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Trump: Putin’s Manchurian Candidate?
The Daily Beast
In light of the DNC hack (which digital signatures point to Russia), we would expect the Democrats to divert attention from their embarrassing emails confirming Trump and Bernie’s accusations of a ‘rigged system’. Schadenfreude for the Right, indeed.
However, as the Left’s automatic impulse to shift the narrative of DSW’s fall from grace, they are pointing to shinier squirrels which may have a more significant impact on the 2016 election. Their story is slowly gaining an audience and being analyzed by many on the center-right, although don’t expect to hear much about it this week during the DNC celebration of government largesse.
The story about Trumps and Putin’s relationship has been bantered about for almost a year. Some refer to Trumps admiration of Putin’s authoritarian style of rule, others (such as Clinton campaign manager wunderkind Robbie Mook) pointed out the emails were leaked “by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump” citing “experts” but offering no other evidence”.
Another former democratic wunderkind referred to the rumors and posed the question directly: “Are there any ties between Mr. Trump, you or your campaign and Putin and his regime?” George Stephanopoulos, of “This Week,” asked Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman. “No, there are not,” Mr. Manafort shot back. “That’s absurd. And, you know, there’s no basis to it.”
The Left have decided to dig much deeper into this. Articles point to Trump as one of many opportunists who tried to cash in on Russia’s dismantled economy starting in the late 80’s. Western businessmen treated Russia as the new gold rush and some instantly became billionaires. However in 1998 many investors were destroyed as the economy collapsed into a massive financial crisis. Reports of western businessmen being gunned down by contract killings which were rumored to be connected to the Moscow government scared much of the Western business interests away.
Then in 2000 commodity prices and oil started to skyrocket. Moscow was suddenly filled with luxury cars, high-end restaurants and night clubs. Luxury hotels were the rage and as commodity prices continued to only go up, everyone wanted back in. Re-enter Donald Trump whose gold-leafed stylings were a dove-tail joint for Moscow’s gaudy chic.
In an effort to venture beyond the conservative echo chamber, I’ll point to the Left-leaning Talking Points Memo which laid out a long list of “basic facts”. (Bold inserted for quicker reading). Please see below for the muted response from the Right.
1. All the other discussions of Trump’s finances aside, his debt load has grown dramatically over the last year, from $350 million to $630 million. This is in just one year while his liquid assets have also decreased. Trump has been blackballed by all major US banks.
2. Post-bankruptcy Trump has been highly reliant on money from Russia, most of which has over the years become increasingly concentrated among oligarchs and sub-garchs close to Vladimir Putin. Here’s a good overview from The Washington Post, with one morsel for illustration …
Since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
3. One example of this is the Trump Soho development in Manhattan, one of Trump’s largest recent endeavors. The project was the hit with a series of lawsuits in response to some typically Trumpian efforts to defraud investors by making fraudulent claims about the financial health of the project. Emerging out of that litigation however was news about secret financing for the project from Russia and Kazakhstan. Most attention about the project has focused on the presence of a twice imprisoned Russian immigrant with extensive ties to the Russian criminal underworld. But that’s not the most salient part of the story. As the Times put it,
“Mr. Lauria brokered a $50 million investment in Trump SoHo and three other Bayrock projects by an Icelandic firm preferred by wealthy Russians “in favor with” President Vladimir V. Putin, according to a lawsuit against Bayrock by one of its former executives. The Icelandic company, FL Group, was identified in a Bayrock investor presentation as a “strategic partner,” along with Alexander Mashkevich, a billionaire once charged in a corruption case involving fees paid by a Belgian company seeking business in Kazakhstan; that case was settled with no admission of guilt.”
Another suit alleged the project “occasionally received unexplained infusions of cash from accounts in Kazakhstan and Russia.”
Sounds completely legit.
Read both articles: After his bankruptcy and business failures roughly a decade ago Trump has had an increasingly difficult time finding sources of capital for new investments. As I noted above, Trump has been blackballed by all major US banks with the exception of Deutschebank, which is of course a foreign bank with a major US presence. He has steadied and rebuilt his financial empire with a heavy reliance on capital from Russia. At a minimum the Trump organization is receiving lots of investment capital from people close to Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s tax returns would likely clarify the depth of his connections to and dependence on Russian capital aligned with Putin. And in case you’re keeping score at home: no, that’s not reassuring.
4. Then there’s Paul Manafort, Trump’s nominal ‘campaign chair’ who now functions as campaign manager and top advisor. Manafort spent most of the last decade as top campaign and communications advisor for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian Ukrainian Prime Minister and then President whose ouster in 2014 led to the on-going crisis and proxy war in Ukraine. Yanukovych was and remains a close Putin ally. Manafort is running Trump’s campaign.
5. Trump’s foreign policy advisor on Russia and Europe is Carter Page, a man whose entire professional career has revolved around investments in Russia and who has deep and continuing financial and employment ties to Gazprom. If you’re not familiar with Gazprom, imagine if most or all of the US energy industry were rolled up into a single company and it were personally controlled by the US President who used it as a source of revenue and patronage. That is Gazprom’s role in the Russian political and economic system. It is no exaggeration to say that you cannot be involved with Gazprom at the very high level which Page has been without being wholly in alignment with Putin’s policies. Those ties also allow Putin to put Page out of business at any time.
6. Over the course of the last year, Putin has aligned all Russian state controlled media behind Trump. As Frank Foer explains here, this fits a pattern with how Putin has sought to prop up rightist/nationalist politicians across Europe, often with direct or covert infusions of money. In some cases this is because they support Russia-backed policies; in others it is simply because they sow discord in Western aligned states. Of course, Trump has repeatedly praised Putin, not only in the abstract but often for the authoritarian policies and patterns of government which have most soured his reputation around the world.
7. Here’s where it gets more interesting. This is one of a handful of developments that tipped me from seeing all this as just a part of Trump’s larger shadiness to something more specific and ominous about the relationship between Putin and Trump. As TPM’s Tierney Sneed explained in this article, one of the most enduring dynamics of GOP conventions (there’s a comparable dynamic on the Dem side) is more mainstream nominees battling conservative activists over the party platform, with activists trying to check all the hardline ideological boxes and the nominees trying to soften most or all of those edges. This is one thing that made the Trump convention very different. The Trump Camp was totally indifferent to the platform. So party activists were able to write one of the most conservative platforms in history. Not with Trump’s backing but because he simply didn’t care. With one big exception: Trump’s team mobilized the nominee’s traditional mix of cajoling and strong-arming on one point: changing the party platform on assistance to Ukraine against Russian military operations in eastern Ukraine. For what it’s worth (and it’s not worth much) I am quite skeptical of most Republicans call for aggressively arming Ukraine to resist Russian aggression. But the single-mindedness of this focus on this one issue – in the context of total indifference to everything else in the platform – speaks volumes.
This does not mean Trump is controlled by or in the pay of Russia or Putin. It can just as easily be explained by having many of his top advisors having spent years working in Putin’s orbit and being aligned with his thinking and agenda. But it is certainly no coincidence. Again, in the context of near total indifference to the platform and willingness to let party activists write it in any way they want, his team zeroed in on one fairly obscure plank to exert maximum force and it just happens to be the one most important to Putin in terms of US policy.
Add to this that his most conspicuous foreign policy statements track not only with Putin’s positions but those in which Putin is most intensely interested. Aside from Ukraine, Trump’s suggestion that the US and thus NATO might not come to the defense of NATO member states in the Baltics in the case of a Russian invasion is a case in point.
There are many other things people are alleging about hacking and all manner of other mysteries. But those points are highly speculative, some verging on conspiratorial in their thinking. I ignore them here because I’ve wanted to focus on unimpeachable, undisputed and publicly known facts. These alone paint a stark and highly troubling picture.
The Hill, a right-leaning publication refers to Russian investments into Trumps’ assets. It raises the question for Conservatives that if this was the Clinton’s there would be likely investigations.
Has the Russian money and Moscow ties had consequences and does it shape candidate Trump’s foreign-policy thinking or that of the advice he receives from his aides? It is certainly a question that would be asked — and rightly so — of Hillary Clinton, if the shoe was on the other foot. Saudi donations to the Clinton Global Initiative have come under scrutiny, as well they should.
Other pressing questions present themselves. Has the U.S. election cycle been targeted by the Russians for ‘active measures? The hacking in mid-June of Democrat National Committee computers and the stealing of opposition research on Donald Trump by, according to some experts, Russian intelligence-linked groups is a clear sign for some analysts such as Anders Aslund of the Atlantic Council that Putin is engaged in “active measures in [the] U.S. presidential campaign.”
So, is it a case of leftist journo’s creating a narrative where there is none, or is there really something to this?
In other words, is where there’s smoked herring, there’s caviar?
Published in General
How do you know this? Can you provide evidence please? Based on what I’ve seen at various rallies and at the DNC this doesn’t appear to be true.
See, that’s the problem.
Never allow others to do the thinking for you.
Always think for yourself.
Until it’s proven* Russia was behind the leaks, I’ll maintain healthy skepticism. It is conceivable that Russia would release this kind of information about both candidates. In this case, the leak is not egregious enough to guarantee Clinton will lose, but in general it increases the distrust in our leaders and the political process, and in particular it will stir up resentment in a part of Clinton’s base that normally regards such scandals as figments of the right wing hate machine. Less faith in the American government is a good thing for Russia. The public will be less likely to support an active and assertive foreign policy if it’s spearheaded by people they regard as corrupt. I know I don’t.
However, that’s all speculation. Having the motive to do something isn’t proof that you did as any whodunit will tell you. Our politicians do a fine job earning our disrespect without assistance from foreign governments.
Finally, I’d like to ask a non-rhetorical question. In a global economy, are there any seriously wealthy people who have no financial connections to some nasty foreign groups?
*By prove I don’t mean 100%, irrefutable evidence, but something stronger than what we currently have.
It’s called an opinion.
Another opinion of mine is that from the evidence of various rallies, is that most of these people are mindlessly emoting, making them soft targets for us.
The squirrel remains free and dangerous.
The fact that the DNC e-mails are relevant and should be investigated doesn’t make the question of whether Trump is beholden to Putin irrelevant.
Personally, I actually do find the question of whether Russia’s trying to exert some kind of influence far more interesting than the DNC machinations. The DNC is the Democrats’ problem, and I’m not a Democrat. Sanders’ supporters absolutely should be furious and up in arms over it, and shouldn’t get thrown off by the source of the hacking. But I’ll leave that to them. I don’t have room for any more outrage; it doesn’t tell me a thing about Clinton I don’t already know. One more piece of evidence in a case already proven five times over.
The question of whether Russia is up to something, on the other hand, is fascinating and also important. Sure, it indicates that Putin isn’t particularly afraid of Trump at a minimum. But I don’t see why discussing that equates to trying to let Clinton off the hook.
We know the Russians could have hacked Hillary’s server. If they hacked the DNC and used that information against Clinton, I think we can take that as an absolutely certain indication that they did hack her server, and are fully prepared to use that information against her when it suits them. And I think Hillary probably knows this too. Some reporter should ask her.
If Trump does have such connections, shouldn’t the voters know about them before the election? Similarly, it would be nice to know if Putin has damning e-mails taken from Hillary’s personal server that could be used to blackmail her.
Yes this is exactly what I meant. You must have looked in my eyes and had what is known in some communities as a moment.
Wait- what exactly did they make up?
I remember all that, too. I remember Ken Starr going out of his way to exonerate the Clintons of the charge murdering Vince Foster, giving them a head’s up that he had Monica’s dress, and then GOP declining to subpoena Juanita Broderick to Capitol Hill during the impeachment trial.
Every time a Republican official testifies before a leftist-run Congress it’s a thinly veiled threat to get them sent to prison. The GOP, on the other hand, let a demonrat president get away with rape, because they didn’t want to bring it up.
That’s what the GOP did during the Clinton years. People on the internet, the American Spectator, went after the Clintons good and hard. The GOP did not.
What similar position?
Some leftist has made a bunch of charges against Trump, based on things he made up or lied about. Hillary Clinton broke numerous laws, and her political party now has an embarrassing email scandal courtesy of their incompetence.
But yeah, let’s talk about Trump.
The left is playing you folks again.
I think the rational assumption is that Putin has Hillary’s emails and I bet the Clintons are assuming the same. That makes it even more interesting about how Putin is playing this if they do not appear before the election. In the meantime, I’m greatly enjoying the havoc created among the Democrats.
I don’t believe that we can necessarily dismiss the possibility of Russian influence on Trump. Here’s what we know or strongly suspect:
Trump has:
Here’s what we don’t know:
Given that Trump is running for President of the United States, asking some questions is important. At the same time, it is just as important to look into Hillary’s finances – particularly the foreign money that has flowed into the Clinton Foundation.
Oops…
Here’s a link:
http://freebeacon.com/politics/trump-consider-recognizing-crimea-russian-territory-Ukraine/
The Politico story on it here.
Any other concessions to Putin in the offing?
I know, I know. What’s the big deal? Do we want Russia’s help in fighting ISIS, or what? Let’s not bicker about who killed who…this is supposed to be a happy occasion.
I mean Crimea river. It’s not as though Putin even used gas. (<–sarcasm alert)
Trump’s sentiments are right on. What objection could anyone have to getting back US government property that was incompetently deleted by the former Secretary of State? Those 30,000 or so emails belong to the US, voters have a qualified right to see them, and if Russia has them they should return them before the election (and anything else they’ve got).
In and of itself, the return of the emails demonstrate harm caused to national security by Clinton’s use of a private email server. So that’s two reasons for the Russians to come clean.
Actually, there’s a third reason. If the Russians were able to hack her private server and taker her emails, no future public servant will use a private server. This would be good for the Republic because it strengthens our national security and the principle of accountability.
For those not interested in hearing tonights revisionist propaganda, check out Clinton Cash Movie. Free here:
https://youtu.be/7LYRUOd_QoM
Um, yeah the embarrassing Vince Foster fables are exactly the kind of kooky conspiracy theories I had in mind. These fringe “investigations” were drummed up by charlatans to sell books and “documentaries” to republicans desperate for any and all dirt they could come up with, regardless of if it was true or not. It can be filed away with JFK assassination conspiracies, right in the dumpster.
These kind of nutty theories actually muddied the water to such a degree they supplied an inoculation in the public’s mind to the charges of the Clinton’s real crimes and corruptions. Maybe Ken Starr exonerated the Clinton’s of bogus charges because his job was to be and independent prosecutor and not a fringe GOP operative?
There’s far more evidence of Trump being under undue influence from Russia than there ever was of Hillary popping a cap in Vince or using the Arkansas State Troopers to become kingpins of the southern heroin trade.
If you hold your opposing party up to one standard of investigation, but give your own a pass regardless of evidence, you’re only compromising yourself and weakening your own party in the long run.
Sure, but that sidesteps my question. Are there people worth millions that have no financial ties to shady individuals/organizations? A lot of big players in international business have connections to, or are outright owned by, terrible governments. There’s a lot of Chinese money out there.
Let me stress that my original comment used the word “non-rhetorical”. I genuinely want to know. The reason being that I suspect it would be easy to make these sorts of accusations about any person in Trump’s position, which is not to say it is a topic unworthy of investigation or that corruption can not be proven, but that we shouldn’t get too carried away connecting the dots (as fun as that is).
Awesome. I think these are both wonderful ideas, for multiple reasons.
So what did the GOP make up against the Clintons? What was it?
And what is the evidence that Trump is under undue influence from Russia? That the Clinton campaign is shrieking because they need to divert attention away from their own incompetence in getting hacked?
It sounds like you’re accepting your own kooky conspiracy theory, presented to you by the Clintons.
And about Vince Foster, that stuck in my mind because I recall reading that he derailed his own investigation into the Clintons so he could take his own detour into conspiracyland by disproving charges no serious person believed.
You give me yet another example of why the GOP is such a stuttering miserable failure. You apparently accept without question every claim by the left, and expect it to be treated seriously- but claim that the GOP is making stuff up about the Clintons, to get them, presumably unfairly.
So what did the GOP make up about the your friends, the Clintons?
In any case your idea that the GOP should investigate itself just as thoroughly as the other team is silly. There are already folks working to investigate the GOP, and defeat it politically.
What we lack is a party to investigate and challenge the left, politically.
Yet, oddly, everyone, Democrats and Republicans, are eager to go after Trump, not Clinton.
No wait- I mean typically everyone is going after the Republican and not the Democrat- including much of the GOP, because Trump hasn’t met the high standard demanded of Republicans, by Democrats.
And Democrats call the tune for the gop, because it’s the stupid party, after all.
Please flesh this out. I would like to know why you think it’s a good thing to capitulate to a foreign dictator annexing parts of his neighbors. It didn’t work out so well last time, Neville.
High standard? He doesn’t meet a freaking minimum standard – of temperament, judgment, competence, conservatism, personal morality, or integrity. And don’t be silly – it’s my standard. Democrats aren’t going to be demanding a high standard of conservatism or, generally, personal morality.
Hillary Clinton doesn’t meet that standard either. But that doesn’t mean I should favor either one of them over the other.
Ugh, ok, so I make an aside about some of the charges against the Clintons being bupkis.
You are outraged by this and demand to know which ones, then proceed to lament Starr’s exoneration for the “murder” of Foster.
I point out that those accusations of murder were one of the very things I had in mind. (I particularly remember watching former GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson present the theory and it’s pushers on his television show.)
You then proceed to tell me you’re not upset that Starr exonerated them for the murder, but you’re upset he investigated it at all.
Fair enough, clarity in your original point would have helped communicate that. I’ve heard many people on the right and left say they think Starr’s leash was so long he strangled himself with it at times.
I’m glad we both agree no serious person believes Hillary repelled via zip-line into Fort Marcy Park to pop Vince before making a quick get away in her black helicopter. Unfortunately many in the GOP believed the equivalent and many (when pressed or unguarded) still do.
The kicker after this exchange is you then proceed to ask me what false charges could I possibly be thinking of? …. I’ve seen this Monty Python sketch. It doesn’t end, does it? We both just get squashed by a giant Terry Gilliam foot.
You also then proceed to ask me to relitigate the entire 100+ thread by demanding to know what evidence there is against Trump?
We’ve been discussing that for a day now. You can say it’s not persuasive enough for you. You can say it’s made up or you simply don’t and won’t believe any of it. But to pretend no one here has been making or presenting the argument is obtuse.
Then la-de-da, now not only am I a de facto supporter of Hillary for not following lockstep behind Rump, I am in fact friends with them. I can’t wait for the graft to start pouring in, I’m going to be on easy street! No in fact I am no friend of the Clintons. But hey, you know who is?
The inks not even dry on his temporary elephant tattoo yet.
Because I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Crimea. Because I know it used to be Russian territory, conquered from the Khanate. Because I know it was given to Ukraine by the USSR, because I don’t care why. Because we have no sort of treaty with Ukraine. Because I see no reason why the US government should spent so much time agonizing about the Russia-Ukraine border when it worries not a bit about the US-Mexico border. Because I am thoroughly brutally tired of the witless globalism that sees the United States as the global arbiter, choosing where boundaries should be, and I presume, where sparrows should be allowed to fall. Because there’s a whole set of rich foreigners between Russia and the US, who can worry about the Ukraine-Russia boundary if it’s such a terrible problem, but they aren’t. And lastly, because everyone knows the US isn’t going to pay the price to evict Russia from the Crimea, and we should stop pretending otherwise, merely because the present political class has silly fantasies that they’re reliving Munich, and this is their time for greatness.
I’m sure Neville Chamberlain had very similar thoughts once upon a disaster.
Peace in our time!!
N.M. Wiedemer:
Ugh, ok, so I make an aside about some of the charges against the Clintons being bupkis.