My guess about why Trump and other republicans are carrying Putin's water
...I'd guess the select few who visited Moscow, including the seven Republican senators and one House member who took a surprise trip there on July 4, 2018, as well as the leading republican candidate for president meeting privately with Putin five times in office, were all summoned by Putin to review their individual kompromat files complete with videos and audio and other incriminating evidence against them.
Putin likely gathered them together in a room where he was recording them and displayed each member's compromising material in turn, then gave each a packet with everything in it, including their marching orders, then told them to gtfo.
We saw visible evidence of that blackmailing when Trump had that private session in Helsinki with Putin after the summit on July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, just weeks after the republican senators visited Moscow, and he came out looking like he'd been bludgeoned.
Trump and Putin Have Met Five Times. What Was Said Is a Mystery.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/us/politics/trump-putin-meetings.html
TPM:
The two world leaders have interacted face-to-face in five different locations since Trump took office in January 2017. Sometimes they’ve sat down for extensive private conversations; other times they’ve just exchanged words in full view of press cameras. More than one of those meetings have coincided with fraught moments in the federal investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Per the Post, no substantial record of any of them exists.
Foreign policy experts say that these off-the-record encounters leave the rest of the U.S. national security apparatus in the dark about how to navigate the country’s relationship with Russia, allow Russia to control public perceptions of the talks, and leave Trump more vulnerable to manipulation from Putin.
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