Donald Trump’s latest verbal slip is raising eyebrows for all the wrong reasons. During a cabinet meeting this week, the former president casually dropped a bizarre phrase – saying he “got activated last week” while discussing Tesla and Elon Musk.
This strange choice of words immediately set off alarm bells among Russia watchers, coming as it does alongside explosive claims from a former Soviet intelligence officer that Trump was recruited by the KGB back in 1987.
The moment came as Trump was praising Musk, saying the billionaire “has never asked me for a thing” before suddenly adding: “I did get activated last week when I saw what they were doing” about attacks on Tesla dealerships.
That peculiar term – “activated” – carries heavy connotations in intelligence circles, typically referring to sleeper agents being woken to action. Social media erupted, with one user asking “Did Donald Trump just say the quiet part out loud?” while another emphasized in all caps: “TRUMP SAID HE WAS ‘ACTIVATED’.”
This linguistic stumble takes on darker significance given recent claims from Alnur Mussayev, a 71-year-old former head of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee who says he served in KGB counterintelligence. Mussayev alleges in a Facebook post that Trump was recruited under the codename “Krasnov” to be a Soviet asset.
While he provides no concrete evidence, the timing is striking – especially as Trump continues his pattern of strange deference to Putin, most recently being kept waiting by the Russian leader for a scheduled phone call.
The “activation” comment is just the latest in a string of incidents that fuel suspicions about Trump’s Russia ties. When pressed about Zelensky’s concerns that some Trump team members might be influenced by Russian information, Trump shrugged: “Well probably they have been influenced to get this thing settled.” This comes weeks after he suggested he’d “encourage” Russia to attack NATO allies who don’t meet defense spending targets – comments that shocked foreign policy experts.
Whether Trump’s word choice was a Freudian slip or just another of his trademark verbal stumbles remains unclear. But in the high-stakes world of geopolitics, where every phrase is scrutinized, such comments from a man who could return to the Oval Office take on outsized importance. With U.S.-Russia relations at their most tense in decades, the world is watching – and listening – more closely than ever.
