I think your comment near the end hits the nail on the head. Trump’s contempt for liberal democracy, hatred for Ukraine (going back to Hunter Biden) and open admiration of autocrats means that there doesn’t need to be Russian coercion. As you say, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t - you might push on an open door to open it further.
However I think more broadly Trump’s behaviour, and the reaction of his supporters and the Republican Party more widely, mean that I am genuinely doubtful that the leaking of the sex video (if it exists) would have any significant impact. Consider January 6th. There is loads of live footage showing Trump inciting a crowd to violence, involving forcing their way into the Capital and deaths as a direct result. And yet has that detracted from Trump’s popularity with his base in any way? On the contrary - January 6th has been variously explained never to have happened, to have been completely benign, to be driven by Antifa, and all the rioters have been pardoned. Not to mention that Trump was re-elected President since then, with a much higher share of the vote than in the two previous elections.
So if there was a sex tape released I am confident that the right and far-right would swiftly flood the zone, deny it, explain it was fake, assert that it was forged by the liberal far-left Democrats etc etc. Meanwhile Trump sues all the institutions who show the footage and settles for millions of dollars - while all the while probably being quietly rather proud of his sexual exploits.
And that is why I don’t think the possible existence of this sex tape has any meaningful explanatory power as to Trump’s actions. He’s just a ****.
If, as is increasingly plain, Trump’s Russian connection goes back to the 1980s and Ivana, then a video made during the Obama era is really the least of his worries.
I think many of Trump’s supporters would be quite pleased if these allegations were incontrovertibly proved to be true. Any kompromat will have lost its value by now. One could speculate that, at the time, Trump was somehow pushed into the rabbit hole, but by now it no longer matters: one way or another his brain has been wired to Russian requirements. I agree with @TurboNick and would add my opinion that one of Trump’s principal motivations is not so much the hatred of liberal democracy as the juvenile crush he has on Putin. His younger chums, however, are a different matter. They have clever people behind them and I wouldn’t be surprised if they get rid of him as soon as they gauge he’s outlived his usefulness. Of course, that presupposes that the midterm elections that so many people are pinning their hopes on, will be manipulated in his favour, or don’t happen at all.
The simplest explanation for Trump’s behaviour is that he is Putin’s man. Anyone who thinks that’s not the right explanation needs to set out a convincing case for some alternative. I doubt whether anyone will manage it.
What I have a hard time understanding is how the US intelligence community and elected officials looked the other way and, not once but twice, allowed this Russian asset or suspected Russian asset to occupy the White House. And how has he never, ever, suffered accountability? It’s like this country, my country, has slowly committed suicide. Soon, we’ll be taking our last gasps.
Thanks Nick. Interesting. There's plenty of material in the public domain on this, which you would imagine might cause American journalists to think. Evidently not. For example, even the Trumps acknowledge the importance of Russian funding. As Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets… We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia”
But they seem oblivious to the troubling picture which is emerging in the midst of the Napoleonic blitz. Start with the so-called "crypto reserve" which is a state-backed Ponzi scheme, where the gains are privatised and risks socialised i.e. US taxpayers left underwriting it.
Meanwhile, they have gutted corporate transparency laws and dismantled anti-kleptocracy efforts. In short, America has now become the global capital of money laundering. Russian oligarchs now have a permanent safe haven, courtesy of the White House! The US replaces Switzerland as the world’s top money-laundering hub - but with zero oversight, because thanks to DOGE:
IRS gutted → Billionaires now functionally tax-exempt.
SEC side-lined → No financial oversight, no accountability.
DOJ’s anti-kleptocracy unit shut down → No more investigations into corruption.
Ordinarily you'd expect Congress, the courts or even the press to put the pieces together. But instead we have the sound of silence.
After years of the GOP working the refs, the US media is primarily concerned with not appearing biased against Republicans. As a consequence they provide hugely favourable coverage to Republicans and stories that would lead the front page of the NYT every day for years if they concerned a Democrat are barely pursued at all. And the result of all the media's fair minded endeavours? Every Republican voter remains of the belief that the media is the enemy of the people.
Indeed. It’s really only a handful of magazines doing their jobs these days. The NYT looks the other way (as it did during the Iraq War), and WaPo has become a conservative shill, albeit not wholly MAGA.
Seems nobody wants to be seen calling out a greedy lying bully who is idolised by a significant proportion of the people. Far easier for the press, the politicians, the police and even the spooks to call out the honest bloke
Nick - 2 more details to add to your account I don’t know if you picked up on.
First, one of the Russian team in Saudi is a guy who bought a house off Trump in Florida for 3x market value.
Second, after his re-election Patrushev in an interview stated ‘as a man of substance’ Trump would ‘understand’ he had had help from ‘certain forces’ and so needed to have regard to their ‘interests’.
FWIW I don’t think Trump believes himself an asset but I am sure the Russians very much do.
Completely agree. It would be far more surprising if proven that he isn’t an agent of influence. He is a traitor and will one day be treated as such. Bring it on!
Thank you Nick. This needs restating. What’s overlooked or is forgotten, is that the oppo research used by the Clinton campaign was not originally commissioned by them; it was by Republicans! And for some reason (I forget) they dropped out and Clinton took up the cause. It’s easy today to forget that back in the day, REPUBLICANS were united against Trump.
Luke Harding’s book, “COLLUSION” (Audible version available) was filled with evidence against Trump and others in his pro- Kremlin gang like Michael Flynn.
The Guardian repeated Kremlin lies verbatim about the Ukraine invasion. Why?
The fact that Robert Mueller's investigation failed to find convincing evidence of Russian collusion in Trump's 2016 election may be at least part of the reason that some people still disbelieve that Trump is a Russian asset and has been for a long time. (If I recall, the consensus opinion was that Trump's campaign organization was such a ramshackle operation that Putin figured it was safer to just use social media manipulation to help Trump along, no coordination required.)
If you are talking about Americans in particular, it may also be insightful to understand that Americans do not take what Trump says seriously. They figure he is just bullsh!tting as opposed to outright lying, for some sort of negotiating advantage -- at least until reality hits, as it is about to with Trump's trade war on Canada, Mexico and China as his top priorities.
The Mueller report found huge collusion and many people went to prison. But Donald Trump is wily and personally had plausible deniability for all of it.
A select few individuals associated with Trump's 2016 campaign including Roger Stone and Paul Manafort did get convicted and jailed, but those convictions may have been indirectly related to the campaign:
"The special counsel found that Russia did interfere with the election, but “did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple efforts from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”
As far as obstruction, the Mueller report laid out facts on both sides but did not reach a conclusion. Barr’s letter said that “the Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’”
Sophie: yes! Barr (Trump’s poodle) intervened before Mueller could publish his Report and spun it to exonerate (or at least diminish) Trump. The Report itself was clear: Trump obstructed justice but Mueller concluded that Justice Department rules or conventions were that they couldn’t charge a sitting president. Merrick Garland; Mueller; even Comey (though one could argue that he single-handedly sunk Hillary’s chances in 2016) all stood for the scrupulous Rule of Law. How quaint, in 2025.
I don't disagree that the decision that there was no collusion was a rotten one, but I gather that the standard of proof for collusion is an extremely high one.
If he behaves exactly as a Russian asset would, it surely renders as moot the question of whether he is or not.
I think your comment near the end hits the nail on the head. Trump’s contempt for liberal democracy, hatred for Ukraine (going back to Hunter Biden) and open admiration of autocrats means that there doesn’t need to be Russian coercion. As you say, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t - you might push on an open door to open it further.
However I think more broadly Trump’s behaviour, and the reaction of his supporters and the Republican Party more widely, mean that I am genuinely doubtful that the leaking of the sex video (if it exists) would have any significant impact. Consider January 6th. There is loads of live footage showing Trump inciting a crowd to violence, involving forcing their way into the Capital and deaths as a direct result. And yet has that detracted from Trump’s popularity with his base in any way? On the contrary - January 6th has been variously explained never to have happened, to have been completely benign, to be driven by Antifa, and all the rioters have been pardoned. Not to mention that Trump was re-elected President since then, with a much higher share of the vote than in the two previous elections.
So if there was a sex tape released I am confident that the right and far-right would swiftly flood the zone, deny it, explain it was fake, assert that it was forged by the liberal far-left Democrats etc etc. Meanwhile Trump sues all the institutions who show the footage and settles for millions of dollars - while all the while probably being quietly rather proud of his sexual exploits.
And that is why I don’t think the possible existence of this sex tape has any meaningful explanatory power as to Trump’s actions. He’s just a ****.
That is a very good and a very depressing point Nick
If, as is increasingly plain, Trump’s Russian connection goes back to the 1980s and Ivana, then a video made during the Obama era is really the least of his worries.
I think many of Trump’s supporters would be quite pleased if these allegations were incontrovertibly proved to be true. Any kompromat will have lost its value by now. One could speculate that, at the time, Trump was somehow pushed into the rabbit hole, but by now it no longer matters: one way or another his brain has been wired to Russian requirements. I agree with @TurboNick and would add my opinion that one of Trump’s principal motivations is not so much the hatred of liberal democracy as the juvenile crush he has on Putin. His younger chums, however, are a different matter. They have clever people behind them and I wouldn’t be surprised if they get rid of him as soon as they gauge he’s outlived his usefulness. Of course, that presupposes that the midterm elections that so many people are pinning their hopes on, will be manipulated in his favour, or don’t happen at all.
The simplest explanation for Trump’s behaviour is that he is Putin’s man. Anyone who thinks that’s not the right explanation needs to set out a convincing case for some alternative. I doubt whether anyone will manage it.
What I have a hard time understanding is how the US intelligence community and elected officials looked the other way and, not once but twice, allowed this Russian asset or suspected Russian asset to occupy the White House. And how has he never, ever, suffered accountability? It’s like this country, my country, has slowly committed suicide. Soon, we’ll be taking our last gasps.
If there were a real deep state, it would never have allowed Trump to take power!
That’s because the so-called Deep State is an invention - US intelligence has no power independent of elected officials.
So where have our elected officials been?
Ask them? I’m in France - we’d be filling the streets long before this point has been reached.
Well quite!
I have no trouble in believing it. Everything he's ever done points that direction.
But I also think he loves how the Russian oligarchs made their money in the 1990s, and is busy replicating it in the USA.
Thanks Nick. Interesting. There's plenty of material in the public domain on this, which you would imagine might cause American journalists to think. Evidently not. For example, even the Trumps acknowledge the importance of Russian funding. As Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets… We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/
But they seem oblivious to the troubling picture which is emerging in the midst of the Napoleonic blitz. Start with the so-called "crypto reserve" which is a state-backed Ponzi scheme, where the gains are privatised and risks socialised i.e. US taxpayers left underwriting it.
Meanwhile, they have gutted corporate transparency laws and dismantled anti-kleptocracy efforts. In short, America has now become the global capital of money laundering. Russian oligarchs now have a permanent safe haven, courtesy of the White House! The US replaces Switzerland as the world’s top money-laundering hub - but with zero oversight, because thanks to DOGE:
IRS gutted → Billionaires now functionally tax-exempt.
SEC side-lined → No financial oversight, no accountability.
DOJ’s anti-kleptocracy unit shut down → No more investigations into corruption.
Ordinarily you'd expect Congress, the courts or even the press to put the pieces together. But instead we have the sound of silence.
The crypto story is amazing. It's so corrupt
https://www.ft.com/content/cb1def8f-53a6-478e-9b3e-33c383b29629
The malign influence of DOGE doesn't stop there I'm afraid:
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-843612
After years of the GOP working the refs, the US media is primarily concerned with not appearing biased against Republicans. As a consequence they provide hugely favourable coverage to Republicans and stories that would lead the front page of the NYT every day for years if they concerned a Democrat are barely pursued at all. And the result of all the media's fair minded endeavours? Every Republican voter remains of the belief that the media is the enemy of the people.
Indeed. It’s really only a handful of magazines doing their jobs these days. The NYT looks the other way (as it did during the Iraq War), and WaPo has become a conservative shill, albeit not wholly MAGA.
All your points are well made.
Seems nobody wants to be seen calling out a greedy lying bully who is idolised by a significant proportion of the people. Far easier for the press, the politicians, the police and even the spooks to call out the honest bloke
Cheers Andrew
…the honest bloke trying his best to warn everyone that this will end badly if the lying bully isn’t stoped.
Nick - 2 more details to add to your account I don’t know if you picked up on.
First, one of the Russian team in Saudi is a guy who bought a house off Trump in Florida for 3x market value.
Second, after his re-election Patrushev in an interview stated ‘as a man of substance’ Trump would ‘understand’ he had had help from ‘certain forces’ and so needed to have regard to their ‘interests’.
FWIW I don’t think Trump believes himself an asset but I am sure the Russians very much do.
Completely agree. It would be far more surprising if proven that he isn’t an agent of influence. He is a traitor and will one day be treated as such. Bring it on!
Brilliant article Nick. It deserves wider circulation and discussion. PS no relation of yours!
That's OK Deborah!! And thank you
Thank you Nick. This needs restating. What’s overlooked or is forgotten, is that the oppo research used by the Clinton campaign was not originally commissioned by them; it was by Republicans! And for some reason (I forget) they dropped out and Clinton took up the cause. It’s easy today to forget that back in the day, REPUBLICANS were united against Trump.
Cheers Will
i read last night that trump has told the uk not to provide us intelligence to ukraine, how low can they get
I hope the UK told them to fuck off.
There was I believe a report of Russian govt discussions a few years back where the existence of kompromat on Trump was explicitly mentioned ….
Luke Harding’s book, “COLLUSION” (Audible version available) was filled with evidence against Trump and others in his pro- Kremlin gang like Michael Flynn.
The Guardian repeated Kremlin lies verbatim about the Ukraine invasion. Why?
The fact that Robert Mueller's investigation failed to find convincing evidence of Russian collusion in Trump's 2016 election may be at least part of the reason that some people still disbelieve that Trump is a Russian asset and has been for a long time. (If I recall, the consensus opinion was that Trump's campaign organization was such a ramshackle operation that Putin figured it was safer to just use social media manipulation to help Trump along, no coordination required.)
If you are talking about Americans in particular, it may also be insightful to understand that Americans do not take what Trump says seriously. They figure he is just bullsh!tting as opposed to outright lying, for some sort of negotiating advantage -- at least until reality hits, as it is about to with Trump's trade war on Canada, Mexico and China as his top priorities.
The Mueller report found huge collusion and many people went to prison. But Donald Trump is wily and personally had plausible deniability for all of it.
A select few individuals associated with Trump's 2016 campaign including Roger Stone and Paul Manafort did get convicted and jailed, but those convictions may have been indirectly related to the campaign:
"The special counsel found that Russia did interfere with the election, but “did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple efforts from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”
As far as obstruction, the Mueller report laid out facts on both sides but did not reach a conclusion. Barr’s letter said that “the Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’”
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2019/03/mueller-concludes-investigation/
AG Barr lied.
As for those select few - they were key players and very close to Trump, as well as running the campaign.
It was rotten :https://www.acslaw.org/projects/the-presidential-investigation-education-project/other-resources/key-findings-of-the-mueller-report/
Sophie: yes! Barr (Trump’s poodle) intervened before Mueller could publish his Report and spun it to exonerate (or at least diminish) Trump. The Report itself was clear: Trump obstructed justice but Mueller concluded that Justice Department rules or conventions were that they couldn’t charge a sitting president. Merrick Garland; Mueller; even Comey (though one could argue that he single-handedly sunk Hillary’s chances in 2016) all stood for the scrupulous Rule of Law. How quaint, in 2025.
I don't disagree that the decision that there was no collusion was a rotten one, but I gather that the standard of proof for collusion is an extremely high one.