Don’t forget the mouthy Montenegrans. Aggressive bunch.
Putin certainly has had a productive 24 hours. Perhaps he suspects that his “useful idiot”, while remaining an idiot, will no longer be useful…
Well, in Trump’s defense,this article states that the reasonthat Trump threw the Kurds under the bus was not necessarily at the behest of the Russians, but rather because " the president has no spine and that’s the bottom line."
The reason for Trump’s idiotic move? "“President Trump was definitely out-negotiated and only endorsed the troop withdraw to make it look like we are getting something—but we are not getting something”
So he’s not an asset of Russia. He is just a spineless moron who was out-negotiated. So that’s good then.
“Can’t he be both, like the late Earl Warren?”
It’s Putin’s birthday, after all.
~Max
I’m with this. I have no idea whether Russia has some tangible advantage or compromising materiel over Mr. Trump. It could plausibly be true - or not. I haven’t personally been made aware of evidence demonstrating any advantage Russia has over the President, so I assume the President just has a few misplaced priorities which happen to coincide with Russian interests. In my opinion, it’s the simplest explanation.
~Max
Trump is an emotionally fragile narcissist.
He is an ‘asset’ of anyone who offers him flattery, money, power or threatens him with shame.
World leaders have figured this out and manipulate him into putting their national interests ahead of Americas. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, North Korea, etc. etc. etc.
We already know Putin has a huge leverage on Trump: he could confirm that Russia helped Trump win the election. While this isn’t exactly a secret, Putin openly confirming it would still damage Trump’s support.
It’s true that foreign policy is a complex beast and sometimes it leads to outcomes that look absurd.
It’s also true that Trump is a self-serving ignorant buffoon who may be pursuing his own idiotic style of diplomacy at nobody’s behest.
It’s also true that Trump behaves in a manner that is sycophantic toward countries he’s done business with in the past, and he’s going to extraordinary lengths to cover those tracks.
Circumstantial evidence is admissible. If you drive past a scene of one car rammed into the back of another car, with steam hissing out of the radiator, you check the scene for skid marks and whiskey bottles and eyewitnesses. You arrest anyone who leaves the scene or tries to conceal the fact.
Team Trump is trying awfully, awfully hard to conceal “circumstantial” evidence as opposed to vigorously trying to clear his name by getting the facts out.
Team Trump is currently a fucking clown car.
When the best they can do is to say “Ha ha, those insane tweets from the whitehouse? Ummmmm… a Joke! Ya, that’s the ticket, it was a funny joke”
Trump has lost the thread at this point. He honestly thinks he has “great and unmatched wisdom”. He has gone completely deleusional.
The Republicans in Congress have to mnow make a decision; Do they stick with a dictator who has completely lost the thread? Someone who may toss them under the bus at anytime?
The Democrats have given them an out. They can get rid of Trump within the next month. He can be gone by the end of October. Boom.
There aren’t many moments of levity in this debacle, but it is actually extremely funny to suggest that Trump, a man who doesn’t laugh, is joking. That’s true comic genius.
Anyway I’m out before I’m tempted to dogpile. Trump is clearly a stooge. He’s using every tool in his formidable arsenal to block investigation that would reveal such documentary evidence, therefore I find it patently ridiculous for the OP to challenge me, Joe SDMB Poster, to furnish that documentary evidence. I guess it’s a safe arguing position, but what’s the point?
This may prove unsatisfactory to all concerned, including myself, because it’s 0400 here on the East Coast of the US and I’m not particularly cogent nor particularly ambitious at the moment. There will be no supporting documentation in this post, although much exists on the IntraWebz and if need be I may be willing to dredge some up later on.
I’m convinced that Trump spent a decade or more engaged in shady (read: likely illegal) business deals with Russian oligarchs. After his father’s estate was distributed and he could no longer run to Daddy to bail him out of his disastrous real estate deals, and after almost all banks learned not to lend him money, DeutscheBank became his lender of first and last resort. DeustcheBank, it should be noted, has some massive legal problems with regard to laundering Russian money. Also, in this period, Trump’s businesses have done a great deal of business with Russians; while I imagine some of these must have been straightforward transactions, some of them raise eyebrows even among the jaded. Steve Bannon, IIRC, even went on record saying that the Mueller investigation would turn out to be “all about money laundering.”
Can I prove any of this? Nope. But if the OP is looking for explanations of how/why Trump may be considered a Russian asset, my answer, based upon much circumstantial evidence and Trump’s behavior patterns, would be: “He laundered money for Russian mobsters/oligarchs because he needed the payoffs to stay afloat, and Putin knows this because he is the greatest Russian mobster of all. This is why we will never see Trump’s tax returns – well, this and all the other, domestic tax fraud he’s been up to lo these many years. And while the pee tape incident may not have occurred, I’d bet a bottle of mid-shelf that Trump is afraid of something having been videotaped in a hotel room.”
Ignoring your mockery, you have linked to a letter essentially arguing that it’s a bad idea to withdraw from Open Skies. Have you bothered to look into why Trump may think this is a good idea, or are you just assuming it’s because of what Putin wants? This is the key question I would ask anyone when something like this comes up.
Missed edit window.
ETA: Being that I’m starting work, I don’t have any more time right now for this, other than to say the first few links I saw don’t even say how they know Trump wants to do this. Thisfor instance says nothing specific. Anyway, will look at it later.
Newsweek’s website says that there’s been nothing from the White House one way or another as to whether it’s true, or what the rationale would be regarding such a move.
Imagine this…
… Imagine that the Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee may have sources unavailable to rando SDMB posters.
… Imagine he, like a whistleblower, hears shit coming out of the White House.
… Imagine he confirms what he’s hearing.
… Imagine he writes a letter condemning what he’s hearing and asks for reassurances that this is not the developing policy.
… Imagine that the WH & State Departments are not responding to requests.
Imagine all this, FP, and then ask yourself
Who knows more: me, doing a quick Google search b4 work, or the Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee?
Trump is a Russian intelligence asset in the sense that he is a corrupt and deeply stupid man who wants to open hotels in Moscow. He doesn’t understand how he is doing Putin’s bidding, but he clearly is. All of his major foreign policy actions have been catering to Russian interests: undermining NATO and fostering divisions within our alliances strengthens Russia’s position in the world. Look at Ukraine, Trump resisted providing aid to the Ukrainians as long as he could and when he could no longer hold it off, he tried to cash it in for personal gain. There’s a good article in Politico on how the Ukraine scandal helps Russia.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/06/putin-trump-zelensky-phone-call-229243
I actually think that some of the people he has surrounded himself with are straight up Russian assets, including the man who was briefly the Nat Security Advisor.
I think he does understand. He wants hotels in Russia so he’ll help Putin’s agenda. It’s quid pro quo just without actually saying those words.
You may be right, I just mean I don’t think he’s meeting an FSB handler in a DC park or anything. He’s just a profoundly corrupt person who is committing crimes right out in the open.
He doesn’t need to. The corruption & collusion has been baked in for years. Now that Trump Tower meetings are out of the question, he’s got Rudy as his errand boy for any additional communication.