It’s Kremlin kompromat, faked by Putin’s fakery farms, and identifiable by his default signature: child pornography and pedophilia.
Putin is that crude.
It was a peripheral pick-up on my part, when I was writing about fakes and fake news (see the link, above). Since child pornography and pedophilia are the most repulsive crimes, Putin has had “evidence” of these rotten acts planted on the computers, etc., of his enemies. Then — voila! — his “investigators” dig up this awful material and instigate smear campaigns and prosecutions.
As I was writing about Roger Stone’s nauseating use of this fakery, I began seeing how this particular poison harked back to the Kremlin.
So why do I say we need to be hypervigilant right now about this kind of garbage falsely implicating Biden?
Two news items.
Yesterday Trump invoked the magic name of Putin in a TV interview. As laid out by Talking Points Memo:
Folks, it’s a pattern: Unchastened by the impeachment hearing against him for demanding domestic political dirt from foreign heads of state, Donald Trump did it again Tuesday, pressing Vladimir Putin for material on Hunter Biden in the middle of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“As long as Putin now is not exactly a fan of our country, let him explain — because Chris Wallace wouldn’t let me ask the question — why did the mayor of Moscow’s wife give the Bidens, both of them, three and a half million dollars?” Trump said in an interview. “I would think Putin would know the answer to that. I think he should release it. I think we should know the answer. Now, you won’t get the answer from Ukraine.”
“I think Putin, now, would be willing to probably give that answer,” Trump added. “I’m sure he knows.”
Around the same time, the invaluable Julia Davis, whose Twitter bio tersely announces, “I watch Russian state TV so you don’t have to,” tweeted this:
Meanwhile on Russian state TV: Host Evgeny Popov says it’s time for the Russian people to call on Americans to change “the regime in the U.S.” before its term expires “and to again help our partner Trump to become President.”
Popov later tried to clean it up by adding “like I hope we helped him in the past,” but that disclaimer rang hollow. Popov and other Russian state TV hosts, pundits & experts have been boasting for years about helping to elect Trump.
Those two statements, one asking for help, the other promising help, suggest some rot connecting Biden to child porn will be erupting soon, possibly via one of the Republicans who notoriously spent one July 4 in Moscow. Ron Johnson, perhaps.
I am trusting our news media, unlike Russian state TV, are prepared to slash into the garbage and condemn it as fakery.
∞
You know, I’m not a conspiratorial sort, but I’ve got a few ideas about why some dopes and sleazes in the GOP have been Krazy Glued to Putin.
Video. Tapes. A library of DVDs, some gathered from Russian hotel rooms, and some — this is my darkest and brightest idea — from Trump’s golf club properties. I’m thinking one of the ways Trump collaborated with Putin from his earliest attempts to make Putin his best friend was to give the Russians access to his properties, maybe in return for a promise to withhold whatever kompromat they had on Trump himself.
Then, Trump invited GOPers to spend a weekend, play some golf, eat some steak, worship at his altar…and appreciate other guest perks in the privacy of their (fully wired) rooms.
As a fervent, passionate democrat and humanist, I wish my notions about kompromat came from the pages of spy novels and streaming service series. So call me over-imaginative, if you like.
Or not.