It sorta looks like Putin is pushing back on opposition to the puppet he bought fair and square, but more likely, he’s just fucking with us. 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.
You guys — I think he just called Jeb Bush a sad, low-energy hooker! Moreover, the dead-eyed revanchist implied that Trump hardly needed to patronize Moscow sex workers since he owned all kinds of choice tail at the time:
The U.S. tycoon-turned-politician was last in Moscow in 2013 for the staging of the Miss Universe contest that he owned. He hoped unsuccessfully to meet Putin, tweeting in June that year about the possibility the Russian leader would attend the beauty pageant.
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.”
My guess is the most low-rent, indiscriminate prostitute in all of Russia has more morals in her pinky toe than Putin, Trump, their entire families and wretched hangers-on put together and multiplied by infinity. But it’s easy to see from these statements why Trump formed a schoolgirl-on-Bieber-like crush on Putin. And it’s laughably plain that Putin knows how to play Trump like a fiddle.
Montysano
I consider myself to be somewhat of a connoisseur of weirdness, but I’m finding that even I have a threshold.
Thoroughly Pizzled
In human history, has there ever been a greater collection of cowardice and/or venality than the modern Republican party? Other than the modern national press corps.
tpherald
Reminder: the modern hot take on Putin by US “conservative thinkers” is that Putin is the new moral leader of the world’s whitey Christians:
Major Major Major Major
OT: were somebody to make a Twitter bot that tweets “a hearty fuck you to firstname lastname of city, state for donating $x to Donald Trump” every minute for four years based on FEC filings, what might one name the account?
Gin & Tonic
Vladimir Vladimirovich is a trained and experienced professional. Our president-elect is not.
tpherald
@tpherald: link here
dedc79
This reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Rushmore: “With friends like you, who needs friends.”
hellslittlestangel
Oh yeah, Russian hookers, famed for rinsing out and re-using condoms to save a kopeck or two, are the best in the world.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
the fuck salute
ETA or heckuvajobfuckface
Hill Dweller
The Twitter machine is telling me Republicans are going to gut the Endangered Species Act. They are truly evil.
oldster
The level of Putin’s overt contempt for Trump is a pretty good proxy for the magnitude of the leverage Putin has over him. If Putin had only a weak hold on him, he would have to manage him more carefully. Instead, Putin is treating Trump the way Trump treated Christie.
It’s not just the tapes. Putin has the tapes, sure. But he clearly has a lot more.
Yarrow
Trump doesn’t have any contacts in Russia. Doesn’t know anyone there.
Felonius Monk
Yes. It is also laughably plain that it’s a “tiny” violin.
Mike in NC
Putin doesn’t recognize moral boundaries, nor geographical ones.
Yarrow
And, hey, since blowing up NATO and becoming best friends with Russia isn’t enough, let’s have a look at China, shall we?
eric
@Yarrow: he met the top people, means that trump is a bottom.
Larkspur
@Hill Dweller: Uday and Qusay have hunting to do and photos to take, so yeah. Shooting fish in a barrel is so easy but sometimes I long for the fish to shoot back.
Emerald
And Laurence Tribe—LAURENCE TRIBE!!!—is calling for a special prosecutor.
https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/821275890764095489
JPL
@tpherald: this is the last line
Trump and Flynn will lead the way.
Cacti
@tpherald:
I wonder how many American evangelicals would be heart broken to find out that Orthodox Christianity doesn’t believe in “the rapcher”.
Corner Stone
At what point is Trump’s team going to have to say, “Ok, Pooty, thank you. That should be enough help for just about now.” ?
Emerald
And Laurence Tribe—LAURENCE TRIBE!!!—is calling for a special prosecutor.
Corner Stone
This is just fantastic comedic timing on Putin’s part. Taking shots at Obama on his way out *and* overtly praising/defending the incoming POTUS.
Have to hand it to him, the man is good.
Ryan
If it weren’t for the fact that Putin is calculating while Trump is oblivious and not self-aware in his bombast, I’d have hope that the Cold War would be reignited as both sides fought each other in public statements over which country had the classiest and most tremendous prostitutes.
http://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/17/14296414/putin-trump-russian-prostitutes-yes-really
Napoleon
What Putin is doing is obvious, he is buddying up to Trump to cripple him as President so that they US will now go the next 4 years with a crippled delegitimized President unable to lead. The thinking in the first place by many was that Putin never thought he would win but that he was attempting to make it so that when Hillary entered office she was essentially had her legitimacy crippled. Why does anyone thing that goal has changed with Trump winning? Basically he is giving Trump a big fatal bear hug, or throwing him an anvil. Maybe Putin thinks that Trump will make some bad deal with him up front, but no way he is so stupid not to see Trump for what he is.
Larkspur
@JPL: Jeebus, what a line. There are all sorts of ways to get more light into a cranium. Creepy.
Corner Stone
@Yarrow: Fucking insanity. My God.
Spanky
Alternate post title: ” You don’t know how lucky you are, boys”
And to imagine that we’ll look back on these days as the normal times.
JPL
@Yarrow: We should set up a system so that our b.j. friends on the west coast can let us know if they are okay, at the start of WW III.
catclub
I only noticed one article/squib that president-elect Obama served in a homeless shelter on MLK day, while president-elect Trump stayed in his tower and was served by others.
Ryan
@Yarrow: Jesus. Even Taiwan doesn’t want that.
Corner Stone
What I love are the “conservatives” on twitter lamenting what happened to the principles of the Republican party?
Trump’s election has been like the greatest, yoogest, most fantastic opening of the kimono in like, ever.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Cacti:
Or that Russians in Russia remember very well that in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, instead of coming with an attitude of respect toward people who maintained their traditional faith structure while contested by various levels of oppression, Evangelicals came with scant resources save for King James bibles and hymnals with hokey American schmaltz.
Major Major Major Major
@MomSense: I like the fuck salute, is that a reference to something?
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
Nope.
zhena gogolia
@Montysano:
Just tell yourself, “We’re turning into Russia,” and it all makes perfect sense.
Turner Hedenkoff
In Russia, hookers buy you!
Spanky
@Yarrow:
So Donald’s a bottom, then?
(ETA: Shakes fist at Eric.) “The replies are coming in too fast!!!”
JPL
@Ryan: Tillerson didn’t go that far, although he did think a naval blockage might be okay.
Mike in DC
@Yarrow:
This is a phenomenally stupid idea. Privately assuring Taiwan we will defend them, so long as they don’t act to provoke the mainland, is probably as far as we should go.
Betty Cracker
@Emerald: And using the “T” word! I don’t outsource my views to anyone, but I do value the moral leadership of Rep. John Lewis and the legal acumen of Mr. Tribe. I think we should listen to them. They’ve earned it.
schrodingers_cat
Why does Putin need a puppet when the Republicans are willing to hollow out the country and its institutions for private gain?
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: To get NATO out of the way?
schrodingers_cat
@JPL: They are spoiling for war. Its good for business.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Good point.
Yarrow
@Corner Stone: @JPL: @Ryan: Yep. It’s crazy. There was a follow up tweet by the same person that it sounds like Bolton (and Trump) maybe think that China is bluffing on war against the west. But yeah, folks on the west coast, especially California, this is not a good thing.
Major Major Major Major
@eric: @Spanky: not that there’s anything wrong with being a bottom.
cmorenc
@Yarrow:
The terrible dilemma in opposing Trump’s SoS nomination of Rex Tillerson is that if Tillerson gets shot down, Trump’s backup choice might be John Bolton, who is as big and arrogant an aggressive right-wing policy ideologue as there is. He is as reliably, dangerously wrong in foreign policy as Bill Kristol is on just about any issue. Bolton exemplifies the “effective policy = act like a bull-in-a-china-shop biggest asshole, and foreign countries will compliantly be forced to bend to your will to keep from getting all their stuff smashed”.
Mike in NC
Ringling Brothers Circus announces closing. Team Trump promises to take up slack.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@hellslittlestangel:
Reminds me of a possibly apocryphal quote from Fidel Castro. “There are no prostitutes in Cuba, however if there were any, they would be the most beautiful in the world.”
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@tpherald: The comments are a real cesspool.
Bobby D
@Mike in DC: I find even that, a promise to support/protect them, insane. It would be similar to China/Russia agreeing to protect Puerto Rico or Guam from the US.
Corner Stone
@Yarrow: Since Trump is physiologically incapable of admitting a mistake or error, I am Joe Biden Literally praying that someone in China is staying calm and saying something like, “Let’s ignore the little orange fucker for a while until he starts blustering about something else again. What celebrity do we know that we can get to insult him a few times?”
Corner Stone
…that answer Trump gave about his “heroes” though…damn…
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@JPL:
Yeah – that’s a War if he does it. My twitter feed indicates that Duterte is now reaching toward Beijing, and Cambodia is shutting down some annual exercises with the US. That leaves Vietnam and China to vie over those. I suppose that Deadbeat Donnie might actually get to Vietnam for once in his life, at least on the diplomatic side…
Mike in DC
@Bobby D:
Apples and oranges. We took Taiwan’s permanent seat in the Security Council and let the PRC have it. In exchange for accepting this loss of status, we made a deal with Taiwan. They’re a democracy in more than name only.
MattF
Putin is the Thug Supreme, and apparently that’s just fine. Trump’s entourage of losers, in-laws and ex-Goldman Sachs banksters can’t compete.
Major Major Major Major
@MomSense: Were one to register this account, any thoughts on one’s profile picture?
WJS
Someone needs to call noted gossip dirtbag A.J. Benza in front of Congress and ask him if Trump really did brag about banging Russian girls and saying that they have no morals. Clearly, Mr. Putin is going to have to defend the excellence of Russian pee hookers and issue a rejoinder should we learn something new. The American people demand answers. Is Russian tail really that good? Putin says they are–let’s trust, but verify.
Bobby D
@Yarrow: Tell me about it. I’m sitting on a military installation that will be one of the prime first-strike targets. On the upside, at least it will end in a flash of light and immediate death for me, poor suckers 20mi away get to run around with their skin melting off in a hellscape of fire and radiation.
Spanky
Has anyone mentioned it’s Betty White’s 95th birthday?
Happy Birthday, BW!
MattF
@Yarrow: Bolton wants a war with China. And Iran, and N Korea. Just because.
bystander
I love the “Trumpsky would never go with a prostitute and even if he did it would be with the classiest prostitute in the classiest city of Moscow but that never happened” defense. So convincing.
Nothing to see here. Move along. No loitering.
Calouste
@Yarrow: Not just the West Coast, China has submarine-launched nuclear missiles with a range of 5,000 miles, and land-based ICBM’s with a range of 9,000 miles.
SatanicPanic
Isn’t it weird how Putin’s quote sounds a lot like something Trump would say?
JPL
Has Donald thanked his friend yet?
mai naem mobile
I’m afraid my bunker will not be ready for Friday but I got some illegal Mexicans digging the hole before they get deported on Monday. I bought several containers of prepper food from Costco. I still have the 2 barrels of lube I bought to get ready for getting screwed by Lumpy Inc.I’ll use that as fuel if I get desperate. Bought a few barrels of water. Will have to reuse pee like Lumpy. Got matches and knives. Have I missed anything?
mai naem mobile
I think Putin is trying to say Lumpy can’t be using a prostitute because he himself is one and Putin is his only client
Bobby Thomson
Why this focus on the west coast? I’m confident the PRC is capable of vaporizing DC many times over.
SiubhanDuinne
@Spanky:
I did, a few threads down, hours ago — but it’s well worth saying again! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BETTY WHITE!!
It’s also Michelle Obama’s 53rd, and James Earl Jones’ 86th. Happy birthday to both of them!
randy khan
@Spanky:
And also Ben Franklin’s birthday. Have you ever seen them in the same place?
Immanentize
@Major Major Major Major: Just a middle finger.
Immanentize
@Bobby Thomson: Actually, they are not very big into ICBMs.
ETA — Last I looked (about a year ago), China had a total of about 50 ICBMs — mostly mobile units. Although about 2/3 could reach DC, they really are tactical capacity weapons, not MAD type systems.
JPL
When asked about Putin’s comment blaming the administration for the spread of fake news to delegitimize the president-elect, Ernest said well he got the talking points down. He then explained that was the line the republicans started using yesterday.
slappy kincaid
You’ve got to admit, that last line from Putin is actually pretty good.
hovercraft
@mai naem mobile:
Exactly, he ought him fair and square, and he owns him lock stock and barrel. The Shitgibbon may be too dumb to know it, but he’s Putin’s bitch. So they are both preening but for different reasons, Putin bought the US government at a discount, the Shitgibbon thinks he’s the most powerful man in the world, I wonder when someone will tell him what’s what. We live in anticipation.
Major Major Major Major
@Immanentize: I’m going with that Johnny Cash pic for now.
hovercraft
@hellslittlestangel:
That is just fucking disgusting, literally fucking disgusting.
Immanentize
@Major Major Major Major: Man, that is one of my favorite pics ever. Great choice. Also, it will drive certain wingnuts crazy because they always imagined they were Cash, and not the one Cash was speaking to.
zhena gogolia
@slappy kincaid:
I had to check the Russian, but yeah, he really did say that.
Immanentize
@hellslittlestangel: There is a funny family law case in which two couples were having sex with their partners in the same car (one in the front seat, other in the back seat). The guy in the back seat asked his friend if he had a condom and the friend said, ‘only the one I just used’ which he hands over. So brilliant guy in the back seat turns it inside out, has sex and the woman gets pregnant with the child of the guy in the front seat. Issue in the case is who must pay child support? biological father or sex partner. Court said biological father….
Calouste
@hovercraft: I think even someone as dumb as the shitgibbon will eventually catch on that he is not the one leading. At which point he no longer has any value to Putin except as a vector to cause further chaos, and the kompromat will come out.
Bobby D
@Immanentize: !!!!!! Seems like some odd “logic” going on there. Can you expand on the court’s reasoning?
LAO
@Immanentize: I love it!
Immanentize
@Bobby D: I’ll try to dig up the case cite. The idea was that the guy in the front acted recklessly as to pregnancy and therefore, being the biological father, is the responsible parent. There is a weird case in the US Supreme Court out of California which involved a threesome marriage, etc. which came to the same result — fatherhood can be determined biologically without a specific contractual intermediary (like a sperm bank where the mother waives all rights to pursue biological parental resources).
Major Major Major Major
@Immanentize: Glad you approve.
hovercraft
@Calouste: I realize that even if it’s kicking and screaming eventually he’ll wake up, but he’ll stay in denial as long as possible. just as he won by a landslide, the polls showing him to have record low approval ratings heading into the inauguration, are rigged, he is loved and the most popular PEOTUS evah!!!! It’s a defense mechanism, he can’t take being the least popular, just like he can’t take the fact that the unpopular evil bitch beat him with voters, and the only reason he “won” is because Putin helped him. Deep down he knows all this is true, but he can’t cope so he’s denying it and lashing out.
hovercraft
@Immanentize:
Wow, I kid of see both sides, the “donor” was irresponsible, handing over his seed, he should have know there was a risk of pregnancy even if the other guy didn’t invert the condom, spillage, or a hole in the condom, doesn’t it say on the package for single use? On the other hand the sex partner also took a risk, he should also be held accountable. If anything the ruling should have been for them to both be held accountable.
Immanentize
@Immanentize: Seems to be unreported, but here is a referrence:
Immanentize
@Immanentize: linky
JPL
@Immanentize: This is certainly on topic, since Betty’s title is he’s just f.king with us.
JGabriel
Bloomberg via Betty [email protected] Top:
(Scratched record sound)
Wait, back up a sec. People who order fakes?
Is it me, or does that sound like Vlad already knows there are tapes out there, tapes that got leaked somewhere, and he’s trying to preemptively label them fakes before they get international airplay?
Jerzy Russian
@Immanentize: Jesus, who needs fake news when real life provides boundless opportunities for entertainment.
Captain C
@cmorenc:
Until they get sick of it and call Animal Control.
Captain C
@hovercraft:
Given that he’ll probably fire whoever tries to tell him that, I suspect the Shitgibbon won’t figure it out until after he’s made a smoking crater of the office in the same manner of his bankrupt casinos and the USFL. Perhaps not even then.
Peale
@Yarrow: We do that and there will be war between North & South Korea almost immediately. Trump has already says he doesn’t think Korea pays its bills for its protection (which they do, of course). There is no way China will let the US have an excuse to put more troops close to its borders if it thinks we aren’t going to honor a commitment to South Korea in a War with the North.
Bnad
Except of course fo-or / Tu-urkmenista-a-an’s
Ksmiami
@cmorenc: Tillerson is a decent human being and can learn. in other words he’s about as good a nominee we’re gonna get
mr_gravity
@Thoroughly Pizzled: I would be much less inclined to fault the “modern national press corps”. It has only been thirty years since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and only slightly longer since “Broadcast News” stopped being a public service and became a ratings-driven source of entertainment. It’s hardly possible to report the news accurately and simultaneously support the corporate bottom line.
It was bad enough before Fox News decided to give their audience exactly what they wanted to hear.
mr_gravity
@oldster: Putin has video that shows just how tiny “Little Don” is.
“Dance monkey. Dance.”
sherparick
@Yarrow: We are so fucked.
In the 1960s and 70s, we developed a little ditty in response to the Civil Defense films that suggested “duck and cover” as the way to be safe in a nuclear attack. “Put your head between your knees and kiss your ass good-by:-)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdytOGnUFoI
sukabi
@Major Major Major Major: #PPP…. Putin’s Patsy Pu$$y
sukabi
Free me from moderation please….
Millard Filmore
@Larkspur:
Reminds me of a poem that ends like this:
” Crow realized there were two Gods-
One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.”
www(dot)thebeckoning(dot)com/poetry/hughes/hughes3.html
sherparick
@Ksmiami: He was the CEO of the largest non-Government oil and fossil fuel firm in the world and was for ten years continuing to promote the use of fossil fuel and minimize the growing global catastrophe of fossil fuel caused climate change. He argued for lax environmental regulations and entered into agreements with dictatorships, including Putin to for oil. He presided over the Mayflower Oil spill pipeline disaster Arkansas. 1 in five CEOs are sociopaths or psychopaths. I would not depend to much on his decency. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-psychopaths-australian-study-finds/
Ian
So says the man who uses nuclear byproducts to murder his detractors.
Ian
@Corner Stone:
In fairness those people are reachable. We call them sane. It’s the others we have to worry about.
Smitty
Has anyone been looking into Pence’s staff selections? These guys will probably be players when Trump fails.
Paul in KY
@Bobby D: I think we should privately advise Taiwan that maybe the time is now to enter into discussions on reunification.
Just my personal take on that conflict.
Paul in KY
@slappy kincaid: Agree. He is so much smarter than our soon-to-be idiot president & experienced on world stage that it really depresses me.
Corner Stone
@Ian: No they aren’t. They believed that elected R officials had closely held principles.
They will believe anything.
Mendo
I don’t know, does this fall into the “make them deny it” category? The fact that Trump and Putin find it necessary to deny the allegation keeps it out there, right?
It seems that Trump and his golden showers has the potential to become a taunting meme in the same way Gore inventing the internet did. SNL is already on it.