{"id":15327,"date":"2025-03-06T18:18:30","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T02:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=15327"},"modified":"2025-03-06T18:36:44","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T02:36:44","slug":"merkley-what-else-could-a-russian-asset-do-that-trump-hasnt-yet-done-bradcast-362025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=15327","title":{"rendered":"Merkley: ‘What Else Could a Russian Asset Do That Trump Hasn’t Yet Done?’: ‘BradCast’ 3\/6\/2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

We pick up on today’s BradCast<\/i><\/a> with something that came up at the very end of yesterday’s program. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.<\/i>]\n

After I raised the question we’ve been discussing of late, regarding why Donald Trump<\/b> is seemingly dismantling the U.S. Government from top to bottom, despite the unpopularity of the bulk of his actions, our friend ‘Driftglass’, one of my guests yesterday<\/a>, suggested that everything Trump was doing was clearly very popular with Russia<\/b> and its strongman President Vladimir Putin<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Democratic U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley<\/b> came at the same the point<\/a> during a confirmation hearing this week for two Trump nominees in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee<\/b>. “Is President Trump a Russian asset?,” the Oregon Senator asked Deputy Sec. of State nominee Christopher Landau<\/b> directly, before detailing one thing after another that Trump has done, particularly regarding Ukraine, that would seem to directly benefit Putin.<\/p>\n

“What else could a Russian asset actually possibly do that Trump hasn’t yet done?,” he asked both Landau and Matthew Whitaker, Trump’s nominee to be Ambassador to NATO<\/b>. Tune in for Merkley’s full line of questioning and the two nominees’ embarrassingly evasive answers. <\/p>\n

Relatedly, and amusingly, Elon Musk<\/b>‘s AI chatbot called Grok<\/strong>, was asked a similar question<\/a> this week. The query asked Grok to “use all publicly available information from 1980” through the present to determine: “What is the likelihood from 1-100 that Trump is a Putin compromised asset”?<\/p>\n

We share part of the detailed answer, as Musk’s AI explains why it estimates “a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties.”<\/p>\n

Well, that’s probably embarrassing for Musk’s co-President.<\/p>\n

As to Merkley’s question about what else a Russian asset could “actually possibly do that Trump hasn’t yet done,” while Trump’s nominees tried to change the subject rather than answer that question, Reuters offers an exclusive<\/a> today that offers such an answer. The outlet is reporting that Trump is readying plans to revoke legal status for some 240,000 refugees who fled to the U.S. from Ukraine<\/b> after Russia’s invasion of their country. They also cite reporting from CBS News<\/a> last week that Trump is planning to revoke legal immigrant status for as many as 1.8 million migrants here legally from Cuba<\/b>, Haiti<\/b>, Nicaragua<\/b>, Venezuela<\/b> and, perhaps most alarmingly, Afghanistan<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Reuters details the case of a former Afghan intelligence officer who served as a CIA asset identifying “High Value Targets” for the U.S. during our long war there. He was granted a two-year parole by the U.S. in January of 2024, on the very strong recommendation of his CIA handler after the Taliban retook Afghanistan. The man, with no criminal record, identified as Rafi, was recently detained by ICE<\/b> when he showed up for a regular check-in, in advance of an asylum hearing scheduled for next month. When Reuters inquired with ICE as to why they were keeping Rafi in detention, they were told that immigration policies for Afghan refugees who aided Americans were “ended on January 20, 2025,” the day Trump was sworn in to office.<\/p>\n

If it’s not clear by now that Republicans are lying when they claim to support “legal” immigration, they’re just against people coming here “illegally”, then the stunning story of what the National Republican Congressional Committee<\/b> (NRCC) tweeted last night<\/a> about Rep. Adriano Espaillat<\/b> (D-NY) — a 40-year American citizen who came to the U.S. lawfully as a child 60 years ago, and delivered the Spanish-language rebuttal to Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night — may be an eye-opener for you.<\/p>\n

Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report<\/i><\/a>, rebutting a litany of environmental and energy related lies that Trump unleashed during his Congressional address, and much more…<\/p>\n

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!…<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We pick up on today’s BradCast with something that came up at the very end of yesterday’s program. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.] After I raised the question we’ve been discussing of late, regarding why Donald Trump is seemingly dismantling the U.S. Government from top to bottom, despite the unpopularity of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,1936,89,675,55,1736,1129,261,806,477,1253,107,137,771,300,534,204,349,1348,233,698,628,1719],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-15327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-artificial-intelligence-ai","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-cia","category-elon-musk","category-ice","category-immigration","category-jeff-merkley","category-kpfk","category-matthew-whitaker","category-national-security","category-nato","category-race","category-republicans","category-russia","category-sotu","category-state-department","category-twitter","category-us-senate","category-ukraine","category-vladamir-putin","category-volodymyr-zelenskyy","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15327"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=15327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}