With each new day comes fresh troubles for President Donald Trump and his sinking administration.

There are speculations of a possible impeachment over suspicions that Trump may have obstructed justice by requesting former FBI Director, James Comey to drop the investigations into former national security adviser, Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia. Trump himself, in all of this, is feeling the heat and has assumed the victim status by tweeting, “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history“.

More trouble now brews for Trump as Washington Post exclusively reported that House Majority leader, Kevin McCarthy told his GOP folks that Donald Trump was being paid by Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Now, McCarthy’s spokesperson first denied that such comments were ever made but upon hearing that Washington Post had a recorded proof of the conversation, the narrative flipped. Now they claim it was a joke, a bad joke. And McCarthy even tweeted in part: “humour gone wrong”. So we’ll go with that. It was something almost like “locker room talk”.

But here are a few talking points from the matter, strong or weak as they may seem:

1.  This conversation that held between McCarthy and other GOP colleagues happened in June 2016. At the time, Trump had not even clinched a nomination ticket. A joke maybe but it definitely feeds into the already established narrative that Trump is in some sort of inappropriate relationship with Russia.
2. McCarthy’s exact words went like, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,…”. Quick introduction: Dana Rohrabacher is a Republican congressman and a Trump loyalist who has a penchant for everything Russian. Just like Trump, Rohrabacher thinks Russia is not an enemy but a potential partner in the fight against terrorism. So McCarthy’s joke does carry a speck of truth in it, doesn’t it?
3. House Speaker, Paul Ryan who was part of the conversation said, “This is an off the record, NO LEAKS…alright?! This is how we know we’re a real family here. What’s said in the family stays in the family”. The question here is: why share a joke that’s unfit for public consumption, then maybe it’s not just any joke, maybe it’s an inside knowledge that could have swayed America’s future in a different direction.
4. When both men, Ryan and McCarthy were contacted by Washington Post on the matter, the first reaction from their spokespeople was denial. McCarthy spokesperson described the assertions as “absurd and false” but later took a turn to call it all a joke after Washington Post’s reporter revealed he had a recording.
5. We wonder if there’s more where this came from. GOP leaders, apparently know a lot more than ordinary folks on Trump’s connection with Russia and Putin. And we can imagine that it won’t take too long for more “jokes” to be unearthed. According to McCarthy, “Swear to God“!