Russian president Vladimir Putin has been fairly quiet recently. While the Western media tears itself to shreds over Buzzfeed‘s leak of a highly salacious and deeply unverified private intelligence – which alleged that Donald Trump is in the thrall of Russian state agencies thanks to the fact they have video of him paying sex workers for golden showers in a Moscow hotel – Putin was content to sort of let it all go down.
Speaking to reporters in the Kremlin on Tuesday, Putin rejected the more salacious details in the dossier, and said it was an example of a kind of moral rot setting in among Western elites.
People who order such fakes against the U.S. president-elect, fabricate them and use them in political struggle are worse than prostitutes. They have no moral restrictions whatsoever, and it highlights a significant degree of degradation of political elites in the West, including in the United States.
He denied that Russian intelligence would have pursued Trump at the time he visited Moscow, as he argued they can’t “chase after every American billionaire.”
Then, weirdly, he specifically addressed the allegation in the dossier that Trump had paid Russian sex workers, who he called “the best in the world.”
[Mr. 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. 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.
Tensions between the American establishment and Russia have been running high of late, with the Democrats (and some Republicans) tearing themselves to bits over whether Russian state interference helped thrust Trump into the top gig.
A storm is brewing within the Democratic opposition, with the establishment that fell behind Hillary Clinton‘s campaign largely focused on exposing supposed Russian involvement, and the populist wing as represented by Bernie Sanders more concerned with addressing material problems.
Whether or not Russian helped Trump win, they’re definitely reasonably pleased he did. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that they’re ready to talk to Trump’s administration on international security issues like nuclear weapons and the Syria crisis, saying that the two countries could together solve many of the world’s problems.
It’s going to be a wiiiiild decade.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo: Getty Images.
