CREDIT: AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic.
The Russian involvement in the election gets more and more interesting. As much as the Pendejo-elect wants this ignored and forgotten, that’s one wish he’s not going to get. The ‘net suffered yet another minor explosion over the latest allegations, which have not been verified.
Yesterday, CNN published a bombshell report: The classified briefing on Russian interference in the U.S. election includes information, collected by a former member of British intelligence, that Russia possessed compromising personal information on Donald Trump. The allegations are unsubstantiated but were sufficiently credible for the intelligence community to inform President Obama and President-elect Trump.
CNN builds on a report by Mother Jones published before the election, based on the same information. BuzzFeed subsequently published the full dossier, which has been circulating among journalists and others for weeks, that was the basis of CNN and Mother Jones’ reporting.
The dossier contains a variety of sensational allegations, including that Russia has videotape of Trump engaging in exotic sexual acts with prostitutes and that there was an ongoing exchange of information between the Trump campaign and Russia. (The later allegation is substantiated, in part, by Russian officials.)
If you’re going to click about and indulge in reading all that juicy intel, I suggest having an empty stomach. Yes, some of it is that bad. Over at Think Progress, it’s been noted that the verifiable and public statements by Trump about Russia, and Putin in particular, take on a brand new shine and spin, given the new allegations. They take a good look at 15 of Trump’s statements, waxing eloquent over the intelligence and strength of Putin.
Also see: ‘Trump claims he has ‘nothing to with Russia.’ His son said the opposite. Donald Trump Jr. claimed “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
Here are some more thoughts:
Whether or not the specific allegations about compromising videos are true, it’s looking pretty incontrovertible that Russia thought Trump would be better for their interests than Clinton. The most obvious reason would be for sanctions to be relaxed so that the North Sea oil deal with Exxon can go through, and the appointment of Tillerson for State seems to make that scenario likely. But there’s something even worse that also seems possible: that Putin wants a friendly American president so he can have a free hand to reestablish the Soviet empire. In a Trump presidency, I’m worried that we may see Soviet tanks rolling into Kiev, or Latvia, or any of the other former SSRs – along with some kind of flimsy cover story about local ethnic Russians begging Putin to restore “order.”
IF that scenario were to happen now, then these rumors are going to put Trump in a bind. If he doesn’t do anything strong to push back, everyone around the world will take that as confirmation that the rumors are true. That means even false rumors have done an impressive job of constraining US policy.
It also means that, badly as these rumors hurt Trump, they probably hurt Putin even more, by putting Trump in a position where just the existence of unconfirmed rumors force Trump to either stand up against him or be confirmed as a pervert (in the sense that the general public uses the term).
That raises another big question: if the story is a hoax, who would stand to benefit from constructing it? The former SSRs would stand to gain the most, but I don’t think they’d have the moxie or resources to do it. The Democrats or Hillary? If so, it was a big fail – they needed the story to break in October, and now it’s way too late. The British? It doesn’t sound like their style either. Russians trying to rein in Putin? I don’t think such groups exist.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I think the stories sound true, because I don’t see anyone who would both benefit from faking them and have the resources to do so.
Bruce:
Yeah, I posted about that in what seems like ages ago. It made sense then, and it still makes sense. And I think it would have worked the way Putin wanted, as long as everything got nice and quiet afterwards.
By now I’m pretty sure there could be videos of Trump raping babies dressed up as the Obama and Clinton families and the GOP and many Americans wouldn’t mind…
Giliell:
No shit. The other day, I was thinking back to the outrage that poured out over Clinton getting a blow job, and all the other presidential peccadilloes, with people screaming for impeachment, but now? Eh, anything goes, apparently.
Do they, though? Be honest -- did they change your mind about him? Whose mind do you see them changing?
Before the election we all heard Trump’s own voice confirming that he’s a sex criminal in the sense the general public uses the term. He admitted… no, bragged about being able to get away with committing sexual assault. “Pervert”, compared to that, seems… weak.
If Russia had video of Obama having sex with a prostitute, that would be something, given that his image in large part depends on integrity and trust. But if it turned out they had video of Trump having sex with prostitutes, the reactions would be much different:
(1) NOBODY wants to see that.
(2) NOBODY would be surprised by it.
(3) The Donald might even be proud of it, as long as the prostitutes weren’t fat or ugly or anything.
Seriously, the man appears to have no shame, but that might just make him unblackmailable.
Yeah, I have to say I don’t see Prince Pussy Grabber being hurt by these. At most, they might seriously turn off some Trumpoids, but it must be remembered that this asshole is going to be president -- nothing hurt him enough to prevent that one.
From the Buzzfeed filedump (apparently unedited output from a poor OCR scan):
Redacted. Did you see this part? Along with all the handy fucking links, so people could make up their own damn minds about what they wanted to see?
I’ll thank you to pay attention to posts in the future, to avoid being such an asshole. -- Caine.
This might upset some of the Sunday-school Trump Chumps, but they have pretty much submitted to the Bannonista “alt-right” faction -- who will lick this up like candy.
I don’t know how to interpret a whole lot of this. I don’t know if any or all of this is real. In this post-fact environment I’m not sure how ‘real’ works. It used to be hard to determine in context but simple in principle. Now, I don’t know.
That said the story about The Donald deriving sexual satisfaction while watching high-dollar sex workers graphically degrading each other seems far too specific, on-point and coherent with his attitudes than just a wild guess. It simply rang true.
Either it is true in the old sense of the word, as in real and factual. Or does the writer have a really good bead on the inner workings of Trump’s mind and how wealth, power, neuroses, and sexual deviations work.
Personally, I think a whole lot of the sex stuff is irrelevant, outside of it possibly being used by Russia for blackmail purposes at some point. I don’t want to know anything about Trump’s sexuality, sex games or anything else, I really don’t. I already know much more than I wanted to know.
What does matter to me is just how much a part Russia played in orchestrating this travesty of an election.
My apologies for the poorly-chosen excerpt from the Buzzfeed report @ # 7.
Raw Story has a summary of the less-salacious, and more significant, revelations.
A much-better sourced set of Financial Times reports, summarized & linked at Daily Kos, provides much more relevant information on the Trump-Russia (& Kazakh) connection.
brucegee1962 @1
Don’t worry, the cover story is already in place, floats up from time to time. But NATO forces on Baltic soil is western sabre-rattlinf, oh yes.
I knew a lady who worked her way through college catering to the deviancies of older men. She claimed that the more of their reputation was based on upright behavior, propriety and good grooming the higher the odds they were hung up on excretory activities. Trump, heavily front-loaded for class and superiority, seems to fit the bill.
The from of deviancy seems custom made to make revelation into a very personal nightmare. It isn’t like he can easily shrug, smile and admit that he has tried some kinky shit. That would be entirely out of character.
I agree that, for the most part, private sexual activity among consenting adults is best left behind closed doors but people who have public and private persona straddling bragging about sexual assault and a gaudy caricature of class and public shaming of women simply don’t, IMHO, qualify for the benefit of the doubt. I personally have nothing against those who enjoy the messier side of kink as long as they don’t make me watch, and they clean up after themselves. The heart wants what the heart wants.
But you don’t get to reference women in the context of menstrual blood, grab their genitals, accuse the Clintons of sexual deviancy, and then turn around and claim to be entirely too classy to have to deal with the subject. It was The Donald who broached the subject of sex and deviancy. Play with fire and …