Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.

The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.

They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives, among them “social turmoil” in the US and a weakening of the American president’s negotiating position.

Russia’s three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature.

By this point Trump was the frontrunner in the Republican party’s nomination race. A report prepared by Putin’s expert department recommended Moscow use “all possible force” to ensure a Trump victory.

...

The report – “No 32-04 \ vd” – is classified as secret. It says Trump is the “most promising candidate” from the Kremlin’s point of view. The word in Russian is perspektivny.

There is a brief psychological assessment of Trump, who is described as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”.

There is also apparent confirmation that the Kremlin possesses kompromat, or potentially compromising material, on the future president, collected – the document says – from Trump’s earlier “non-official visits to Russian Federation territory”.

The paper refers to “certain events” that happened during Trump’s trips to Moscow. Security council members are invited to find details in appendix five, at paragraph five, the document states. It is unclear what the appendix contains.

Interestingly this was already reported far earlier, even during the election.

And it makes sense. Putin is a career spy and the former head of the FSB. He took direct control also of the Crimea operation, which gained total strategic surprise. Some other politician in Russia might have doubts to do anything like this in the US elections in case of a pullback if the other candidate won. Putin understood how wrecked the system is and how easily the issue would be confused to a conspiracy theory.

Heck, if Putin wouldn't have admitted that the "little green men" were really Russian paratroopers, there would still be those who would claim that they were just Crimean volunteers (that suddenly just had in their closets the newest BDUs that Russia uses).

But of course, there's going to be those diehard that won't believe this at all, and that precisely what Putin had in mind: a Hillary Clinton administration would have been right from the start one giant hearing after hearing.

For me the final thing was the Helsinki-summit. It was simply not normal behaviour from any President, especially of the US President.

“impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”

That's the Trump I have seen.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15/kremlin-papers-appear-to-show-putins-plot-to-put-trump-in-white-house

Certainly not news after the fiasco at Helsinki in 2018. Leak the kompromat, Vlad ... :smirk:

Certainly not news after the fiasco at Helsinki in 2018. Leak the kompromat, Vlad ... :smirk: — 180 Proof

:100: I'd like to see it, but I've also learned from this man that no new low is low enough to turn his sycophants away from him. If it was two (or more) consenting adults pissing all over each other, then that won't be enough. Now, if he was taped fucking little boys or what have you, then you'd think that might do it. But I don't know. I'm sure the shit that is stuck to his shoe would just say "It's all a deep fake tape and conspiracy against dear leader by the evil Jewish space laser cabal!"

lol :sad: :up:

Also this:

"I feel you are going to lose the election. I feel you are actually losing touch with your own base. The only reason you won last time, Mr. President, is because of the 'grab them by the pussy' comment. It actually scared you enough to listen to Kellyanne [Conway]. And for the last several weeks you behaved yourself and won by a hair. This time it's different. You cannot wait until the end. I think that if you wanted to you could walk into a second term, COVID and all. You could go down in history as an amazing president and it's yours for the taking. But it's about you, and you're turning off enough people to lose this election." — Bill Barr (fmr AG tr45h admin, RESIGNED), Spring 2020, excerpt from I Alone Can Fix It, by Carol Leonnig & Philip Rucker

Some journalists have found some names, money, events, ...

The Big Money Behind the Big Lie (Jane Mayer, The New Yorker)

I don’t think we can say with certainty who won. I believe there were more illegal votes cast than the margin of victory. The only remedy is a new election. — Cleta Mitchell

The Georgia runoffs later confirmed the election results, though.

Big-Money Republican Donors Are Now Backing the GOP’s War on Fair Elections (Joan Walsh, The Nation)

In the US, given a good chunk of dollars, can you purchase fraud that wasn't there? If you keep going long enough?

I am very anti-gun. I am also very anti-lies. If the liars force me to choose, they won't like my choice.

Donald Trump was actually responsible for moving the Doomsday Clock forward by a few minutes, taking the world closer to midnight (Apocalypse, End times, Armageddon).

Reason: reckless language.

Donald Trump was, as the timekeepers call it, a doomsday factor.

A clock that never hits midnight is broken. It’s not the greatest analogy given that they are atomic scientists.

A clock that never hits midnight is broken. — NOS4A2

The video does mention that the Doomsday clock, 1) isn't linear, and 2) with it we can turn back time. Watch the video, it's just 5 minutes.

I'll bet Marj is moving the clock a few milliseconds.

It’s a kind of racket. If our predictions don’t come to fruition we can say our predictions altered the course of events. Rinse, repeat. Bush acolyte David Frum did the same in his book “Trumpocracy”, which warned about Trump’s push towards illiberalism. He never warned that the push towards illiberalism would come from him and people like him in the form of covid fascism.

I'll bet Marj is moving the clock a few milliseconds. — praxis

A draft report of the Republican-backed review of 2020 election results in Arizona’s largest county — which critics derided as a shambolic stunt aimed to further vote-rigging conspiracies peddled by former President Donald Trump — has in fact confirmed the winners, the county said.

The much-delayed report from Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based firm whose owner had spread pro-Trump conspiracies, had been repeatedly hyped up by Trump himself.

But the draft “confirms the county’s canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win,” Maricopa County’s official account tweeted Thursday night. — Maricopa County recount confirms Biden's election win

I expect that Trump, if he makes any comment, will declare that the recount is wrong. The depth of his delusion is such that no mere fact could penetrate it.

I think the spread increased for Joe. LOL! But now Texas is bowing to Trump's demands. :roll: What a loser.

Actually reading the NY Times article on the release of the draft report, Trump does comment ' 'Mr. Trump on Friday said the review “has uncovered significant and undeniable evidence of FRAUD! Until we know how and why this happened, our Elections will never be secure.” So, no evidence of fraud, is, according to Trump, evidence of fraud. Just as I knew he would say.

:100: Maybe Texas will make it work for him. Now that they have AZ to learn from. :roll: Will it ever end?

I sincerely hope so. Hope the whole tottering, cancerous mess comes crashing down.

...for those who have tried to undermine confidence in American elections and restrict voting, the actual findings of the Maricopa County review that were released on Friday did not appear to matter in the slightest. Former President Donald J. Trump and his loyalists redoubled their efforts to mount a full-scale relitigation of the 2020 election.

Any fleeting thought that the failure of the Arizona exercise to unearth some new trove of Trump votes or a smoking gun of election fraud might derail the so-called Stop the Steal movement dissipated abruptly. As draft copies of the report began to circulate late Thursday, Trump allies ignored the new tally, instead zeroing in on the report’s specious claims of malfeasance, inconsistencies and errors by election officials. — NYT

Reason stands for nothing when facts don't matter.

Reason stands for nothing when facts don't matter. — Wayfarer

:100: Understatement +.

It’s a kind of racket. If our predictions don’t come to fruition we can say our predictions altered the course of events. Rinse, repeat. Bush acolyte David Frum did the same in his book “Trumpocracy”, which warned about Trump’s push towards illiberalism. He never warned that the push towards illiberalism would come from him and people like him in the form of covid fascism. — NOS4A2

:up:
There might be a grain of truth in what you say. However, I'd hesitate to say it's all for show, you know, just for the cameras. It might help to, as the wise say, follow the money trail to get to the truth? What if big oil and/or nuclear power industry has everyone involved in the Doomsday clock on their payroll? Something to think about.

:up:
You’re probably right.

Do politics come into play?

Sure. The Bulletin follows politics and public policies throughout the year, but officials say the outcome shouldn't be interpreted as a political statement.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Fox News

Certainly not news after the fiasco at Helsinki in 2018. Leak the kompromat, Vlad ... :smirk: — 180 Proof

After watching the whole press conference held here by Trump and Putin in 2018 is all that actually one needs to firmly understand that Trump's relationship with Russia was not normal. It wasn't a normal press conference between the US and some other country. It was more like Putin as Soviet Union would held a press conference with East Germany or a satellite state. It simply wasn't and isn't normal.

And likely some Americans will deny it forever.

So...

What do people think about Trump being the Republican candidate in 2024?

And what a wonderful happy time Americans would have again if Trump would be re-elected?

What do people think about Trump being the Republican candidate in 2024? — ssu

Who?

No one cares what this deranged imbecile has to say anymore. He was finished the moment they booted him from Twitter. If he runs again he'll lose again. He's already reduced to a has-been after 7 months -- imagine in 3 years?

Let his followers continue to worship him as they always have. It matters not. They made their strongest effort in 2020, with plenty of structural advantage and intense enthusiasm, and they lost anyway -- to a weak a candidate as Joe Biden, who barely mustered any enthusiasm.

No one cares what this deranged imbecile has to say anymore. — Xtrix

The way I see it, there is a lot of commentary on Trump still in the media.

Plus the GOP seems to be hijacked by the "Trump crowd" ...or at least so it's depicted in the media. So Biden won. But it wasn't in the ballpark of Reagan winning over Mondale in '84 or Roosevelt winning over Landon in '36.



Has anybody seen signs of the political polarization going away?

Besides, what would be the reason why elections in the US wouldn't be dumpster fires?

I'm big on Presidential histories, but I always avoided the Trump ones because it seemed like so much leaked that they wouldn't reveal much.

However, I read Landslide, which focuses on the efforts to overturn the election, and it is absolutely hilarious. Comedy gold.

Apparently Trump wanted to make Guliani Attorney General, or a nominee for the Supreme Court. Think of all the comedy we missed!

It'll either be Trump or a Trump-clone. Biden should win unless something weird happens.

So Biden won. But it wasn't in the ballpark of Reagan winning over Mondale in '84 or Roosevelt winning over Landon in '36. — ssu

True, but think about the enthusiasm gap. The Trump crowd and Republican party was nearly unanimous in getting behind him. He had the entire media juggernaut behind him as well -- talk radio, Fox News, millions of social media followers, and help from foreign hackers. He also had, as mentioned, structural advantages in the electoral college. All of that, and he still lost by over 7 million votes.

Yes, he did do better than I would have expected, even given all of that. 75 million votes is a lot. But in the end, he still lost pretty handily. The delay in counting and screaming about fraud didn't allow this to become clear, but the final numbers reflect it.

Lastly, this was against Joe Biden. A boring, bland, centrist, old, establishment candidate that was barely registering any votes prior to South Carolina. This was almost entirely an anti-Trump vote -- for me as well.

So given all that, and especially after Georgia and January 6th, I think it's a silly mistake for Republicans to rally behind this guy still. But they're pretty much out of ideas, and they're afraid of those voters who still love the guy. They're really caught in a bad spot in this respect. All the better for the country, in my view.

Now let's see if the Democrats can do ANYTHING with their slim majorities in terms of the reconciliation bill.