Tag: Putin

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Megyn Kelly Gets Tepid Reviews For Putin Interview

While I’m sure she got the ratings she wanted out of her debut on NBC last night, what Megyn Kelly didn’t get was anything of substance out of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

I’ll admit she did seem to ask the right questions, but got no where as Putin was very much in control of the interview throughout. She never seemed to have the right followup question ready, and Putin made sure to ridicule the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

“For me, this is just amazing. You created a sensation out of nothing,” Putin said. “And out of this sensation, you turned it into a weapon of war against the current president. Well, this is, you know, you’re just, you people are so creative over there. Good job. Your lives must be boring.”

Additionally, there were no questions regarding the rounding up and torture of gay men in Chechnya.

Watch the full interview below.

Just some of the reaction from Twitter:

Another cringe-worthy moment was when Kelly asked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi if he was on Twitter – he has over 30 million followers. She didn’t think to look that up?

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Putin: “Patriotically Minded” Private Russian Hackers Could Have Interfered In U.S. Election

Russian President Vladimir Putin admits “patriotically minded” private Russian hackers could have been involved in U.S. election interference.

Via the New York Times:

Raising the possibility of attacks by what he portrayed as free-spirited Russian patriots, Mr. Putin said that hackers “are like artists” who choose their targets depending how they feel “when they wake up in the morning.”

“If they are patriotically minded, they start making their contributions — which are right, from their point of view — to the fight against those who say bad things about Russia,” he added.

His remarks echoed ones by Mr. Trump, who has dismissed accusations of Russian meddling and said that the person responsible for the attack on the Democratic National Committee “could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”

The firing of James B. Comey as director of the F.B.I. has led several lawmakers to call for an independent investigator or commission on top of the current investigations into potential links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

All the same, Mr. Putin stuck firmly to earlier denials that Russian state bodies or employees had been involved, an accusation leveled by United States intelligence agencies. They concluded in January that Mr. Putin himself had directed a Russian “influence campaign” involving cyberattacks and disinformation intended to tilt the November election in Mr. Trump’s favor.

Putin also theorizes that “someone” could be creating a fake trail back to Russia with today’s technology.

Riiiiiight.

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House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Caught On Audio: Putin Pays Trump

Rep. Kevin McCarthy


The Washington Post is reporting the discovery of a recording from last year which apparently captures Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy claiming Donald Trump was receiving payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016 exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

[snip]

When initially asked to comment on the exchange, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never happened,” and Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”

After being told that The Post would cite a recording of the exchange, Buck, speaking for the GOP House leadership, said: “This entire year-old exchange was clearly an attempt at humor. No one believed the majority leader was seriously asserting that Donald Trump or any of our members were being paid by the Russians. What’s more, the speaker and leadership team have repeatedly spoken out against Russia’s interference in our election, and the House continues to investigate that activity.”

“This was a failed attempt at humor,” Sparks said.

Why would Brendan Buck initially respond “That never happened,” only to cop to the fact it did happen minutes later? Is lying his default?

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Trump Compares US To Russia: “You Think Our Country’s So Innocent?”

In an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly set to air today on FOX before the Super Bowl, President Trump was asked about his views on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At one point, as Trump says that he respects the Russian president, O’Reilly interjects “But Putin’s a killer.”

“There are a lot of killers. There are a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent? ” replied Trump.

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Putin Doubts Trump Used Russian Prostitutes “Although Ours Are Undoubtedly The Best In The World”

President-elect Donald Trump’s bestie, Russian President Vladimir Putin, has no problem defending him against the recent unsubstantiated rumors floated in an “intelligence dossier” recently.

Putin says he doubts Trump ever utilized Russian prostitutes, “although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world.”

Via Bloomberg:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he doesn’t believe that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump met with prostitutes in Russia, calling the accusations part of a campaign to undermine the election result.

Unsubstantiated allegations made against Trump are “obvious fabrications,” Putin told reporters in the Kremlin on Tuesday. “People who order fakes of the type now circulating against the U.S. president-elect, who concoct them and use them in a political battle, are worse than prostitutes because they don’t have any moral boundaries at all,” he said.

Putin said that Trump wasn’t a politician when he visited Moscow in the past and Russian officials weren’t aware that he held any political ambitions. It’s “complete nonsense” to believe that Russian security services “chase after every American billionaire,” he said.

Trump is “a grown man, and secondly he’s someone who has been involved with beauty contests for many years and has met the most beautiful women in the world,” Putin said. “I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world.”

Bolding is mine. Here’s video of the statement. The issue of “girls of loose morals” comes up at the 3:45 mark.

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BREAKING: U.S. Intelligence Report Shows Russia Officials Celebrated Trump Win

Details of the upcoming report from U.S. intelligence agencies on Russia’s cyber hacking during the presidential campaign were leaked this afternoon, and among the results are the fact that Russian operatives celebrated Donald Trump’s win

The Washington Post reports:

Senior officials in the Russian government celebrated Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton as a geopolitical win for Moscow, according to U.S. officials who said that American intelligence agencies intercepted communications in the aftermath of the election in which Russian officials congratulated themselves on the outcome.

The ebullient reaction among high-ranking Russian officials — including some who U.S. officials believe had knowledge of the country’s cyber campaign to interfere in the U.S. election — contributed to the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Moscow’s efforts were aimed at least in part at helping Trump win the White House.

Other key pieces of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies include the identification of “actors” involved in delivering stolen Democratic emails to the WikiLeaks website, and disparities in the levels of effort Russian intelligence entities devoted to penetrating and exploiting sensitive information stored on Democratic and Republican campaign networks.

Those and other data points are at the heart of an unprecedented intelligence report being circulated in Washington this week that details the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and catalogues other cyber operations by Moscow against U.S. election systems over the past nine years.

Russia’s initial objective may have been merely to meddle and undermine the legitimacy of an assumed Clinton victory. But as Trump captured the GOP nomination and showed that he could remain competitive with Clinton, Russia’s aims became more ambitious, officials said. The final months of the race saw a steady stream of leaked emails that damaged Clinton’s candidacy, without any corresponding release to embarrass Trump.

The report also includes U.S. intelligence officials’ conclusion that Putin held a grudge against Hillary Clinton for years, which they cite as motivation for undermining her campaign.

Additionally, the report indicates that Russia used social media and “fake news” platforms as an “accelerant” to help Trump in his quest for the White House.

President-elect Donald Trump is currently busy having a meltdown on Twitter:

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Trump Praises Russian President Putin On Twitter

Yet again, Donald Trump has publicly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, going so far as to praise the Russian president for not expelling American diplomats in Russia in response to President Barack Obama’s sanctions. “Great move on delay (by V. Putin),” Trump tweeted. “I always knew he was very smart!”

It was initially thought that Putin would react in kind to the sanctions, but yesterday announced he would hold a “wait and see” position until after January 20th when Trump takes the oath of office.

Not only did the Trumpster post the tweet, but he’s pinned the tweet to the top of his feed, clearly meaning to make quite the statement.

The Twitterverse reacts:

And then, this from CNN Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta:

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Putin Announces He Will Not Expel US Diplomats From Russia – Yet

CNN is reporting that Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced he will not dispatch American diplomats from Russia as a response to yesterday’s similar move by the Obama administration over cyber-hacking during the recent presidential election.

Putin said he would not pursue “irresponsible diplomacy” and would instead attempt to rebuild relations with Washington after the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump.

However, Putin said that Russia reserved the right to respond to the new US sanctions, which included the expulsion of 35 diplomats from the US. The Obama administration said the measures were in response to allegations that Russia had meddled in the 2016 US presidential election.

“Further steps towards the restoration of Russian-American relations will be built on the basis of the policies carried out by the administration of President Trump,” a Kremlin statement said.

Putin reportedly told Sputnik: “We will not create problems for American diplomats. We will not send anyone away. We will not prohibit their families and children to use for their usual vacation spots in the New Year’s holidays.”

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Trump Joins Russian President In Trashing Hillary Clinton

Placing his ego ahead of the country, President-elect Trump took to Twitter to agree with Russian President Putin on trashing Hillary Clinton.

From The Washington Post:

President-elect Donald Trump late Friday publicly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for attacking Trump’s former Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. In a striking statement that seems to further align Trump with Putin, the incoming U.S. president tweeted that he agreed with the Russian leader’s assessment that Clinton and the Democratic Party generally have not shown “dignity” following widespread loses in the November election.

“So true!” Trump tweeted of Putin’s comments, apparently referencing statements the Russian made at his year-end news conference. Trump’s expressed admiration of Putin came only hours after he released to the media a warm letter the Russian sent him. The Friday night tweet sparked cries of alarm from former U.S. officials and other Trump critics on social media.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Obama, tweeted Friday night that Trump’s praise of Putin was “unprecedented.” Evan McMullin, a Republican former CIA operative who ran unsuccessfully against Trump as an independent candidate, called Friday night for Republican leaders to condemn Trump’s “alliance” with Putin.

Trump is so eager to accept any sense of praise that he doesn’t see he’s being played by Putin. #sad