In Reply to: Trump is afraid of Putin because Putin has kompromat posted by Gainsborough on May 16, 2026 at 15:35:53
On the one hand, yes, there is a sense that there may be some strong kompromat that Putin is holding against Trump, which was especially effective in his first tem. In the second term, however, I think Trump now believes that he is invincible and whatever Putin may have on him won't hurt him because he has ascended to god-like levels (he truly believes his own gaslighting).
On the other hand, this is a man who has always craved the acceptance and approval he never got from his father. So when he sees power, whether it is custodians of the elite society tastemakers and opinionators, or foreign strongmen, or in the case of Mamdani, the power of charisma, he will always roll over and how his belly. He wants to dominate people and have power over them and in that regard, he wants to be in the same league of people like Xi and Putin. Likely there is also an implicit B-D angle here that attracted him to Epstein as much as young girls in their early teens.
I think when he talks about Xi as his friend, what he's trying to say is that he feels accepted as a peer. He feels that Xi's "friendship" is a counter-voice to the one that's in his head all the time, his father's voice telling him that he's a f*ck-up.
So it's a combination, IMO. I believe there is a kompromat situation around him (other than his desire to build a Trump Tower in Moscow). I know that because of the way he has never ever ever said a single negative thing about Putin. He even barked at Xi and China, as he did with everyone in the world, including Netanyahu and Israel. But the farthest he has gone with Putin was to say that he was disappointed in some attack on Ukraine while he was tryng to set up a peace accord to get his Nobel -- which he now does. (So that head trip is over.)