Will Putin Come Through for Trump?

From Russia with Love? Is Vladimir Putin going to bail out Donald Trump by delivering Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine to the US just in time for the presidential election?

Could that be the reason why Trump during his July phone call with Putin didn’t bring up the touchy matter of Russia putting a bounty on the heads of American troops in Afghanistan.

Trump told Axios’ Jonathan Swan: “That was a phone call to discuss other things, and frankly that’s an issue that many people said was fake news.”

Let’s shoot down that phony fake news bit. The New York Times reported Aug. 8 that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov about paying bounties to the Taliban fighters.

The CIA has placed “medium confidence” in the bounty story. Pompeo, who previously was CIA director, reportedly is livid about the bounty payments.

That puts Pompeo squarely in the Joe Biden camp.

“The most critical and sacred obligation of a commander-in-chief is to protect those who serve our nation in harm’s way,” said a statement from Biden spokesman Andrew Bates. “But months after the U.S. intelligence community sounded the alarm — to Donald Trump and to our allies — that Russia was placing bounties on the heads of American servicemen and women in a war zone, our president continues to turn his back on those who put their lives on the line for our country, and on his own duty.”

Trump and Putin have spoken eight times this year, which is twice the number of conversations they had in 2019.

What are they talking about? Trump’s Moscow retirement plans?

My hunch is that Trump is begging Putin to meddle once again in the US presidential election.

A Russian COVID-19 vaccine may be the best way for Trump to rebound from his disastrous handling of the pandemic.

The virus has killed more than 160K Americans and shattered the global reputation of the US.

Unless Vlad comes through for his dear friend, Donald, COVID-19 may take the lives of another 140K Americans by the end of the year.

Who are these people? A shockingly high 13 percent of Americans are satisfied with the state of the nation, somehow overlooking the raging COVID-19 pandemic, economic meltdown, racial inequality and the wave of impending evictions.

That satisfaction rate is the lowest in the last nine years of polling by Gallup and down a whopping 32 points since February.

The all-time low of seven percent came in October 2008 following a plunge in stock prices during the global financial crisis.

Gallup found that Republicans are largely responsible for the recent plunge in satisfaction rates.

Twenty percent of them are satisfied with the way things are doing today, down from 39 percent last month and 89 percent in February.

GOPers though haven’t jumped off the Trump bandwagon, according to Gallup.

Their dissatisfaction stems from the impact of COVID-19 on the economy and racial unrest, rather than the administration’s botched handling of both matters.