14h ago

Trump = Krasnov? Magic Disappearing DB Story About Spy Chief Allegations Trump Recruited as a Russian Asset in 1987.

www.dailykos.com Magic Disappearing DB Story About Spy Chief Allegations Trump Recruited as a Russian Asset in 1987.

So earlier today, the Daily Beast’s Isabel van Brugen published a bombshell story about allegations by Kazakh Spy Chief Alnur Mussayev that the KGB had recruited Donald Trump as a Soviet Asset way back in 1987 under the code name “Krasnov.” I expected...

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"Krasnov" means "reddish." Like someone with orange hair and skin.
- Or a communist, if anyone wants to spread the rumor!

Pieces of news like this tend to raise the popularity of Trump whenever they come up. It doesn't make any sense, but that's what happens.

Something I do not see discussed enough in this context is the fact that whether or not Trump or any other potential asset is an actual knowing asset or not has no bearing on whether they act in the interests of the Russian government. If he does something in the interests of the Russian government it doesn't really make that much of a difference if he is doing it knowingly or not. The effect of his actions is the same, the only difference is how likely you think he is to do another thing in the interests of the Russian government.
If he weakens the western alliances, withdraws from NATO, creates economic chaos, and makes everyone poorer then the Russian government benefits. Regardless of the cause of his behaviours they are still damaging, he is still destroying the US government, he is still hurting all sorts of people, and he is still destroying the global economy.
Asset or useful idiot, he is still setting the world on fire.

At this point I really don't know whether to believe that Trump is literally a Russian asset. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, we need to wait for actual evidence to know for sure.
But I'm finding it more interesting right now watching how people are reacting to the possibility that Trump is a Russian asset. I'm thinking a lot of people would rather believe that it was true, because that way it would mean America didn't do this to themselves. Much nicer to believe that some Machiavellian spy plot had been pulled and America had been hoodwinked than to believe that America had simply elected this ridiculous parody of a human being because they wanted to.
- Literally? Doubt it. Effectively - absolutely agree.
- Lemmygrad.ml is filled with only positive articles about president Trump. Think about that.
- America did do that to themselves, either elected a evil, greedy and a complete moron, or a russian asset... or both...
  In any case they did that, the ones that voted for him and the others that did not vote at all "since both parties are the same"
  
  A large majority of his voter base has had Fox News propoganda shoved down their throats for the last 30 years. The division in this country was intentionally sowed by bad actors.
  Trump, Putin, and Elon just used that division to manipulate his base, and twist the narrative into something they would accept. America was lied to
- I don't have any evidence to suggest one way or the other that Trump is or is not a Russian asset. But I think the news-worthiness of this post is not necessarily the supposed turning of Trump, but with the story was scrubbed.
  A notable news outlet merely reported something said by a well-known ex-intelligence operative. That is legitimate news. And if they got what the ex-intelligence operative said wrong typically, a news outlet would update the story and issue a retraction. Instead they just deleted it, and so did everyone else, and I think the reasons for that is a valuable thing to think about.

If it quacks like a duck...
- if it leaks shit out of both ends, it must be full of it.
  
  Well from what I've read about trump, the shit is literally leaking from everywhere, orifices be damned.
  He's got the Depends™️ people trying to figure out how his constantly erupting deluge of putrid effluent is able to escape the Kevlar prison they've custom built.
- Where there's smoke, there's fire.

Anyone have an archive link? Gonna go digging for it. Hopefully it's fake or inaccurate, I'd prefer the people up top to just be incompetent
https://archive.md/ohI5R
Edit: seems fake to me. The source is just a Facebook post. I'm gonna be skeptical until we can get more information
- I mean, didn't the Mueller report heavily imply he received help from Russia?
  
  Yeah, but here are my thoughts.
  There is so much that is actually happening right now and stuff that is still unconfirmed shouldn't distract us. This should be pursued for sure, but until it becomes actionable, we as people not in the press, should focus on stopping what we can.
- Here's one from the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20250221153932/https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-intelligence-officer-alnur-mussayev-claims-kgb-recruited-donald-trump-under-codename-krasnov/
- https://archive.ph/QaJKC
  also..
  https://bylinetimes.com/2025/02/21/donald-trump-was-recruited-by-the-kgb-under-codename-krasnov-claims-former-soviet-spy-chief/
  https://www.kyivpost.com/post/47630
  and this one from 2021:
  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book
  
  Oh I didn't look at the date, so this is ancient.
  Edit: nope I misunderstood. The Facebook post is still recent

I dunno, someone might've paid him to try to get some info, but "recruited as a spy"? He'd be the worst spy in the entire world.
"Hello fellow fatcat businessman, I am a simple fatcat businessman just like you. Would you like to tell me any secrets you have that my friend Mr. Gorba-- I mean Mr. Smith would be interested in?"
- Spies often don't know they are spies...
  Like someone selling manuals for a piece of defense tech may not know why the buyer wants it... but yet....
- The main thing they look for in an asset, apart from access and connections, is leverage. You want someone who can be easily manipulated - for example through flattery, someone indebted who can be made desperate, someone venal who can be bribed, someone unscrupulous who can be made to compromise themselves, someone with sexual or other secrets they need to keep secret. Trump would absolutely be the ideal candidate.
- The reason that Russia would tap businessmen as assets is to have them buy things and then import them into neutral countries through shell corporations to bypass trade regulations and tariffs and international law. The other major thing would be real estate deals also often facilitated through shell corporations.
- He’d be a great asset.
  Launder him some Russian money, convince him to go into dodgy deals with others, get blackmail on them, repeat.
  
  And now imagine if you've got some dimwitted pudge-ball rich kid with daddy issues, who admires tough guys and wants to act like he's a mobster. The asset is handed to you on a plate in that case. No need for blackmail, flattery and a bit of dirty money is all it'd take.
- No idea if this story is true or not. Weird it got published, and weirder that it got scrubbed.
  As far as intelligence assets go, from what I've read you want as many as you can get, just in case they become useful eventually.
- Now imagine your asset becomes the president of the United States. All of a sudden, he is the most useful and important intelligence asset in the history of intelligence assets.

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