I highly doubt Trump or Bibi are fooled by who Putin is, unlike the Putinistas here at FR.

The Putinistas aren't fooled by him. They know full well what he's about. The ones that are fooled are the simple-minded/know nothing types here who they so easily manipulate into supporting his expansionist, Soviet Union 2 agenda.

Mr Putin, what do you think of your "useful idiot"
supporters on Free Republic?

____________________________

Useful idiots

Thomas Sowell
May 20, 2003

Thomas Sowell

"The term 'useful idiots' has been attributed to Lenin, as a description of those mindless people in the Western democracies who would always find ways to excuse whatever the Soviet Union did. Columnist Mona Charen's new book Useful Idiots shows that such people are still with us.

Long after the Soviet Union's horrors had become too widely known around the world for their sympathizers in the West to be able to get away with whitewashing the USSR, new Communist dictatorships arose to become the new objects of the affections of the Western intelligentsia and of like-minded people in the media and in politics. ..."

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2003/05/20/useful_idiots