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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhen did Trump and Putin talk about hookers?
By the top of the second page of the first memo former FBI director James B. Comey wrote to memorialize his conversations with President Trump, prostitutes are mentioned. Sex workers are a running theme in the seven memos released on Thursday evening, a function of their prominent role in the dossier of unproven allegations involving the presidents 2016 campaign and the presidents apparent insistence on raising the subject on most of the occasions in which he and Comey spoke.
One particular discussion of the subject, though, is important for nontitillating reasons.
In a memo dated Feb. 8, 2017, written after an informal Oval Office meeting between Trump and himself, Comey writes:
The President said the hookers thing is nonsense but that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin had told him we have some of the most beautiful hookers in the world. He did not say when Putin had told him this and I dont recall [REDACTED].
As is often the case with redactions, the missing section in this quote raises a lot of possibilities. But the point on which we should focus is the point onto which Comey also latched: When, exactly, did Trump and Putin have this conversation about sex workers?
This is important, because Trumps admitted communications with Putin were limited. While Trump at one point claimed to have had a number of interactions with the Russian president, when it became apparent during the campaign that clear links to Putin might cast doubt on his loyalties, Trump quickly and believably backed away from any claimed relationship. If Trump and Putin had held more conversations than are known, it adds significant credibility to the idea that the Russian government and the Trump campaign might have had high-level, coordinated contacts.
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One guest on Lawrence last night surmised that Trump heard a comment from Putin on TV and imagined it as part of a phone call.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,829 posts)he thinks what could have happened was that Trump had heard Putin's remarks on TV about beautiful hookers, and either deliberately lied to Comey when he said Putin had made the statement to him personally during a phone call, or that he conflated the TV remarks into a personal statement and really believes it was said to him personally - which is a particularly disturbing possibility. That is, he thinks things he saw on TV actually happened to him.
exboyfil
(17,865 posts)another President that had that problem.
Seems like a really good press question.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,829 posts)who publicly claimed that when he was in the Army film corps he personally shot footage of Nazi concentration camps as they were liberated. But he actually spent the war in California, where all he did was process footage from the liberation of the camps.
exboyfil
(17,865 posts)Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)I mean, repube self-proclaimed "christians" put Dirty Donny* out front as the FACE of their faith and their party, and the role model for republican family values. Their children are no doubt paying close attention. Totally low and creepy.
* aka republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief