Thread by @Monaheart1229

Not only does Trump's public disagreement with our Intel Chiefs leave an opening for Putin, I think that in contradicting our own Intel pros, he SOUNDS like Putin.. #ThursdayThoughts #TrumpRussianAsset
washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost…

2-"ALL THINGS COMING UP RUSSIA: President Trump's very public disagreement with his own intelligence chiefs this week is more than just a domestic rift. Analysts say it also leaves a rather large opening for frenemy Vladimir Putin, who has been flexing Russia's muscles

3-"internationally in a return to Cold War-style posturing as the United States leaves an increasingly large vacuum on the world stage. Emboldening Putin: President Trump “seethed” after he watched the highlights of Capitol Hill testimony from his intelligence chiefs on Wednesday

4-"morning in which they contradicted pretty much everything he has said on Russia, North Korea, China and ISIS, CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports. Trump, CNN reported, singled out Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats “by name during his morning rant.”

5-"“The snippets of Coats saying that North Korea had 'halted its provocative behavior related to its WMD program' but was unlikely to 'completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities' angered him,” wrote Collins and Caroline Kelly. “Go back to school,” Trump

6-"tweeted angrily at “intelligence officials” he deemed “extremely passive and naive,” especially on Iran. Fred Fleitz, a former National Security Council official in Trump's White House, told Lou Dobbs that Coats should be fired for “airing intelligence conclusions in public,”

7-"report The Post's Shane Harris and John Wagner. “Fleitz said the intelligence community 'has basically evolved into a monster that is second-guessing the president all the time.' In the future, he added, the president should forbid the officials from testifying publicly.”

8-"Bigger stakes: Trump’s private anger and public attacks on his intelligence agencies over their contradictory assessments of foreign threats to the United States spells out what has emboldened Putin to be a bigger player on the world stage. Analysts say Putin is being driven

9-"by pragmatism rather than old-school proto-socialist foreign policy of the Soviet era. “I think what Putin has seen is certainly that the U.S. is withdrawing,” Angela Stent, the author of the forthcoming book “Putin's World,” told Power Up. “We said we are getting out of Syria

10-"and Afghanistan, both decisions which have been greatly praised by the Russians and they see a president with an inconsistent foreign policy who is questioning all of the major alliances we have with Europe and Asia. [Putin] is very cleverly taking advantage of opportunities

11-"presented to him by an irresolute U.S.” “Putin understands that there is a disconnect between Trump and how he views the world and what the rest of his executive branch says — and you saw that clearly on display yesterday,” Stent added. “What is new is how China and Russia

12-"are now working closer together to undermine U.S. interest against Western democracies.” “I think most of the Russians I talked to are as puzzled by this as anybody else,” Jeffrey Mankof, deputy director and senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International

13-"Studies's Russia and Eurasia program, told us. “And I think that the fact that there is this very public disagreement here about what the nature of the Russia challenge is … makes it less likely that the U.S. is going to have a unified vision of what Russia policy should

14-"look like, which gives Putin certain opportunities.” In Venezuela: Putin is spearheading support among U.S. adversaries for embattled President Nicolás Maduro after Russia accused the United States of orchestrating a coup following the Trump administration's officially

15-"recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's interim president. The arrival of a Russian airplane surprised Venezuela watchers when it landed in Caracas on Monday night, “sparking unproven claims that President Nicolás Maduro’s administration is looking to

16-" whisk what’s left of the nation’s depleted gold reserves out of the country,” according to the Associated Press's Joshua Goodman. Military analyst Aleksandr M. Goltz told the New York Times's Neil MacFarquhar that Russia's relationship with Venezuela “mirrored the foreign

17-"policy of the old Soviet Union, in which the Kremlin lavished arms and money on any country that barked at Washington.” “For Putin, the fight against color revolutions is a principle matter,” said Goltz. “It is not important where they happen, in Syria or Venezuela. Any

18-"attempt by local people to get rid of an authoritarian leader is seen by the Russian leadership as a conspiracy, masterminded by foreign intelligence.” North Korea: Earlier this week, The Post's John Hudson and Ellen Nakashima scooped that the Russians had secretly offered

19-"the North Koreans a nuclear power plant in Moscow in exchange for nuclear disarmament. “They want to be a player on the peninsula for economic and security reasons,” Ken Gause, director of the adversary analytics program at CNA, a defense think tank, told Hudson and Nakashima

20-"“They have aspirations to build a gas pipeline that extends through North Korea all the way down to South Korea, for example. They share a border with North Korea and want a say in how security in Northeast Asia evolves.” “Previous administrations have not welcomed these

21-"Russian overtures, but with Trump, you never know because he doesn’t adhere to traditional thinking,” Victor Cha, a former White House staffer, told The Post. It's not just North Korea, Venezuela, and Syria: Also part of expanding Russian geopolitical clout in places the U.S

22-" is neglecting, Putin has his sights set on Egypt, Algeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and a long list of commercial engagements across Africa. “But with the U.S. retreat, there is space for Moscow to be mischievous. It is about optics and, to a certain extent, smoke and mirrors to

23-"present itself as a global power,” Alex Vines, head of the Africa program at the Chatham House think-tank in London told the Financial Times's Henry Foy and Natassia Astrasheuskaya. “The Russians are looking for areas where they can unnerve western opponents . . .

24-"some of whom are truly shocked at what is happening.” Bottom line: “Russia has for a long time been arguing that the era of U.S. domination is ending and that creates opportunities for other players,” Mankoff said. “But with the diminution of American supremacy accelerating,

25-"there is a bigger Russian push into other parts of the world where at least since end of the Cold War, we haven't been accustomed to seeing much of their presence. North Korea and Venezuela are part of that.” ~Wapo

26-"RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN... AGAINST MUELLER: In addition to Putin's recent spate of geopolitical moves, the Department of Justice alleged on Wednesday that Russia continued to try and discredit Bob Mueller's investigation "after a pro-Russian Twitter account spread

27-"confidential information from a criminal case that special counsel Robert Mueller's team brought against a Russian company for social media conspiracy," CNN's Katelyn Polantz reports. Prosecutors are alleging that some of the confidential information turned over to the

28-"Russian company Concord Management and Consulting “accused of funding a social media effort aimed at swaying American voters in 2016" became public "after a now-suspended Twitter user touted that it had a 'Mueller database' and a computer with a Russian IP address published

29-"thousands of documents online," Polantz reports.
“More than a thousand of those documents were part of the case's evidence collection, and were listed online under labels and folders known only to those involved in the case, the prosecutors said.” ~Power Up, WaPo