Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/04/trump-on-navalny-poisoning.html
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Trump on Navalny poisoning: 'We haven’t had any proof yet,' also focus on China not Russia and Putin
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Trump: He was a sucker anyway. Who cares?
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Yeah, because German doctors are full of shit?
Hey Trump, mind explaining how China would even have Novichok at all, unless Russia gave it to them? Its highly classified shit.
This man is a stooge of a stooge, and a joke of a President. Pretty fucking transparent trust of Russia you moron
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Russia already has a president. Why do they need an opposition?
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So Dump wants proof of poisoning, yet he’ll go on TV and talk about planes full of men dressed in black based on something he read on Facebook?
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Those men in black were ferrying Novichok from China to Wisconsin give to radical Antifa thugs and blah blah blah
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“I will take a look” is such a Trump tell. It consistently means, “I will do my best to ignore this going forward, don’t bring it up again.”
I don’t think he meant to imply China poisoned him, it was just his desperate attempt to change the subject. “Why are you talking about this one news story that makes me uncomfortable, when instead you could be blaming China for my coronavirus failures?”
No, no, he clearly said he’d “take a look” which means he definitely will not look at it and absolutely doesn’t want proof of anything, please never mention it again. Also - look over there, squirrels!
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Yup. Still don’t know who killed Khashoggi either.
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Well, to be honest, there’s a lot of weirdness in this story. I mean, if Putin had really wanted Navalny dead, he wouldn’t have made it out of that Russian hospital in the first place - I’m not even sure he’d have made it into one. And then he certainly wouldn’t have allowed him to leave the country to be tested by foreign doctors who would immediately bring suspect substances to light. Especially Novichok which is the “poison du jour”.
Meanwhile, Germany and Russia are in the middle of a complex oil pipeline deal, which is not popular with other oil-producing economies like Saudi Arabia, and those countries would definitely like to derail it.
And now I understand why things like Qanon are so seductive. It’s perilously easy to create complex conspiracy theories to try and explain the inexplicable.
This isn’t an operation to derail Nordstream 2. For one, nothing will derail it, there’s too much investment already. It’s also not really a “complex” deal anymore. All the complexity was happening when it was negotiated decades ago. Right now it’s just a big infrastructure project. And the only reason Navalny ended up in Germany of all places (besides the world-class reputation of the Charité, where he is being treated) is that it was a German NGO that took the initiative and chartered a plane to get him to a specialist hospital.
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IMHO, the point is to intimidate any other dissidents who might get too big for their britches and challenge Putin. They don’t care if Navalny dies or not, they don’t care who knows or not, they just want to inflict maximum pain and fear into the opposition.
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This. Intimidation by implication is a great way to keep your nose clean while letting everyone know who’s in charge. Putin is ex-KGB and spectacular at this. During the lead up to the impeachment, I always knew they would never find a direct link to Putin and that it would be trump’s fumbling that revealed anything of merit. But of course, his goons shut down any investigation before it ever started.
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If this it true- it’s definitely Russia.
Precisely because they have plausible deniability, and unique calling card- all in one compound.
Putin has had a man killed with Polonium isotope only made in Russia. He likes sending messages to people he doesn’t like.
I have absolutely no reason to find Russian government innocent of anything- they have gone out of their way to be aggressors for decades, and there’s plenty of proof of all of it. They are occupying a sovereign country’s land in Crimea.
You would have to be the world’s most naive fool to trust Russia on much of anything. And lately, the US too, under Trump.
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Was it …[ oooooh has to think hard … wonders who would be best to blame…] … the Chinese???
/s
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I was honestly expecting Saudi Arabia and the Trump gang to blame George Soros for that one.
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Wrong on all counts. Putin not only doesn’t care who knows he did it, he WANTS people to ‘know’ he did it. It is part of his campaign to intimidate any and all opposition or criticism both internally and by Russian ex-pats.
ETA @llamaspit beat me to it, really
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Well yes. That’s why I specifically added my last line about conspiracy theories being incredibly seductive. It’s quite easy to conjure an “alternative” explanation that appears to tie up various bits of disparate stories and make something out of it.
