[skinster]

Israel-lovers like Sheldon Adelson paid multi millions to bribe Trump into supporting anything Israel wants, which is why it's currently on steroids.

Perhaps I should have quoted:

My point was that Trumps problems now are mainly that he is trying to reverse his words due to outraged patriotic Americans rather than standing by them which is likely going to cause more tensions with Russia - so more problems overall.

That's what I meant, which words of Trump are you referring to re: reversing them re: Russia.

As for tensions with Russia, they've increased under Trump.

You have to remember that Trump is just a front man for the one percent. In fact a puppet of the powerful, the arms manufacturers, the oil men and this might explain the above tweet.
Also he could be a puppet of Putin who's got something on Trump as well. Just saying.

I'm aware Trump is a puppet for the neocons, like the two before him. I don't see how you follow that with Trump - front-man of the empire - being a puppet for Russia. How does that work? The only collusion at play in the last election that we have evidence for, is the DNC colluding with Clinton to steal the Democrat nomination from Sanders. The rest is the most boring and elaborate hysteria that oh my eyes it's been 2 fucking years, nothing proven, and you're stll saying "just saying".

NO.

You don't get to do that anymore.

[Godstud]

Nothing proven, yet, you mean...

So far, four former Trump campaign associates – Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and George Papadopoulos – have been charged.

Keep dreaming that nothing will come of this investigation and that trump isn't connected to Russia. Keep dreaming.

[Beren]

Trumpanzeees!!

I always suspected they're Putinists actually.

[Albert]

I see this conspiracy thread is still going on.

[Verv]

I don't really get it.

I think that the populist right wing has been signaling for a while that they want to go in a radically different direction from W. European liberalism & the whole egalitarian, secular humanist ethos. The idea that Pres. Trump is taking some hard, unpredicted turn that is shocking & treasonous is laughable.

Moreover, Pres. Putin has actively signaled against Communist values and spoken out on behalf of Western, conservative Christian civilization, yet he also has a very metropolitan, modern, realpolitik & pragmatic feel to him... I do not see how this would be seen as utterly alien to the world of Pres. Trump, and that Pres. Trump's decisions to cozy up with the left is so out there.

It would also make no sense for Pres. Trump to be thought of as a stooge, or for the head of any superpower to be thought of in these terms... Literally, the guy is getting beaten up for something that he isn't, imagine how we would act if he literally did do something totally subservient?

Honestly, smart people should nto get pulled into this narrative, and maybe we could ask the intelligent left leaners here to just deal with us honestly as opposed to trying to gaslight the entire forum. Say it for us: "Drumpf isn't a stooge; this is just politically expedient for me to make this accusation."

[colliric]

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.smh ... 4zsjl.html

Looks like a typical twofold meeting. Wanna bet "Trump goes into the second one on US soil looking surprisingly stronger than Putin".

.... They probably agreed to this approach. Won't be the first time two leaders exchanged "Make me look good on my home turf not long after my elections, and I'll make you look good on yours during the midterm election campaign".

[blackjack21]

Sure, @blackjack21, it would be cool if Putin just took over the country and appointed a procurator to lead the US.

It's amazing that Vladimir Putin has such a benevolent influence that he would torpedo Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign bid, begin putting US trade sanctions on China, deporting illegal aliens in the US back to their home countries, driving US unemployment down and driving the US stock market up. I mean, I find it hard to believe that Putin could be that great a guy, and that Trump is just a proxy for him. Putin's Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh picks are pretty top notch too. It makes me wonder why Putin can't do the same for Russia.

Trumpanzeees!!

Don't you mean Putinzees? After all, we should give credit where credit is due. Right?

Everyone just goes "Yep, that's normal, the US is Israel's bitch!". But freaks the fuck out if it's any other foreign leader.....

I still think it's a bunch of gay deep staters that are totally pissed that Trump and Putin are alpha male heterosexual types, while they are basically ballerinas. They absolutely hate masculine men. It's a riot!

Israel didn't tamper with the US electoral system. Try making a valid comparison.

There is no evidence the Russians did either. All that is alleged is that they may have hacked the DNC server, John Podesta's email, and maybe organized a few rallies for Sanders and Trump, and a few rallies against them. Just common shit disturbing. Nothing significant, like liberal cities allowing illegal aliens to vote in elections.

I'm aware Trump is a puppet for the neocons, like the two before him. I don't see how you follow that with Trump - front-man of the empire - being a puppet for Russia. How does that work?

Putin makes Trump bomb Russian soldiers of fortune in Syria so that he can get out of Syria and make Trump look good. That way, he can control Trump better that way, and continue to make America great.

Nothing proven, yet, you mean...

So far, four former Trump campaign associates – Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and George Papadopoulos – have been charged.

For nothing to do with Russia... Maybe we should give them some speeding tickets too, because God knows everyone is guilty of speeding at some point in time.

Keep dreaming that nothing will come of this investigation and that trump isn't connected to Russia. Keep dreaming.

And then what do you think will happen?

We will have to invite Putin to the United States and give him a medal for making America great again, and maybe chisel his likeness onto Mount Rushmore.

I see this conspiracy thread is still going on.

Calling it a conspiracy--where two or more people take actions to further an objective--might make Godstud think you aren't taking it seriously.

Moreover, Pres. Putin has actively signaled against Communist values and spoken out on behalf of Western, conservative Christian civilization, yet he also has a very metropolitan, modern, realpolitik & pragmatic feel to him... I do not see how this would be seen as utterly alien to the world of Pres. Trump, and that Pres. Trump's decisions to cozy up with the left is so out there.

Right, which is why one possible explanation is that these people are homosexuals and have some significant gender issues. Both Trump and Putin trigger their daddy issues in a big way.

Honestly, smart people should nto get pulled into this narrative, and maybe we could ask the intelligent left leaners here to just deal with us honestly as opposed to trying to gaslight the entire forum. Say it for us: "Drumpf isn't a stooge; this is just politically expedient for me to make this accusation."

It could be that they are trying to find any way they can to get people to dislike Trump. I'm not at all clear on why they think people are going to suddenly become afraid of Russia.

I wonder what Putin will do with his invitation to visit the United States. I would bring a Russian Orthodox priest and go on a little tour saying prayers for America and Russia for peace in the name of Christ. That will send these guys over the moon...

[Albert]

I honestly hope he will bring a priest over with a big beard, wearing a big cross over his neck. Proclaiming how both USA and Russia are Christian countries that should stand in unity and defend their values. It would be a pleasure to watch all the progressive liberal foaming at their mouths and spiting hot saliva into the air whilst yelling.

[roscoe]

Is this a bad thing?

[B0ycey]

Well, put it this way. If Putin is the puppet master of Trump, he is doing a shit job of it. If anything, Trump is going to go harder on Russia just to shut people up. Can't people accept that Trump is just an idiot who does idiotic things because he suffers from dementia? Instead you are justifying his actions by declaring that 'Putin did it'. The reality of course is that he does things on a whim and listens to no one. Time for the Kremlin to showcase this pissing video before Trump starts a new cold war... If they have it!

On a lighter note, we all have a sequel to look forward to this Autumn.

[anarchist23]

skinster says:

I'm aware Trump is a puppet for the neocons, like the two before him. I don't see how you follow that with Trump - front-man of the empire - being a puppet for Russia. How does that work? The only collusion at play in the last election that we have evidence for, is the DNC colluding with Clinton to steal the Democrat nomination from Sanders. The rest is the most boring and elaborate hysteria that oh my eyes it's been 2 fucking years, nothing proven, and you're stll saying "just saying".
NO.
You don't get to do that anymore.

Well.
You must agree that Trump is a stooge for the:
Arms manufacturers and corporations...cause of his halving of corporation tax.
Zionists..cause he moved the embassy to Jerusalem.
Gun lobby...cause of his inaction after the mass shootings at schools.



And I believe the Kremlin...cause of his bizarre behaviour and the only explanation is that Putin has something on him.
I had my suspicions one and a half years ago that Trump is being blackmailed by Putin subsequently my suspicions have been confirmed. Anyone who thinks otherwise has their head buried in the proverbial sand.

Scarborough tried to take a stab at why his one-time friend might be behaving so “obsequiously” towards Putin. “We all know that Vladimir Putin is holding something over Donald Trump,” he said. “We do not know what it is, but we know it must be something extraordinary because no rational politician, no rational president would act this way if he weren’t being blackmailed on some level.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/joe-scarb ... d-by-putin


edit

[Verv]

I honestly hope he will bring a priest over with a big beard, wearing a big cross over his neck. Proclaiming how both USA and Russia are Christian countries that should stand in unity and defend their values. It would be a pleasure to watch all the progressive liberal foaming at their mouths and spiting hot saliva into the air whilst yelling.

That would be the single greatest moment in Western history since the fall of Communism itself.

... And maybe this hasn't already happened because this is the 2020 election wombo-combo he has planned for us.

Seriously. Think about it. He gets friendly with Russia, shows the world is not coming to an end and that this actually brings tangible benefits, and while the economy is doing well he brings over some handsome middle aged Orthodox Bishop and has him open up a few campaign stops and give a Solzhenitsyn-at-Harvard-esque speech.

Throw in a Catholic Bishop and then have the mandatory 10-man deep Protestant minister mafia in tow and there you go.

Time has shown that the people who encourage drag queen story hour actually fail to seem relevant in their criticism of the right as being 'unchrsitian' and hypocritcal for supporting Trump. Who would've thought that people can see through the media's shallow ploy?

[colliric]

Throw in a Catholic Bishop and then have the mandatory 10-man deep Protestant minister mafia in tow and there you go.

A Bishop? Umm. Get the Russian Orthodox Patriarch and Pope Francis in the same room!

The Pope has already meet Donald Trump anyway, but a new trip to the United States wouldn't be a bad idea(already been 3 years).

Even let the Archbishop of Canterbury attend(as one of the ten Protestants!)

[anarchist23]

Although it's a wall of words it's worth a read. The second extract is an interesting take on what Putin has on Trump, saying that it's not sexual in nature but it's concerns money laundering which would mean that Trump would be busted and it would be the end of his presidency.

President Trump stood next to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday and publicly challenged the conclusion of his own intelligence agencies that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election, wrapping up what he called a “deeply productive” summit meeting with an extraordinary show of trust for a leader accused of attacking American democracy.
In a remarkable news conference, Mr. Trump did not name a single action for which Mr. Putin should be held accountable. Instead, he saved his sharpest criticism for the United States and the special counsel investigation into the election interference, calling it a “ridiculous” probe and a “witch hunt” that has kept the two countries apart.
Mr. Trump even questioned the determinations by his intelligence officials that Russia had meddled in the election.
“They said they think it’s Russia,” Mr. Trump said. “I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia,” the president continued, only moments after Mr. Putin conceded that he had wanted Mr. Trump to win the election because of his promises of warmer relations with Moscow.
“I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia that was responsible for the election hacking, Mr. Trump added. “President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/worl ... gence.html

Alena Ledeneva, a professor of politics at University College London and an expert on Russia’s political and business practices, describes kompromat as being more than a single powerful figure weaponizing damning evidence to blackmail a target. She explained that to make sense of kompromat it is essential to understand the weakness of formal legal institutions in Russia and other former Soviet states. Ledeneva argued that wealth and power are distributed through networks of political figures and businesspeople who follow unspoken rules, in an informal hierarchy that she calls the sistema, or system in English. Sistema has a few clear rules—do not defy Putin being the most obvious one—and a toolkit for controlling potentially errant members. It is primarily a system of ambiguity. Each person in the sistema wonders where he stands and monitors the relative positions of friends and rivals.
Gleb Pavlovsky, one of the leading political thinkers in Russia, is known to be an adviser to Putin and well connected to the power structure. In a 2016 article in Foreign Affairs, he endorsed Ledeneva’s sistema framework. Many observers imagine Putin to be some all-powerful genius, Pavlovsky wrote, but he “has never managed to build a bureaucratically successful authoritarian state. Instead, he has merely crafted his own version of sistema, a complex practice of decision-making and power management that has long defined Russian politics and society and that will outlast Putin himself. Putin has mastered sistema, but he has not replaced it with ‘Putinism’ or a ‘Putin system.’ Someday, Putin will go. But sistema will stay.”
Ledeneva said that the key to understanding Trump’s interaction with sistema is to look at the people with whom he did business. “Trump never dealt with anybody close to the Kremlin, close to Putin,” she said. “Or even many Russians.” Trump’s business deals, she told me, were with tertiary figures. Sistema is rooted in local, often familial, trust, so it is common to see networks rooted in ethnic or national identity. My own reporting has shown that Trump has worked with many ethnic Turks from Central Asia, such as the Mammadov family, in Azerbaijan; Tevfik Arif, in New York; and Aras and Emin Agalarov, in Moscow. Trump also worked with large numbers of émigrés from the former Soviet Union.
If there truly is damaging kompromat on Trump, it could well be in the hands of Trump’s business partners, or even in those of their rivals. Trump’s Georgian partners, for example, have been in direct conflict with other local business networks over a host of crucial deals involving major telecommunications projects in the country. His Azerbaijani partners were tightly linked to Iranians who were, also, senior officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The work of Ledeneva and Darden suggests that Trump’s partners and their rivals would likely have gathered any incriminating information they could find on him, knowing that it might, one day, provide some sort of business leverage—even with no thought that he could, one day, become the most powerful person on Earth.
Ledeneva is skeptical that Putin, years ago, ordered an effort to collect kompromat on Trump. Instead, it is possible that there is kompromat in the hands of several different business groups in the former Soviet Union. Each would have bits and pieces of damaging information and might have found subtle (or not so subtle) ways to communicate that fact to both Trump and Putin. Putin would, likely, have gathered some of that material, but he would have known that he couldn’t get everything.
Ledeneva told me that each actor in sistema faces near-constant uncertainty about his status, aware that others could well destroy him. Each actor also knows how to use kompromat to destroy rivals but fears that using such material might provoke an explosive response. While each person in the sistema feels near-constant uncertainty, the over-all sistema is remarkably robust. Kompromat is most powerful when it isn’t used, and when its targets aren’t quite clear about how much destructive information there is out there. If everyone sees potential land mines everywhere, it dramatically increases the price of anybody stepping out of line.
The scenario that, to my mind, makes the most sense of the given facts and requires the fewest fantastical leaps is that, a decade or so ago, Trump, naïve, covetous, and struggling for cash, may have laundered money for a business partner from the former Soviet Union or engaged in some other financial crime. This placed him, unawares, squarely within the sistema, where he remained, conducting business with other members of a handful of overlapping Central Asian networks. Had he never sought the Presidency, he may never have had to come to terms with these decisions. But, now, he is much like everyone else in sistema. He fears there is kompromat out there—maybe a lot of it—but he doesn’t know precisely what it is, who has it, or what might set them off.
Trump and many of his defenders have declared his businesses, including those in the former Soviet Union, to be off-limits to the Mueller investigation. They argue that the special counsel should focus only on the possibility of explicit acts of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. This neatly avoids the reality of sistema. As Pavlovsky wrote, ”Under Putin, sistema has become a method for making deals among businesses, powerful players, and the people. Business has not taken over the state, nor vice versa; the two have merged in a union of total and seamless corruption.”
Ledeneva explained to me that, in sistema, when faced with uncertainty, every member knows that the best move is to maintain whatever alliances he has, and to avoid grand steps that could antagonize powerful figures; in such times, the most one can hope for is simply to survive.

https://www.newyorker.com/news-desk/swa ... -kompromat

[Rugoz]

Putin has actively signaled against Communist values and spoken out on behalf of Western, conservative Christian civilization, yet he also has a very metropolitan, modern, realpolitik & pragmatic feel to him...

He's also a de facto dictator and former KGB man.

Trump stands beside him, denying Russian meddling, attacking the domestic opposition, badmouthing American institutions and later even proposes to form a common "Cyber Security unit" to prevent election hacking . As if he were the president of a banana republic trying to secure his rule with the help of a foreign power.

I don't know why the Trumpsters won't just admit that they give a damn about democracy and the rule of law. What they want is chauvinistic one-man rule a la Putin, Erdogan or Chavez. With a touch of theocracy of course. In fact, why don't they just convert to Islam. Given that catholicism is dead in the water it seems like the obvious next step.

[soron]

Nonetheless I suspect Russia main leverage is their gas supply to Europe actually.

The Russian quota of natural gas in Germany is a mere 7 %, in Europe it is 37%. The new pipeline (NS2) would increase this to maybe around 40%.
At the same time, the US is trying to push their surplus of fracked liquified natural gas onto Europe. So what we have here is probably more a pursuit of US business interest rather than security issues. Especially when one considers that those deliveries are a two-way street: As Russia becomes more important as a supplier, the leverage the EU gains by endorsing sanctions against Russia and stop buying their produce will increase at the same rate.

[Hong Wu]

If Trump invites Putin now, it's likely a sign that their internal polling indicates that the latest media outrage machine process failed and so they're going to double down.

http://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/397902 ... y-american

That passage was transmitted on May 19, 2017. “There’s no big there there,” Strzok texted.

The date of the text long has intrigued investigators: It is two days after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee an investigation into alleged collusion between Trump and the Russia campaign.

Since the text was turned over to Congress, investigators wondered whether it referred to the evidence against the Trump campaign.

This month, they finally got the chance to ask. Strzok declined to say — but Page, during a closed-door interview with lawmakers, confirmed in the most pained and contorted way that the message in fact referred to the quality of the Russia case, according to multiple eyewitnesses.

The admission is deeply consequential. It means Rosenstein unleashed the most awesome powers of a special counsel to investigate an allegation that the key FBI officials, driving the investigation for 10 months beforehand, did not think was “there.”

By the time of the text and Mueller’s appointment, the FBI’s best counterintelligence agents had had plenty of time to dig. They knowingly used a dossier funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign — which contained uncorroborated allegations — to persuade the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to issue a warrant to monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter Page (no relation to Lisa Page).

They sat on Carter Page’s phones and emails for nearly six months without getting evidence that would warrant prosecuting him. The evidence they had gathered was deemed so weak that their boss, then-FBI Director James Comey, was forced to admit to Congress after being fired by Trump that the core allegation remained substantially uncorroborated.

In other words, they had a big nothing burger. And, based on that empty-calorie dish, Rosenstein authorized the buffet menu of a special prosecutor that has cost America millions of dollars and months of political strife.

It goes on to make the "circular intelligence" charge.

[Beren]

It makes me wonder why Putin can't do the same for Russia.

Putin made Russia great again, I wonder if he wants the same for the USA.

[One Degree]

Russia went from being a ‘has been’ back to being a world power just because Democrats found it convenient to use against Trump. What you imagine becomes reality.

[JohnRawls]

Russia went from being a ‘has been’ back to being a world power just because Democrats found it convenient to use against Trump. What you imagine becomes reality.

Pretty much. As said before, Trump is not dumb. You can portray him to be dumb to "hurt" his pride but that will change nothing. Yes, he is a loud mouth but he doesn't care about himself being loud mouth. This actually furthers his PR.

Here, some annual dose of propaganda: