Let’s play a game. It’s called ‘Name the Country.’ Here goes:

This country has deep ties to U.S. President-elect Donald J. Trump. Trump has traveled to this country in the past and frequently praised this country’s long-time leader. This country is very far away from the United States of America. So far, in fact, you wouldn’t really expect it to influence or figure much into American politics, but it does—a lot. So much so that some even say the U.S. government is controlled by this country. This country is a major player on several continents. This country does not speak English and its inhabitants have funny English accents. This country does not even use the Latin alphabet. Some even say that this country, which has a nefarious history of meddling in elections and dirty intelligence work abroad, had something to do with Donald Trump’s rapid rise in U.S. politics.

Can you name this country?

If you guessed Israel—congratulations! You are sane and well-read. If you guessed Russia, you may be an aggressively stupid political pundit. My condolences—it’s inoperable.

Yes, hitting back on the media’s sudden obsession with finding a Trump-Russia connection may seem like low-hanging fruit. It is. But there’s a greater point to be made here: not only is the “Trump is a Manchurian candidate for Russia” narrative aggressively stupid because Donald Trump is the most obviously financially independent and independent-minded American politician in recent history, it is aggressively stupid because even if The Donald were a Manchurian candidate, of all shadowy organizations, he would be least likely to be a stooge of the KGB’s.

The “Manchurian candidate for a shadowy organization” angle is not as dumb as it sounds, provided the right shadowy organization is identified. This is really not as radical as it sounds. Everyone, and particularly everyone in some position of power or influence, is a Manchurian candidate of sorts for some shadowy organization or another. This is because most individuals are not Great Men who move mountains and shatter paradigms all alone, but depend on the money, connections, ties, favor, resources, good will, weapons (sometimes), and cooperation of larger groups of individuals—we’ll call them “shadowy organizations”—with some already to spare. The Great Men, if living, are usually found at the tops of those shadowy organizations.

When somebody pops into the public square with a sales pitch and clear desire for power, you can normally accurately guess what shadowy organization is sponsoring them—directly or indirectly, because it doesn’t matter how directly—by looking at a number of things, such as what ethnic group they’re from, what religion they practice, where they went to school, who their parents are, who gave them their first job, whom they marry, where they were born, who loaned them money, who mentored them, where they travel, vacation, live, etc. The list of details to check off and compare is long, which makes the job easy.

For example, Rodrigo Duterte popped into the public square in the Philippines without warning, flipping off the United States, the world power currently occupying his meth-stricken archipelago-jungle country. He can’t do that! Well, he did. How? As it turns out, a little cursory revealed Duterte was tied to the Chinese Communist Party from his waist to his ex-Maoist rebel death squad commandos to his America-hating anti-colonialist college mentor to his Chinese immigrant ancestors. That’s before you even start reading about the 50 years of arms shipments and training from mainland China. China is, needless to say, the only other world power besides the United States with clout in the Philippines.

So, we figured it out: the shadowy organization behind Rodrigo Duterte, directly or indirectly, is probably the Chinese Communist Party. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion if you read the evidence. Duterte’s proclamations against China are about as convincing to my ears as Donald Trump’s against Russia are to Louise Mensch’s. But that isn’t an indictment of Donald Trump.

So why don’t we apply the same process of investigation to Trump that we did to Duterte? What shadowy organization will we find there? It’s not hard, so let’s begin:

Trump was born in Queens, a borough of New York City. His mother was born in Scotland and actually spoke Gaelic as her first language. His father was also from New York City, though his parents were from the Palatinate in Germany, then a part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. So far, I am not worried about Celtic or Royal Bavarian intelligence secretly hacking into Hillary’s e-mail servers to aid Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump is a mainline Protestant, but doesn’t seem particularly religious. His wives were Czechoslovak, American Southern, and Yugoslav, in that order. Seeing as it is the Current Year, I am also unconcerned about Czechoslovak, Confederate, or Yugoslav intelligence hacks into Democratic National Committee infrastructure—can you believe all these no-longer-existent countries?

Young Donald attended the New York Military Academy, Fordham University in the Bronx, and finally the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied economics. He embarked on his real estate career in New York City and made a name for himself as a “real New Yorker.” He owns and runs buildings all over the country and world now, including in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, India, and Panama. None in Russia. Hey, business dealings in India? Maybe virulently anti-Muslim India—with its own version of Donald Trump, nationalist Narendra Modi, in power—did some hacking of the Democratic Party?

But let’s not wait on the pundit class to pursue a hypothesis that makes sense. Anyway, we haven’t found anything too suspicious so far. No patterns except for New York City. Definitely no Russian influence. What about Donald Trump’s mentor? Did he have one?

Yes, he did: big league anti-communist and even bigger league anti-communist Senator Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man, Roy Cohn. The Daily Caller documents the tremendous influence Cohn had on a young Donald Trump, from his understanding of the news cycle to his very catchphrases, so I won’t repeat it here, but definitely go read it for yourself. This is what we call “a strong lead.” So who was this Roy Cohn? What was his background that might give us a clue as to the shadowy organization behind Donald Trump? Put simply, Cohn was a gay, Jewish, right-wing, New York City lawyer.

Come to think of it, now that I’ve said the words “right-wing,” “New York City,” and “Jew” aloud, I’m really starting to think… isn’t one of Donald Trump’s daughters Jewish? Why, yes: Ivanka Trump married religious Orthodox New York City Jew Jared Kushner and converted to Judaism. In fact, Donald Trump, Jr. also married a Jew: Vanessa Haydon, who studied psychology in New York City. That’s a lot of Jews in the family.

Now take a look at the top executives at The Trump Organization, L.L.C.: in addition to Trump family members (married to Jews), it looks like the leadership includes some guys named Michael Cohen, Jason Greenblatt, and Allen Weisselberg. On certain other websites, you’d be seeing a lot of triple-parentheses printed in the text right now, but at our august Social Matter, we don’t engage in that sort of behavior. There is also one Italian with the surname Calamari, which we’ll get to later.

In the meantime, check out this 2013 video of Donald Trump praising Israel and endorsing right-wing Benjamin Netanyahu for Prime Minister of Israel. Oh, did you know the biggest donor to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was Israeli media mogul and Jewish multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson? Do you see where I’m going with this?

Jewish mentor. Jewish in-laws. Jewish grandkids. Jewish donors. Jewish endorsements. And all particularly right-wing Jewish, particularly Israeli. Not a Vladimir or a Boris to be found among Trump’s family, friends, and business associates, but an endless supply of right-wing Jews and Israelis. While I’m not going to out-and-out say that Israeli intelligence was the shadowy organization responsible for Donald Trump’s election victory, it sure seems a lot more plausible than the theory that Russian intelligence was behind it, no?

If I were to pick one foreign country that was most likely to have done unethical things on behalf of Donald Trump’s political ambitions, it would be Israel without a doubt. Russia is somewhere near the bottom of the list, after India, Panama, and Brazil. At least Trump has had business dealings in those countries. Donald Trump, the America-loving capitalist mogul, was in his mid-40s by the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Before then, a Soviet Russian agent approaching Trump was more likely to burst into flames than successfully “turn” the billionaire friend of President Ronald Reagan and Roy Cohn’s mentee.

After Mossad, the second most likely shadowy organization to have backed Trump is not the KGB, but the Italian mafia. Donald Trump can’t grab a pussy in the New York City real estate business without brushing against a mafioso, as Politico has extensively documented. Donald Trump’s mob ties even overlap sometimes with his ties to Jewish Roy Cohn, such as in the case of “Fat Tony” Salerno, who was a client of Cohn’s.

But Trump’s ties to Israel and the Italian crime families are a bit beside the point, because the most obvious shadowy organization to have backed him is right in front of our faces, not hiding in the Bronx or the Middle East. This shadowy organization calls itself “the American people”, though it is more commonly known to us as “RedGov” or the Red Empire. That means the FBI, the NSA, the cops, and the good ol’ U.S. Army.

The most striking thing about Donald Trump is how white and American he is—truly, indigenously American. Donald Trump is not a “global citizen.” He is not German or Scottish, despite his ancestry. He is not a slavish Israel-Firster, despite his deep and broad ties to the Jewish community. He attended a military academy. He calls Bernie a “socialist slash communist.” He wants to antagonize Mexico. Just look at the banner image of him above: Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, and the decorated, uniformed U.S. soldier.

Is there anything to do but scoff at the suggestion he’s a Russian plant?