[15] Writing in The New York Times in 1987, Safire discussed the increasing use of the term useful idiot against "anybody insufficiently anti-Communist in the view of the phrase's user", including Congressmen who supported the anti-Contras led by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Labour Party in the Netherlands.
[19] Michael Morell, former acting CIA director, wrote: "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.
"[20] Michael Hayden, former director of both the US National Security Agency and the CIA, described Trump as a "useful fool, some naif, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.
[22] The Serbo-Croatian term korisne budale, which may be translated as useful idiots or useful innocents, attributed to unnamed Yugoslav communists, appears in a 1946 Reader's Digest article titled "Yugoslavia's Tragic Lesson to the World", written by Bogdan Raditsa.
For example, William J. Bennett alleged that "'Useful idiot' was the term Lenin had used for credulous Western businessmen", giving as an example Armand Hammer "who helped build up the Soviet Communist state".
"[26] The wording from written works by Lenin about the "rope" was as follows[27] They [capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers.
To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.and the "dumb and blind" version of the quotation (from handwritten notes by Lenin) was the following:[13] To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit.
The whole world's capitalists and their governments, as they pant to win the Soviet market, will close their eyes to the above-mentioned reality and will thus transform themselves into men who are deaf, dumb and blind.