Michael Whatley, Donald Trump’s hand-picked Republican National Committee (RNC) chair, lumped in Ukraine with China and Iran when listing the United States’ “aggressive” adversaries on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.
“Joe Biden’s feckless leadership has shown China, has shown Ukraine, has shown Iran, that they can feel free to be much more aggressive on the world front to the point where even they will try and meddle with our elections here,” Whatley told host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
It makes me think Putin doesn’t actually have anything on Trump and the other Russia loving Republicans. They just really like him and are envious of his authoritarian regime.
Trump’s been a tool of the Russians since before the fall of the Soviet Union. Stalin liked the term ‘useful idiot’ for people who would do his bidding without realizing they were puppets.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/78dvw4/a-timeline-of-trumps-long-history-with-russia
I’m pretty sure he did. But it was all about campaign funding through the NRA. That little bit of news did slip out a while back. None of the GOP got in trouble. That’s why they don’t care now.
Why not both? They could have something on those politicians and also be envied by them.
Unless everything we know about Russian intelligence is wrong, Putin almost certainly has kompromat on many politicians. There was an article recently from a politician about how after he was elected, he started being approached by young beautiful women, and he realized after talking to other politicians just how trivial an effort it would be to get compromising material on most of them.
According to George Clooney, he always saw Trump in NY bars trying to sleep with random women in the early 2000s. Trump was already a world famous “businessman” at the time who was into politics. Exactly the sort of person Russia could target and who would be easily compromised.
It’s fine to consider, but it’s also just an unnecessary step. Aligning with each other ideologically is enough to explain the cooperation we see.
That’s what I’m thinking too. Because to say that Putin has something on Trump at this point, is in some ways taking agency away from Trump. But I think Trump and the other Putin lovers are terrible enough people on their own. He doesn’t need to have any dirt on them, they just want to work with him because they think he’s doing well for himself, and they want that kind of power too. It feels like a much simpler explanation.