What Does Putin Have on Trump?
A rare moment of bipartisanship of today’s hyper-partisan Washington — and what it means for Russia,
President Trump and holding clean elections on November 3.
By Frank Vogl, April 30, 2020
Credit: Gage Skidmore www.flickr.com
Takeaways
- In a rare moment of bipartisanship, Republicans and Democrats on the US Senate Intelligence Committee approved a report on Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
- That the Republicans broke ranks on Russian interference in the 2016 elections will be particularly distressing to Trump and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell.
- Before Trump, a president calling the US national intelligence community “scum” would have been unimaginable.
- There have long been suspicions that funds supporting the Trump Organization have come from Russian oligarchs through Deutsche Bank.
- With the November 3 election approaching rapidly, Pelosi’s question “what does Putin have on Trump” is as urgent as ever.
Recently, Republicans and Democrats on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report totally supporting the findings by U.S. intelligence agencies that there was widespread Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Unfortunately, in stark contrast to past times when bipartisanship was a regular occurrence in the U.S. capital, arriving at such shared judgments has become a matter of great rarity in today’s hyper-partisan political environment.