And now a word from our sponsor. Really Donald, I mean, really?!? “Shadey” James Comey That tweet had to come from Trump directly, since his aides and staff all had to be able to spell their names correctly on their applications. Come on man, even a rapper like eminem knows how to spell “Shady” correctly! People get on my ass for typos, but at least I can;t pull the nuclear launch codes out of my pocket!
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Trump and Putin and Hookers, oh my! Thanks to Republican “leakers” in the House, we now know from the Comey memos that Trump told Comey that in his first call, Putin told Trump that Russia “had the most beautiful hookers”. Now, everybody is fixating on whether or not the President of Russia bragged to the President of the United States about the physical allure of his ladies of easy virtue, or whether Trump is just spouting shit again.The funny thing is, in terms of Trump’s image, it really doesn’t matter.
If you cast your mind back a bit, you’ll realize that this isn’t the first time you’ve heard the words “Russia has the most beautiful prostitutes in the world,” and you didn’t hear it from Trump, or Comey quoting Trump. My mind placed it the minute I heard the words last night. Back when the dossier broke, with the salacious allegations, Putin spoke to the allegations directly, and they showed his response on MSNBC at that time. While Putin denied the allegations in the dossier, and while he blathered on about his efforts to eradicate prostitution in Russia, he couldn’t resist bragging that “Russia has the most beautiful prostitutes in the world.” Sound familiar?
I wasn’t the only one who caught that. Last night, on The Last Word, panelist David Frum noted that Putin had spoken those words previously in public, and opined that he felt it highly likely that when Comey raised the uncomfortable allegations in the dossier to Trump, Trump instinctively remembered hearing Putin talk about beautiful hookers, and told Comey that Putin had bragged about his hookers in his first phone call, so he could say how virtuous he was in resisting any such idea. Trump took a factual statement, and wove it into a lie to make himself look good. You gotta admit, it has the ring of truth.
What’s the alternative? Trump’s statement to Comey was that in his first phone call with Putin, Trump says that Putin bragged about the incredible beauty of his countries ladies of the evening. There was some difference of opinion last night as to whether that phone call was a “Welcome to Moscow!” phone call from Putin in 2013 when Trump visited for the Miss Universe pageant, or whether it was on Putin’s first congratulatory phone call after Trump’s election. But in fact the timing is immaterial. What is important would be that Putin actually threw out the teaser about the beauty of Russia’s hookers. Why?
Either way you look at this, Trump comes out of it looking like a lecher. If Frum and I are right, when Comey told Trump about the allegation in the dossier, rather that a straight up outraged denial, why did Trump reflexively find it necessary to confirm that Putin had tempted him with paid companionship, before vowing to Comey that he had resisted, stout fellow that he is. And if in fact Trump is telling the truth, and Putin did offer to ply Trump with the wiles of prostitutes, regardless of the time frame of the phone call, What did Putin already know that would make him think that Trump would be susceptible to such an offer? Somehow or other, I cannot imagine us ever finding out that in a phone call, President Pena Nieto of Mexico ever told President Obama, “If you get bored while you’re here, our senoritas are gorgeous, and very accommodating.” Why would Putin bring up hookers to Trump at all, in any phone call?
Comey says that Trump’s obsession with the hooker angle was Trump’s fear that there could be even a 1% chance that Melania would believe he had watched hookers pee on each other, or a bed, or a rack of lamb or whatever. Personally, I think Trump was fixating on the wrong thing. If I was Melania (perish the thought!), I would be much more worried about why the word “hookers” kept coming up in the same sentence as the name “Trump.” Ir Putin never said it, why did her husband find it necessary to associate himself with hookers before protesting his innocence? And if Putin did make the statement, what did he know that made him think that Trump might nibble the bait? Nevermind the deviance, what is it with Trump and hookers all the time?
So, I’d like to thank the so far anonymous GOP leaker(s) on the House Judiciary Committee. They hit a grand slam. Not only did they manage to highlight the consistency of James Comey’s statements on his interactions with Trump, going all the way back to a time when Comey had no idea that anybody other than himself and a handful of close aides would ever read the memo’s, but they managed to get the entire country talking almost nonstop about Trump, Russian hookers, and “pee tapes” again. Sounds like a winning strategy to me. But I just wonder whether Trump is going to want this particular leaker tracked down, immediately jailed, and hung by his heels. Nah, probably not.
