'Utterly Horrible': Trump’s Putin claim ignites anger, again

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
June 4, 2024 6:30PM ET




Vladimir Putin (Shutterstock)




Donald Trump, the Republicans’ 2024 presumptive presidential nominee and a convicted felon, is claiming Russian President Vladimir Putin will release a U.S. reporter arrested on espionage charges who the U.S. says is being wrongfully detained, if the American people elect him president again.

“Evan Gershkovich, the reporter for The Wall Street Journal who is being held by Russia will be released almost immediately after the election, but definitely before I assume office,” Trump says in a video (below) posted to his Truth Social account Tuesday. “He will be home, he’ll be safe. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia will do that for me. And I don’t believe he will do it for anyone else.”

President Biden has strongly denounced Russia’s unlawful imprisonment of Evan Gershkovich, and he and his administration have publicly discussed Russia’s detention of the reporter at least 38 times, most recently May 3, according to a count of documents on the White House’s website.

David Corn, Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for Mother Jones blasted Trump.

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“‘Vladimir Putin…will do that for me.,’ ” Corn wrote. “This is shameful. Trump boasting that a war criminal and tyrant will only release an American hostage if Trump is elected president. I’ve been saying this for eight years. There is no bottom.”

Former Dept. of Defense official Mike Walker responded by writing: “What Trump is really saying to Putin: ‘Don’t release the WSJ reporter UNLESS I win.’ He is condemning Evan to many months more in a Russian prison.”

Last month Trump made similar remarks.

“Trump did not refer to any contacts with Putin or say what grounds he had to believe that the Russian leader would release Gershkovich,” Reuters reported at the time. “His campaign did not address questions about whether Trump or his advisers had been in touch with Putin or his staff about Gershkovich. Instead, Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said: ‘There is only one person who can negotiate the safe return of Mr. Gershkovich back to his family – President Trump.'”

“Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin has ‘naturally not had contacts with Donald Trump,'” Reuters added, noting remarks made by former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, who was detained in Russia from 2019 to 2022: “As a former wrongful detainee in Russia, I would just like to remind everyone that President Trump had the ability to get myself and Paul Whelan out of Russia for years and chose not to. I would be skeptical of any claims about getting Evan Gershkovich back in a day.”

Last week the Bangor Daily News editorial board blasted the ex-president.

READ MORE: Trump Demands SCOTUS Intervene After ‘Dangerous’ Suggestion of Possible Violence if Jailed

“If Trump can secure the release of Gershkovich, he should do it now, not months from now,” the paper’s board wrote. “Trump may be trying to showcase his close relationship with Putin. Much has been written about the dangers of Trump essentially doing Putin’s bidding by valorizing the Russian president and his ruthless rule and opposing and undermining U.S. support for Ukraine, which Russia invaded in February 2022. Trump has also not been a champion of journalists, calling the press the ‘enemy of the people.’ He also refers to the ‘fake news media,’ to try to debunk reporting he doesn’t like.”

“Back to dangling Evan’s freedom as a political tool,” wrote National security Attorney Brad Moss, who also remarked: “Paraphrasing Trump to Evan’s family: I could help get him home now but I only care if I win. If I lose, I don’t care if he lives or dies.”

Former Republican U.S. Congressman Joe Walsh responded to Trump’s video, saying simply, “He’s an utterly horrible human being.”




https://www.rawstory.com/trump-putin-2668454661/

 

A Trump 2024 win is the linchpin of 'fantasies of Kremlin strategists': report

Matthew Chapman
June 25, 2024 9:21AM ET




Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Moscow would only halt its offensive if Kyiv pulls its troops out of the east and south of the country (NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP)




The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help former President Donald Trump, a chain of events documented in detail by former special counsel Robert Mueller's report. Now, eight years later, Vladimir Putin and his strategists are just as eager for the former president to retake office in order to realize their geopolitical goals.

According to Vanity Fair, "From the moment Trump was elected, the word Yalta became one of the most popular among Kremlin officials" — a reference to how Joseph Stalin was able to convince his then-American and British allies in World War II to legitimize his sphere of influence. "They were confident that Trump was the right person to agree to such a spectacle. This did not mean that Russian authorities considered Trump 'their puppet' — the Kremlin never had any means to influence him. Putin simply believed that Trump was morally close and understandable to him: a fellow cynic who also thought that money solved everything."

This came after Putin had, according to Mikhail Zygar, believed former President George W. Bush was on his way to becoming a military dictator he could partner with, only for the American people to lose support for him and his party to be swept from power.

After this, he had endured years of a mistrustful relationship with former President Barack Obama, harboring paranoid suspicions that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton organized protests against Putin's own administration at home.

It was in this context that Putin tried to interfere to help Trump get elected, and believed that it would be easier to deal with him — in essence, wrote Zygar, "the fantasies of Kremlin strategists" involve Trump and Putin meeting somewhere neutral, like Fiji, and the two will carve up the world together and create a new order for each country.

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"While fantasizing about the future of the US under Trump, the Kremlin harbors another dream," wrote Zygar. "It sees it as the ultimate revenge for the Cold War defeat and the collapse of the USSR. Putin’s current advisers are confident that the US will eventually disintegrate, breaking into several pieces like the Soviet Union ultimately did. This would require the right conditions and a leader who could plunge the country into chaos. You might be surprised, but the nickname used for Trump in the Kremlin is the American Gorbachev" — for Putin, being a former KGB officer, sees Gorbachev as a "demagogue and a narcissist" whose empty pandering and lack of strategy caused the end of the Soviet Union.

Moreover, he added, Putin's inner circle gets much of their conception of how America works from Hollywood movies, believing that this year's dystopian sci-fi film Civil War is basically a prediction of the future.

"Just a little more, and Trump will agree to a new Yalta. And then the US will disintegrate, and Russia will win the new Cold War," wrote Zygar. "Vladimir Putin believes that his dream is not so unattainable."


https://www.rawstory.com/trump-russia-2668600707/

 

We're back to russian/trump collusion.
Whatever it takes.
Despicables will stop trump no matter what it takes.
They will save democracy from the satan.
Fuck the constitution.
Fuck the law.
Fuck everything but stop trump.
Even if it means destroying democracy.