You knew he was going to say it sooner or later.
Former President Donald Trump wants Russian President Vladimir Putin to reveal any dirt he has on the Biden family’s dirty business dealings in Russia.
Trump said so in an exclusive interview with Just the News that will air on Tuesday, in which he called on Putin to release information about Hunter Biden’s business deals with oligarchs like Yelena Baturina, who gave millions of dollars several years ago to a company whose leadership included Biden.
“She gave him $3.5 million so now I would think Putin would know the answer to that. I think he should release it,” Trump said in the interview. “I think we should know that answer.”
“I think Putin now would be willing to probably give that answer,” he continued. “I’m sure he knows.”
Trump also seeks information about Biden’s work with Nikolai Zlochevsky, the owner of Ukrainian gas company Burisma.
In the same interview, Trump touted the fact that he was tougher on Putin than any recent president has been. He cited blocking the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and imposing tougher sanctions on Russia, among other actions.
“And by the way, that’s another, I’m the one who brought up Nord Stream 2,” Trump pointed out. “I’m the one that blocked it. I terminated it. They weren’t gonna have it. [Biden] then opened it.
“And then they say, ‘He’s so nice to Russia,'” he added. “I’m the one that put the biggest sanctions on Russia.”
He also talked about how he left NATO in better shape when he left the White House than it was in during the Obama years.
“I’m the best thing that ever happened to NATO, because I made them pay. So NATO has plenty of money now,” he said.
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As much as we’d all love to see Putin spill the tea on Hunter Biden, do we really believe he’s going to? I think we all know the answer to that question.
My PJ Media colleague Matt Margolis related in a conversation with me that he thinks Trump calling for Putin to sing like a canary is a bad look, and I agree. It looks bad on multiple fronts.
For starters, the Democrats have tried to paint Trump and Putin as big buddies doing work that benefitted each other for years now — something Trump even acknowledges in the interview. If Putin actually did Trump’s bidding on this front, wouldn’t that play into that narrative? We’d never hear the end of it from the media because that angle is the only way they would play up any negative news about the Biden family.
There’s also the easy good-guy-vs.-bad-guy narrative that any release of Russian intel on Hunter Biden would conjure up for the mainstream media. Putin is the world’s enemy number one, and if he released any info that was damaging to the Bidens, the media would immediately portray it as bullying tactics. They would also easily paint the entire Biden family as victims, and that sympathetic coverage could serve to give Biden a bump in public opinion. Though that bump probably wouldn’t be enough to overcome the president’s negatives, it’s a chance we don’t need to take.
The mainstream media is also likely to ignore or downplay any coverage of Russian data designed to hurt the Bidens as old news or irrelevant, or they might trot out their latest pet epithet: “disinformation.” If the media couldn’t turn it to Biden’s benefit, they’d likely make it disappear after a couple of days of light coverage.
I get what Trump is doing here, but it’s also easy to see how it could backfire. Besides, do we really think Putin would do such a thing? That’s a big fat nyet.
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