Surely it’s time to release the Trump tapes, Putin

MANDY Rice-Davies’s famous riposte to Lord Astor’s denial that he had had an affair with her – “Well, he would say that wouldn’t he” – is an apt response to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s denial that Donald Trump had worked for Moscow’s interests.

It cannot be coincidental that, like his friend Trump, Lavrov blames this accusation on a dramatic plunge in the standards of journalism when he knows that it was the FBI who first mooted this possibility, and not without cause.

Asked whether Russia would release the minutes of meetings between Trump and Putin, Lavrov said it defied the basic culture of democracy.

What is in those minutes, hastily snatched from the hands of the American minute-taker by Trump himself, that would endanger democracy?

On the other hand, what is in those minutes that forces Trump to such aggressive physical behaviour, and the Russians to such asinine comments that open them as much to the ridicule of the world as Trump has?

Putin must be livid that Trump hasn’t yet learned how to control Congress, the American press and his opponents, à la Putin.

But this is perhaps one of Putin’s few failures, not having realised in 2016 that Trump is just about bluster, whose sociopathic nature is only about immediate self-gratification.

What a person to put your trust in, Vladimir.

Perhaps it’s time to release those tapes. Liam Harrington

Castletownbere, Co Cork