Something doesn’t add up with this latest Trump Tower meeting revelation
Last night, in the midst of a whacked out and seemingly chemically fueled rant at a political rally, Donald Trump accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of having framed him in the Trump-Russia scandal. It was a completely unhinged accusation from a desperate man who has run out of excuses and is simply throwing random things at the wall, right? But what if, for once in his miserable existence, Trump is accidentally onto something?
When Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya decided to tell NBC News on Friday that she’s actually a Russian government informant (read: spy), everyone on our research team had the same question: why did she do it? The closest we could come to an answer was the possibility that she’s caved to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, because she has clients in the United States, and she fears losing business if she gets banned from the country. But even that wouldn’t explain why she would be willing to go against Putin, who murders people like her when they’re disloyal, or why she chose to make the announcement on television.
That leaves an entirely different scenario: Putin told Veselnitskaya to go on American television and confess to being a Russian spy. Of course the only reason for Putin to do this would be if he were looking to hurt Donald Trump. A lot of people are under the impression that Putin’s plan with Trump has always simply been general chaos in America. That’s a nice bonus for him, but Putin’s primary goal – by far – has always been to get U.S. sanctions against Russia eased. Those sanctions have personally cost Putin billions of dollars out of his own pocket, and they’ve made his oligarchs far less than happy with him.
Simply put, Putin cares about sanctions, sanctions, and sanctions. Trump has largely managed to prevent Congress from implemting additional sanctions against Russia. But Trump has utterly failed in his task of reducing Obama-era sanctions against Russia. Trump has periodically failed, but he keeps failing. Trump failed badly on sanctions last summer, and right after that, Donald Trump Jr’s meeting with the Russians conveniently leaked to the media. At the time, Palmer Report asked the question of whether Putin might have leaked it, in order to hurt Trump Jr, as a way of trying to motivate Trump Sr to find a way to reduce sanctions.
Now that Donald Trump has recently blown it on Russian sanctions yet again, suddenly the Russian lawyer who conspired with Donald Trump Jr is on NBC News loudly admitting that she’s really a Russian spy. Did Vladimir Putin tell her to do this as a way of punishing Trump Sr by further harming Trump Jr? Or has Putin just given up on Trump entirely, and decided to begin finishing him off?
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report