Putin Has a Grip on Trump<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters has been a politically-conservative commentator and military analyst on television's Fox News and Friends program for\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kermitzarleyblog\/2018\/06\/putin-has-a-grip-on-trump\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Putin Has a Grip on Trump\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters has been a politically-conservative commentator and military analyst on television's Fox News and Friends program for\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kermitzarleyblog\/2018\/06\/putin-has-a-grip-on-trump\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kermit Zarley Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kermit.zarley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-06-10T01:50:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kermitzarleyblog\/files\/2018\/06\/TimeMagazineTrumpAsKing.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kermit Zarley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kermit Zarley\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kermitzarleyblog\/2018\/06\/putin-has-a-grip-on-trump\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kermitzarleyblog\/2018\/06\/putin-has-a-grip-on-trump\/\",\"name\":\"Putin Has a Grip on Trump\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kermitzarleyblog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2018-06-10T01:50:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-06-10T01:50:31+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kermitzarleyblog\/#\/schema\/person\/8393f2e63455a2915f7ca277bf5a5d02\"},\"description\":\"Retired Army Lt. 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{"id":5720,"date":"2018-06-09T18:50:31","date_gmt":"2018-06-10T01:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/kermitzarleyblog\/?p=5720"},"modified":"2018-06-09T18:50:31","modified_gmt":"2018-06-10T01:50:31","slug":"putin-has-a-grip-on-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kermitzarleyblog\/2018\/06\/putin-has-a-grip-on-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin Has a Grip on Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a>Retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters has been a politically-conservative commentator and military analyst on television\u2019s Fox News and Friends program for years. But early this year, he began speaking out critically of President Donald Trump. Then Peters resigned from Fox News. He has since called it \u201ca propaganda machine\u201d for President Trump. Wednesday, on CNN\u2019s Andersen Cooper 360 newscast, Mr. Peters said of Russia\u2019s president, \u201cI am convinced that Vladimir Putin has a grip on President Trump.\u201d It sure looks like it.<\/p>\n

Peters thinks there is much validity to the Steele dossier. That is the document that appeared during the presidential campaign that former British spy Christopher Steele had drafted on the basis of his investigative research on Donald Trump that stretched back to 2013, when Trump owned the Miss Universe Pageant held that year in Moscow. The dossier tentatively claims Trump did a salacious act involving prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room to disparage then U.S. President Barak Obama and his wife Michele who had stayed in that room. And the Dossier says Russian intelligence sources secretly took video of the prostitutes standing on the bed and urinating on it, called \u201cGolden Showers\u201d they say.<\/p>\n

Peters also said on CNN, \u201cWhen I first learned of the Steele dossier, it just rang true to me. Because that\u2019s how the Russians do things. And before he became a candidate for president, Donald Trump was the perfect target for Russian intelligence. Here is someone who has no self-control, a sense of sexual entitlement, and intermittent financial crises. That\u2019s made to order for seduction by Russian intelligence. I may be wrong. I hope I am wrong. I hope Putin doesn\u2019t have a grip on him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI\u2019s Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2013a former director of the FBI for over ten years\u2013is conducting an investigation under the auspices of the Department of Justice to determine if there was any so-called \u201ccollusion\u201d between Russian government operatives and the Trump presidential campaign in 2016. U.S. intelligence agencies have all said there was and that Russians tried to get Trump elected.<\/p>\n

Putin hated Hilary Clinton. When she was U.S. Secretary of State, she repeatedly had spoken critically of him. But ever since Donald Trump has been president, he constantly has asserted that there was no such collusion and that the Special Counsel\u2019s investigation is \u201ca Witch Hunt\u201d and a \u201choax.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donald Trump is a big liar, and that it is either a lie or BS. Just think about it: how could Donald Trump know everything that everyone in his presidential campaign had done or had not done during that campaign. There is no way! People in his campaign could have been colluding with Russians without him knowing it. Plus, he could have told them to and not known it. And even if he afterwards asked all of them if they had colluded with Russians, are they all going to tell the truth if they did? If Trump does a lot of lying, you can expect that the people working for him may also.<\/p>\n

Ever since FBI Director James Comey started an investigation into possible Russian meddling in our presidential election in the early summer of 2016 (later taken over by Mueller), Trump has spoken positively about Putin. Yesterday, at the G-7 economic conference held near Ottawa, Canada, Trump surprised everyone, including his staff, by saying the group should allow Putin, and thus Russia, back into its membership. It was ousted as punishment after Russia invaded Crimea, a part of Ukraine, and annexed it to Russia. So, I guess that means Trump approved of that Putin move.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said before<\/a>, Donald Trump does not believe in democracy. He believes in himself since he is a classic narcissist. The front cover on this week\u2019s Time<\/em> magazine tells it all. It\u2019s a photo of Trump looking at his reflection in a mirror, in which he has a gold crown on his head and he is wearing a cape. The caption says, \u201cKING ME.\u201d I would say it\u2019s worse than that with Trump. He\u2019d rather be a dictator.<\/p>\n

What is Trump hiding? If he is innocent of wrongdoing, he\u2019d welcome Mueller\u2019s investigation. His antagonism toward it is self-revealing\u2013Trump has something to hide from the American public that would be so devastating for him that he is willing to risk firing Comey and constantly criticize Mueller\u2019s investigation. All of that looks like obstruction of justice, which, if true, should get him impeached. He\u2019s got a lot to hide to risk that. As I said long ago, Trump\u2019s strategy is to turn enough of the American public against Mueller\u2019s investigation so that Congress will not impeach Trump.<\/p>\n

Plus, Trump is scared to death of Putin. Why? It looks like Peters is right, that Putin has something big on Trump. If so, it\u2019s probably worse than what Steele Dossier says. Ralph Peters also said Wednesday, \u201cWhen you look at Trump\u2019s behavior patterns . . . How can you not draw the conclusion that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is frightened of Vladimir Putin and his grip?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"