Will a disturbing scoop about Trump and Putin affect Trump's electoral chances? | Margaret Sullivan

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

74% : Since then, Woodward reports, Trump has kept in touch with the Russian autocrat.
59% : It gives a whole new dimension to Trump's pressuring Republicans to block military aid to Ukraine.
46% : When, shortly before the 2016 election, NBC's Access Hollywood tape surfaced and Trump could be heard bragging that he was such a star that he could get away with grabbing women's private parts, his campaign took it as a death knell.
42% : Trump may have spoken to Putin as often as seven times since he left office in 2021.
42% : But Trump sails on.
35% : Imagine if Kamala Harris had first agreed to, then backed out of, an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes, as Trump did - at least in part because he didn't want to be fact-checked or subjected to tough questions.
34% : Thus, the report that Trump and Putin remained in contact gives a whole new dimension to knowing that the former president had a trove of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and did not willingly turn them over.
33% : Trump has known this for years, reflecting in early 2016 that he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters".
33% : It brings deeper understanding to how Trump says the conflict between Ukraine and Russia would never have started under him and that it will be immediately over if he wins another term.
31% : Trump secretly gave the Russian autocrat Covid equipment when America desperately needed it.
30% : Trump doesn't often tell the truth.
26% : Meanwhile, in his own country, Trump downplayed - even mocked - the need for Americans to test.
24% : "I don't want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me," he reportedly told Trump.

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