ALRIGHT, stop me if you’ve heard this one…

An internationally famous sociopath, known for bragging about his Scottish heritage and paying as little tax as possible, takes a trip behind the Iron Curtain.

While there, he is caught on film in a compromising position, and the bad guys threaten to release the tape, exposing his misbehaviour and undermining his position and the reputation of the Government he represents.

If all that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a synopsis - although admittedly a very simplified one - of the second best James Bond movie to feature Sean Connery, From Russia With Love*. There’s also something about defection and stealing a cryptographic device which would probably tie in with Russian hacking allegations, if I had the time or patience to devise a clever way to do that.

(*I’ll argue all day that, despite all its flaws – Bond does nothing but look suave while bumbling from one catastrophe to another, causes the death of two sisters and uses Judo to ‘seduce’ Honor Blackman – Goldfinger is the highpoint of Connery’s Bond career, if not simply because it came to define the character and the franchise.)

Something I think we can all agree on is that it’s been an interesting week for relationships between Russia and the United States of America, not to mention between the President Elect and the US intelligence agencies and media outlets.

Although rumours of links between the Trump campaign and Russia have been in the wind since he started his election run, they were pretty unsubstantiated and deniable. It was subtle little things, like the self-confessed genital-grabbing soon-to-be Commander In Chief standing in front of a packed news conference last July and urging Russia to hack into and release emails from his opponent’s private server. Little things like that and his continued praise of Vladimir Putin were pretty easy to miss.

The first I heard about the US intelligence agency’s latest concerns that Russia had compromising information on the President Elect was an 11-minute segment on CNN on Tuesday night.

In it, three journalists and investigative legend Carl Bernstein – whose work with Bob Woodward effectively brought down Richard Nixon in the 1970s – spoke in measured tones about an appendix to a security report.

They did not mention the exact contents of the report, despite having access to it, and had spent several days verifying what they could before releasing the story which said, simply, both the outgoing and incoming Presidents had been made aware of intelligence suggesting the Russians had compromising information about PEOTUS.

The discussion made it clear that the information itself could not be verified, but the sources the intelligence came from were extremely reliable – including one of Bond’s brothers in arms, a former member of our very own MI6. In some circles, speculation was rife that the Russians were ready to tell the world that if their banks called in their loans, Trump’s business empire would crumble to ashes.

By the time I woke up on Wednesday, the discussion had changed completely.

Gone were the facts, sources and concerns over the future of the Presidency, replaced by lewd hashtags and easy 140-character jokes, completely undermining the seriousness of the situation and the hard work done to bring the intelligence to public attention.

That day, in his first press conference in six months, PEOTUS refused to answer questions from CNN because they broke the story, which he called “fake news”. Watching him angrily deal with reporters, I couldn’t shake the image of Robert Shaw’s villainous From Russia With Love character Red Grant from my mind.

With his sharp suit, unconvincing blond hair and furious eyes, he might not know the best wine to drink with fish, but you can bet your bottom ruble he’ll order the most expensive one. Then drink it through a curly straw.

Did the public need to know the exact details of the document? Some outlets felt it best to leave it vague and state the facts, while others printed the whole shebang and said it was up to the reader to determine whether the report was relevant.

Whatever your thoughts, I think the point to remember is that while good work is being done to look at important issues and legitimate concerns, it’s being done quietly and efficiently, and – until certain outlets get hold of it – in a way which presents the facts in a responsible and measured way.

It’s getting too easy to focus on the noisy fallout from legitimate news, and forget the details that went before. We should know better than to fixate on that, but the problem is the loudest voices get heard, regardless of what they’re saying.

Anyway, come back next month when I’ll be comparing Trump’s ascendance to leader of the Free World to the plot of 1991 John Goodman laugh riot King Ralph.