I don't think that's true, he kept putting the emphasis the fact that a pipeline would mean Germany financing putin and his regime, so it needed to be blocked.

I don't think that's true, he kept putting the emphasis the fact that a pipeline would mean Germany financing putin and his regime, so it needed to be blocked. Sure, there is absolutely an element of gaining leverage on Europe but that's still a pretty counterproductive thing to do if he was a russian asset. Pushing for more military spending in NATO, especially to defend eastern Europe would also have been very weird if he was putin's puppet. You can definitely think that the real reasons were different but that's just speculation. What matters are the results, and I'd say that blocking nordstream and pushing for more NATO spending is exactly the opposite of anything putin would've wanted from a puppet. Otherwise imo you'd really need to stretch the truth to conclude those were just a side effect of other trump's policies when he repeatedly insisted that it was to counter russia. (Putin wouldve probably have wanted the US president to not want any leverage on the EU and let them just be because the western euro countries sure weren't interested in anything related to European defense anyways.)