599
UPDATE: In previous chapter we looked at Trump’s bodyguard’s admission that when they were in Moscow in 2013 for the pageant the Russians offered to send five girl’s to Trump’s room. The report that Trump actually sent a letter to Putin asking for girls would mean that-if true-the Russians sent Trump the girls per his own request.
Say this for Putin, the old KGB head: he knows the way to Donald Trump’s heart. There is good reason to suspect that Trump is an unwitting Russian agent but if so it wasn’t hard to recruit him.
Just praise him and always defend him against any criticism and you own Donald Trump heart and soul.
Asked about Trump’s performance-kind of appropriate he gets a vote as he helped elect him-Putin says he has ‘no disappointment’ in so-called President Trump. That’s a relief.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin commended President Trump on Wednesday and said he has “no disappointment” in his relationship so far with Trump.
“I have no disappointment at all,” Putin said about Trump during an interview with Russian state television, according to the Associated Press. “Moreover, on a personal level he made a very good impression on me.”
Sad thing is Trump no doubt really is relieved to know he has Putin’s approval.
Again, Putin really does handle Trump like he’s an unwitting Russian agent and he knows exactly the right thing to say:
“Putin has previously touted his respect for the president, and called him a “balanced” leader last year after the two met.”
More than just flattery this amounts to ‘slander but in the positive direction.’
‘Balanced leader’ is rather similar to what Trump calls himself: ‘the stable genius.’
Putin recognizes Trump’s-quite legitimate-insecurities and plays right to them; assure Herr Trump that he is so balanced, in contradiction to not just what most Americans think but that many members of Trump’s own WH think.
For the rest of us Americans, however, Putin doesn’t have much praise-he is disappointed in us.
But Putin bashed the U.S. political system, and said it has “demonstrated its inefficiency and has been eating itself up.”
Yes, democracy and respect for the rule of law sure is ‘inefficient.’ Just recently Trump was expressing admiration for China’s President becoming President for life.
In other news, it’s not enough for Devin Nunes and friends to shutdown the House Intelligence Russia probe way prematurely; the House GOP also wants yet another memo bashing the Steele dossier.
As Congressman Ted Lieu says bring it on.
I support Devin Nunes writing a second memo because his first memo was a disaster. I also support more investigation into the Steele Dossier for the following 2 reasons:
-The more we learn, the more parts of the Dossier have been corroborated
-Opposition research tends to be true https://t.co/zypd0AYXdP— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) March 10, 2018
To be sure, the first Nunes Memo also showed that the GOP has exaggerated the place of the dossier relative to all the other sources and intelligence they have. In the last paragraph they admit that the FBI’s Russia-Trump investigation begun before the dossier even made an appearance based on the drunken boasts of George Papdopoulos to Australia’s top diplomat.
UPDATE: Although John Schindler-formerly of NSA and has major sources-makes the point that the Russia investigation surely didn’t hatch from the single source of Alexander Downer either but from preponderance of signals intelligence from the NSA and the signals intelligence of its allies-Five Eyes, the French, the Dutch, etc.
As for the dossier itself, a favorite way for the GOP to discredit it is besides belaboring the point that it was partially paid for by the DNC and a law firm that worked for Hillary Clinton-not that this really matters-is to call it ‘salacious.’ They focus on the salacious aspects of the allegations: that Trump while on the 2013 Moscow trip requested prostitutes pee on the bed Michelle and Obama used to sleep in.
To be sure, this was only a small part of the allegations in the dossier most of which weren’t ‘salacious’ at all. But by focusing here the GOP tries to suggest that it’s just tabloid nonsense that can be discounted; the word ‘salacious’ gets used in a way that suggests ‘unreliable and false’, indeed ‘absurd on their face.’
That an ‘unverified’-which is used to suggest ‘disproven’ though nothing in the dossier has been disproved-dossier is the sole or main basis of the Russia investigation. Much of it has been neither proven nor disproven but some of it has been verified and Trump’s newly uncovered typed letter to Putin in 2013 before the trip, strongly hint that there may well be something to the ‘salacious’ aspects of the dossier.
In his ‘Dear Vladimir’ letter Trump wants two things above all:
1. To meet with Putin while in Moscow
2. For them to send him girls.
“Donald Trump was so eager to have Vladimir Putin attend the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow that he wrote a personal letter to the Russian president inviting him to the event, according to multiple people familiar with the document.”
“At the bottom of the typed letter, Trump scrawled a postscript adding that he looked forward to seeing “beautiful” women during his trip.”
“Trump’s letter to Putin, which was described by people with knowledge of its contents, shows how interested he was in attracting the personal attention of the Russian president. The real estate magnate, who owned the Miss Universe pageant, wrote the note at a time when he was looking to expand his brand to Russia.
Prior to the emergence of this letter, we knew that while Trump dismissed the allegations about the prostitutes as ridiculous-pointing out he’s a germaphobe-his bodyguard Keith Schiller did admit in testifying before Congress that the Russians did offer Trump girls-though Schiller claimed they turned the Russians down.
This claim was never particularly believable on its face-considering Trump’s normal attitude towards pretty young girls and this letter now blows it up completely.
4/ Keith Schiller needs to be in front of a grand jury—and he needs to be there for about 12 hours. He knows exactly what Trump did in Moscow, and when, and with whom. And the story he told Congress isn't just shaky—it's prima facie evidence of an intent to mislead investigators.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 10, 2018
Abramson points out Trump told FNC that he DID speak to Putin on the phone while in Moscow.
BREAKING: Trump wrote a letter to Putin before traveling to Moscow in November 2013—and in it he mentions wanting to see Moscow's "beautiful women." What I don't know is why WP doesn't include that Trump told FNC he spoke to Putin by phone while in Moscow. https://t.co/srj0Iuq2Y8
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 10, 2018
Besides playing Trump like a violin in his interview with Megyn Kelly, Putin also declared that ‘he couldn’t care less’ on the question of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin has told NBC News that he “couldn’t care less” if Russian citizens tried to interfere in the 2016 American presidential election because, he claims, they were not connected to the Kremlin.”
“In an exclusive and at-times combative interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly, Putin again denied the charge by U.S. intelligence services that he ordered meddling in the November 2016 vote that put Donald Trump in the White House.”
“Why have you decided the Russian authorities, myself included, gave anybody permission to do this?” asked Putin, who will probably be returned as president in the March 18 elections.
Maybe because few things happen in Russia these days without your permission including ‘elections’?.
Putin then: blames the Jews. Not even kidding:
“Putin was unmoved by an indictment filed by special counsel Robert Mueller last month that accused 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies of interfering in the election — including supporting Trump’s campaign and “disparaging” Hillary Clinton’s.
“Mueller is investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.”
“So what if they’re Russians?” Putin said of the people named in last month’s indictment. “There are 146 million Russians. So what? … I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. … They do not represent the interests of the Russian state.”
“Putin even suggested that Jews or other ethnic groups had been involved in the meddling.”
“Maybe they’re not even Russians,” he said. “Maybe they’re Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship. Even that needs to be checked. Maybe they have dual citizenship. Or maybe a green card. Maybe it was the Americans who paid them for this work. How do you know? I don’t know.”
So Jews can’t be Russians? In any case, it’s not so hard to understand how Putin became the darling of the worldwide nationalist movement.
“Asked whether he was concerned about Russian citizens attacking U.S. democracy, Putin replied that he had yet to see any evidence that the alleged interference had broken Russian law.”
Is it against Russian law to interfere in an American Presidential election?
“U.S. intelligence agencies and many Western analysts have said that Russian interference came at the orders of the Kremlin. Putin, Russia’s longest-serving leader since Stalin, dismissed this.”
“Could anyone really believe that Russia, thousands of miles away … influenced the outcome of the election? Doesn’t that sound ridiculous even to you?” he said. “It’s not our goal to interfere. We do not see what goal we would accomplish by interfering. There’s no goal.”
Controlling and setting US foreign policy isn’t a goal worth accomplishing for Russia?
“With cyber warfare you don’t have to be physically close-that’s old logic from the kinetic world. The goal is a WH beholden to Russia and doing Russia’s bidding-as Trump has done in Ukraine, in Syria, at the State Department where Putin’s buddy Rex Tillerson had dismantled State root and branch.”
Putin continued he and Trump’s mutual admiration society:
“Trump has called Putin “a strong leader” who has “done a very brilliant job in terms of what he represents and who he’s representing.”
“Trump has also hinted that he gives Putin the benefit of the doubt when he denies that Moscow interfered.”
“[Putin] said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Hanoi following a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Danang in November.”
In the interview with Kelly, Putin called the U.S. president “a businessman with vast experience” and “a quick study” despite being new to politics.
Putin continues to spin Trump like a top.
“In terms of the future of Russia-U.S. relations, he cast Russia as the victim.”
“We are not the ones who labeled you our enemies. You made a decision, at the level of parliament, at the level of Congress and put Russia on your list of enemies,” he said. “Why did you do that? Are we the ones who imposed sanctions on the United States? The U.S. imposed sanctions on us.”
Putin claimed he would be willing to repair relations with Washington.
“Listen, let’s sit down calmly, talk and figure things out,” he said. “I believe that the current president wants to do that, but there are forces that won’t let him do it
I imagine hearing Putin speak of him in this way has an almost hypnotic effect on so-called President Trump.
UPDATE: Since then we’ve learned a lot more about the level of influence Putin as on the alleged ‘President.’ Andy McCabe revealed that Trump rejected his own intel agencies analysis of North Korea’s ballistic missile capability replaying ‘I believe Putin.’
More recently we had Trump’s disastrous ‘Summit’ with Kim Jong Un. It turns out Lavrov was advising Trump on the meeting-ie, Trump was carrying Russia’s water at this meeting rather than that of the United States.
With so many of Trump’s sudden foreign policy moves puzzling observers the obvious question in every case is to ask if Russia told him to make the latest puzzling move.