And Mueller's not even Don's real problem: Putin is.

[pbmus]

Link to tweet

[dalton99a]

1. "In a revealing flourish, Mueller personally signed Cohen's cooperation agreement"

Worse, Cohen is the first direct public connection made by Mueller and the Special Counsel between President Trump and his concealed business ties to Russia. In a revealing flourish, Mueller personally signed Cohen’s cooperation agreement with the Special Counsel’s office.

It seems the president knows that Mueller is coming for him and his family, and at this point there’s nothing he can do except buy a bit of time with his customary histrionics before the Special Counsel’s boom falls. Twitter rage may still motivate the dwindling ranks of MAGA true believers, but it does nothing to deter Team Mueller.

Right now, President Trump’s biggest worry isn’t Bob Mueller but Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin’s displeasure with its erstwhile friend, rising for months, has risen to hazardous levels for the White House. The breaking point is Ukraine. Last weekend, Putin’s Federal Security Service engineered an armed confrontation in the Black Sea, grabbing two Ukrainian navy patrol boats and their crews as booty.

As always, the threat of what Vladimir Putin knows about Donald Trump is unspoken but indelible. Kompromat is the coin of the realm in Putin’s Russia, and his Kremlin wants everybody—above all President Trump—to know it.

The ridiculous hidden truth about Donald Trump’s run for the White House is that it was a publicity stunt, an effort by the reality TV showman to up his brand and cash in. Trump’s desire to make “his” Moscow tower happen during the campaign demonstrates what our 45th president’s real priorities were. Neither Trump nor any of his key advisers in 2016 actually planned to win the race. Yet, somehow, they did.

Worse, they involved Russians, many of them linked to the Kremlin, in their bizarre get-rich-quick scheme that masqueraded as a presidential campaign. That was their fatal error, since Muscovite footprints guaranteed a degree of scrutiny that Team Trump and its perennially shady deals had evaded for decades. Now it’s up to Team Mueller to unravel it all, as they are doing, one prosecution at a time, getting ever closer to people with the last name Trump.

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. Not sure I agree with the Observer's conclusion that Trump's winning was accidental.

I think the Russians absolutely demanded that Trump run. He was leveraged bigtime with the money loaned/laundered from Russian Oligarchs. The Russians bet that Trump would get the sanctions removed and free the Russians to pursue their mob agenda worldwide.

Turns out that Trump was already politically wounded when he took office in 2016 and hasn't been able to the sanctions lifted. He hasn't been able to deliver anything meaningful to Putin. And everyday Trump is losing political strength as Mueller's investigation grows more powerful.

So I am thinking that Putin is like the cat who is tiring of playing with his captive mouse. He's concluded that Trump is of little value now, so he really is starting to exert the Russian agenda on the world stage. Why else would he move belligerently against Ukraine, just before the G-20? He didn't do Trump any favors there.

Who knows?, Putin may decide to really screw with the American people by dumping incriminating evidence of Trump/Republican malfeasance. Starting a new Civil War in the US certainly would be good for Putin's plan of world dominance.