Another hold the Russians have over Trump is Trump’s very, very, very deep aversion to being shown up as a bad businessman.
“We will reveal to the American people and the world exactly how many times and to what an extent Russians have had to bail out your business failures with ‘loans’, and you will get to see Merkle and Macron and all the rest laughing their heads off at your ineptitude” will get Trump’s attention. Heck, it would motivate him to do anything at all asked of him. At Putin’s request Trump would hand over Alaska, to keep the depth of his incompetence from hitting the headlines.
There was a story a couple weeks ago about the New York Times reporting they had received a number of false “leaks” from the White House. They claimed they didn’t publish those, because they authenticated everything they report with multiple sources, every time. Apparently, the current administration doesn’t understand how reputable media works. Granted, they don’t understand how [del]health care[/del] [del]the FBI[/del] [del]surveillance[/del] [del]government[/del] [del]facts[/del] work, so there’s that.
They’re not even trying to hide it at this point.
*
"The Trump administration is moving toward handing back to Russia two diplomatic compounds, near New York City and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, from which its officials were ejected in late December as punishment for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Then-President Barack Obama said Dec. 29 that the compounds were being “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes,” and gave Russia 24 hours to vacate them. Separately, Obama expelled from the United States what he said were 35 Russian “intelligence operatives.”"*
Its a test, dipping the toe in the water of public opinion. If there is no overwhelming outrage, they can proceed to the next step. Perhaps some horseshit about reviving Exxon’s Arctic oil deal will make us energy independent and create oodles of good-paying jobs.
Maybe something like Vlad the Impaler was deeply worried about Hillary destroying America, what with her ruthless and blood thirsty war-mongering about…stuff. How her victory would have encouraged mad Islamic terror in Iraq, Syria, Israel…and Chechnya.
*The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee asked U.S. spy agencies late last year to reveal the names of U.S. individuals or organizations contained in classified intelligence on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, engaging in the same practice that President Trump has accused the Obama administration of abusing, current and former officials said.
The chairman of the committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has since cast the practice of “unmasking” of U.S. individuals and organizations mentioned in classified reports as an abuse of surveillance powers by the outgoing Obama administration. *
This probably isn’t the best thread but it’s the most recent Russia/election related thread so I’m putting this here:
A newly leaked NSA document details more Russian election hacks. This contains new information but I’m not sure if we’ve heard about these hacks or not. We heard rumors of them monkeying with voting equipment vendors and voter registration, and that’s what this talks about, but I don’t know if this is more information on that or separate incidents entirely.
Being that the story broke about 90 minutes ago, and we have zero information, I have no idea and therefore, no opinion. It’s better to do it that way than to have no idea, and form strong opinions, I find.
