NB: I thought I read the article much earlier, but the link says it’s from 2021. So I was wrong about the date.
Is that a reference to Christopher Steele?
Not that I am aware of. As far as I can recall, the Steele dossier was about the alleged ‘piss tape’ and other kompromat. The Guardian article tells how he was recruited as an asset by the KGB.
The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.
“This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB active measures at the time.”
We know for a fact Russian operatives were targeting right-wing political groups with propaganda and assets fostering “shared ideology” in the mid 2000s. I saw reporting on it, and we arrested a woman for spying, who was IIRC exchanged in a spy transfer.
They have been cultivating the MAGA mindset for two decades, making inroads into the conservosphere.
That’s why right-wing politicians were early in coming out with opinions that Ukraine isn’t our fight, that Putin was justified, etc.
They tapped in to the “America First” isolationism and “stop wasting money and lives on the rest of the world” to foster a political group with their interests in mind.
That’s why Vance could/would say that. Russian expansion in Europe and growing global influence is meaningless to him. He wants to jump at bugbears in American society that demonstrate “how decadent we’ve become”.
“First we freed the slaves, then we gave women the vote. It’s been all downhill since then.”
Remember, Trump was a democrat. He was a social liberal but “get the government’s hands off my money” fiscal conservative.
And he was friends with Bill Clinton, and a lot of rich people. Rich people have always had political influence. It’s not hard to think the Russians might have sussed out his vulnerabilities to see if it would pan out. And it did.
I think you meant 2011.
Donald Trump: putting the “crass” in "Krasnov” since 1987.
I did.
In 2001 Barack “Hussein” Obama was an Illinois State Senator supposedly born in Honolulu, Hawaii or Kenya (as per Trump later in the decade) and had (in 1980) somehow DEI’d his way into Columbia University (graduated with Poly/Sci degree) and Harvard, and after graduating taught Constitutional Law.
Seth Myers had just joined SNL.He wasn’t quite Mike Myers, yet was invited to the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011.
DJT would have been somewhere between his 4th bankruptcy and 5th bankruptcy.
I won $20 from one of his shitty casinos in Atlantic City, which itself was a dump. Has a nice ocean beach though. And the roadside attraction, Lucy the Elephant right near Atlantic Avenue, which I should have bought for $260 and built a house for $110. If I’d snagged Marvin Gardens and Ventnor Avenue, I too could have been a slum-lord like Trump.
I think you meant Seth Meyers
Drat, yes I did. Truth and solid knowledge rules the Dope.