Putin Claims to Have Sabotaged Mueller Report

By Дэвид Свонсон

1 April 2019, Moscow — In an interview broadcast Sunday evening on Russian television, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have sabotaged the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

In a wide-ranging three-hour monologue, Putin touched on topics ranging from the Olympics to vodka before launching into a lengthy description of his alleged ability to control the decisions of both President Donald Trump and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Putin claimed, without presenting any evidence, that he had sent Russian troops into Venezuela under a secret agreement with Donald Trump, whereby Trump’s efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government would be frustrated, but Trump would appear at odds with Putin.

According to Putin, in the same interview, a similar arrangement was set up with Trump in a number of other policy decisions. These included, as Putin rattled them off: Trump’s eviction of Russian diplomats from the United States, Trump’s sanctioning of Russian officials, the maintaining of missiles in Romania, the selling of weapons to Ukraine, the lobbying of European nations to drop Russian energy deals, the U.S. departure from the Iran agreement, the abandoning of the INF Treaty, Trump’s rejection of Russia’s proposals on banning weapons in space and banning cyber war, U.S. support for continued NATO expansion, Trump’s moving of weapons into Poland, the adding of a NATO partner in Colombia, Trump’s proposal to add Brazil to NATO, NATO plans to add Georgia and Ukraine, Trump’s pressuring NATO members to buy more weapons, Trump’s policy on new nuclear weapons construction, his bombing of Russians in Syria, and the largest war games in Europe in half a century recently held by NATO.

Each of these policies, Putin maintained, was aimed at fooling the world public into believing that Donald Trump was not taking direct orders from the Kremlin. A second part of this operation, he said, consisted of never giving Trump any direct orders. Putin declared the entire operation a miserable failure, stating his belief that Trump could shoot him (Putin) in the middle of Red Square and would still be seen as a Russian asset by true believers in “CIA propaganda.”

Putin concluded his rambling monologue by declaring that in fact he had never possessed any videos of anyone urinating on Donald Trump. “Until now!” he announced. Upon which, Putin brought out a large photograph of Trump, placed it on the floor, stood over it, and proceeded to urinate. This portion of the video is available only at http://notonato.org