embroidered with a missile.
In an interview with state-run Russian news site Sputnik News, a representative for the store said, “All of American buyers are very friendly and enjoy the discounts; nobody is making jokes about Trump’s peculiar ties with Russia.” The store advertised the promotion with this poster:
Russian Trumpophilia could also be seen Friday in expressions of joy from some Russian politicians. The populist, nationalist, fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky—as close to a Russian version of Trump as there is—was quoted as calling Trump “a lucky bird,” a reference to a kind of traditional wooden toy that some Russians hang in their homes for good fortune. Separately, a Moscow city councilman named Ernest Makarenko tweeted his well wishes: “Congratulations, Donald, you have earned this. Ahead are eight long and important years. I believe you can do it,” he wrote in Russian. Earlier, he had tweeted a video still of Trump taking the oath and annotated it as follows: “That’s it! Trump is president! The U.S. is ours!”
The AP reports there were celebrations in real life as well:
About 100 Trump sympathizers, nationalists and spin doctors gathered at a trendy loft just a few hundred meters away from the Kremlin to celebrate Friday, with a triptych of Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and French nationalist politician Marine Le Pen in the center of the hall.
An hour before Trump took the stage in Washington, the sound of opening champagne bottles echoed in the vaulted hall. The party was co-sponsored by the conservative Tsargrad TV channel, which is led by ultra-right ideologue Alexander Dugin.
Dugin is the founder of Russia’s Eurasia Party and a proponent of a so-called Neo-Eurasianism, which imagines Russia standing up to the West as part of a massive new geopolitical force. Dugin once wrote that Russia needs an “authentic, real, radically revolutionary and consistent fascism.”
