The Guardian first reported “Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House” and as of this morning the story has been reported elsewhere. All of the articles feature photos of a smiling or frequently smirking Putin alongside Trump. It is the main top of the page story in The Guardian today.
“Leaked Kremlin documents reveal Putin holds blackmail leverage over Trump -- and that's why Russia backed him” (RawStory) summarized the story in The Guardian and tells us two big things we already knew. Note that the URL is simply “trump-kompromat.”
Also from RawStory:
This was also reported in Yahoo News and The Daily Beast. It was also reported on Forbes but I didn’t want to use up a free click to read it. They the used the picture Putin giving Trump the fish-eye.
The two things we already knew which now seem to be supported by documentation are that the Russians actively tried to get Trump elected and that they considered him mentally unstable. The Guardian reported:
There is a brief psychological assessment of Trump, who is described as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”.
It’s no surprise that Russian mental health experts came to the same conclusion as American mental health experts including Trump’s own clinical psychologist niece.
What we suspected is now being confirmed assuming this is all true. This is what was described in the Steele dossier, i.e. that the Russians had blackmail material, aka krompromat, they could use to control Trump and that Trump knew this.
Now the big questions are so what and who cares?
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Addendum: It isn’t difficult to find photos of a self-satisfied smirking Putin standing with Trump with an image search (here). For a former KGB officer one might think he could manage to hide his glee over being able to manipulate Trump so easily.
The Poll: So far this hasn’t been a major story. I’ve had MSNBC on. for two hours and it hasn’t been reported. It was merely a sidebar story on The Daily Beast (image).