Bestselling author Elizabeth Graham, who held a Top-Secret Security Clearance and worked undercover with the CIA before living under communism in the Soviet Union, warns that Vladimir Putin is playing a long game with Donald Trump and U.S. politics. In her book From Democracy To Democrazy, A Warning to All Americans, Graham draws on decades of experience studying Russia and living under authoritarian regimes to draw parallels between Trump and Putin.
Graham, who managed the largest Russian-language military, technical and intelligence database in the U.S. while at SAIC's Foreign Systems Research Center, argues that Trump's actions—such as pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" votes, destroying independent media, and politically motivated lawsuits—fit the "duck test" for dictatorship. She cites Alexei Navalny's description of Putin in TIME100 Magazine, noting that Navalny warned that a path starting with "just a little election rigging" always ends in dictatorship.
Graham points to Trump's taped call to Raffensperger, first published by The Washington Post and The New York Times, as evidence. She also highlights Trump's closure of USAID, which she claims has led to a genocide in Africa with an estimated death toll of over 15 million people by 2040, citing The Lancet. Graham writes that this death toll exceeds Putin's in Ukraine and Hitler's Jewish victims, calling it "an atrocity of great historical proportions."
In her Substack post 'Heroes,' Graham contrasts descriptions of Putin by Navalny and of Ukrainian President Zelensky by U.S. President Joe Biden. She warns that Trump's similarities to Putin—destroying independent media, organizing political assassinations, and imperial delusions—make him a danger. Graham notes that Trump's victims include Alex Pretti, Renee Good, and 33 others who died in his "containment camps," and that his military decisions have killed over 100 in Venezuela and Iran.
Graham's book, which draws on her lived experience under communism, will be available for free in ebook form March 9 and 10, 2026 on Amazon. She invites readers to join discussions on her Substack at egraham.substack.com for $5/month. More information is available at her website democrazy2020.org.
Graham's analysis, grounded in her experience managing Russian intelligence databases and living under Soviet rule, serves as a stark warning about the erosion of democracy. She argues that Putin's long game involves exploiting U.S. political divisions, and that Trump's actions align with authoritarian playbooks she witnessed firsthand.
