As world leaders reacted to the US president’s “liberation day” tariff policies demolishing the international trading order, about $2.5tn (£1.9tn) was wiped off Wall Street and share prices in other financial centres across the globe.
World leaders from Brussels to Beijing rounded on Trump. China condemned “unilateral bullying” practices and the EU said it was drawing up countermeasures.
While Trump timed his Wednesday evening Rose Garden address to avoid live tickers of crashing stock markets, that fate arrived when Asian exchanges opened hours later.
Putin could not possibly have any dirt on Trump that is worse than the publicly available knowledge we have of his personality and activities. If he’s working with Russia it’s because he wants to, not because he’s being coerced.
If Trump is a Russian asset as we all believe then Putin will have irrefutable proof that would be able to put Trump in prison.
He’s also likely to have evidence of other crimes that everyone is pretty sure that he has done and is doing.
A lot of the publicly available stuff has a lack of evidence, a lack of motivation to get the evidence or a lack of will to impeach and prosecute a sitting president. It’s possible that Putin could release enough information to overcome those barriers.
Putin will have dirt that trump thinks is important, like that he has a comb over or some other trivial crap.
That the whole world knows he’s a weird, small handed, incontinent, idiot doesn’t register with his own opinion of himself.