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Despite Denials, There Is Evidence of Collusion Between the Trump Campaign and the Kremlin
It is a common talking point among Trump supporters that “there is not one shred of evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.” This statement is far from true. In fact, the evidence is quite extensive.
The Kremlin supported the Trump campaign through a broad spectrum of means, including staff, funds, propaganda, black operations, trolls, and thugs. We address each of these in turn.
Staff
Prominent Trump campaign officials who are known to be paid Kremlin agents include Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, Campaign Energy Advisor Carter Page, and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort was formerly chief henchman to Putin-allied Ukrainian dictator Victor Yanukovych. Manafort was also directly involved in the transferring of millions of dollars of such Russian mob funds into US real estate ventures.
Trump Energy Advisor Carter Page is a major investor in the Russian state owned energy company Gazprom. As a Gazprom investor, Page has a personal financial interest in ending Western sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, a move which, along with recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea, Trump himself said he was considering during the campaign. But it gets worse. Page actually endorsed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, going so far as to compare US support for Ukrainian independence to the killing of black youth by police officers. “The deaths triggered by U.S. government officials in both the former Soviet Union and the streets of America in 2014 share a range of close similarities,” wrote Page in January 2015.
Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had dinner with Vladimir Putin last year. Such fraternization bore fruit for the Kremlin, as evidenced by the action by Trump operatives to eliminate language in the GOP platform advocating US support for Ukraine’s defense. In exchange for his trip to Moscow, Flynn received $50,000 from Russian state owned TV company RT, a payment which he concealed from federal agents investigating him for purposes of checking his security clearance. Flynn was appointed chairman of the National Security council by President Trump, only to be forced to resign a few weeks later when it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Pence about some of his Kremlin contacts.
Funds
Without a viable business base, Trump could never have mounted his campaign for the Republican nomination, let alone the election. Because his business career has involved a series of swindles against his investors, lenders, vendors, workers, and customers, Trump in recent years has found it difficult to obtain credit from legitimate financial sources. This has opened questions as of how the Trump empire can remain in business. The solution to this mystery is provided, however, by statements made by Trump’s sons. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia, Donald Trump Jr. explained in 2008. In 2013, this was further clarified by Eric Trump, who told a reporter: “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” If such confessions of financial dependency require verification, it can no doubt be found in Trump’s tax returns. However, despite pre-election promises to disclose these documents, the President continues to refuse to make them available.
Black Operations
In early July 2016, GRU (Russian military intelligence) hackers broke into the computers at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, stealing their files. Then, July 22, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, thousands of emails embarrassing to the Clinton camp drawn from these files were publicly released through WikiLeaks with the clear intention of dividing the Democratic Party and electing Donald Trump President.
Asked about this by the press on July 27, Trump openly proclaimed that he favored such Russian hacking, and he hoped that Putin and company would do more of it to help expose Hillary. This remarkable and potentially felonious statement provoked a firestorm of criticism, so much so that Trump subsequently walked it back – a rare event for the Don – saying that he had been speaking “sarcastically.” The fact, however, that the GRU did actually conduct a black operation inside the United States to assist Trump makes it not so easy to dismiss. Furthermore, it must be noted that the channel used for this and subsequent anti-Clinton operations during the campaign, Wikileaks, is a known Kremlin front.
Propaganda
The Russian state owned propaganda agency Russia Today (RT), which broadcasts internationally, including within the US, was unstinting throughout the nomination and election campaigns in its support for Donald Trump. This support has included not only constant favorable coverage, attacks on opponents, and commentary by talking heads, but personal praise of Donald Trump by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin himself.
Trolls and Thugs
During both the nomination and election campaigns, media websites of all sorts, but most especially conservative ones, were deluged with abusive comments directed against those who refused to adhere to the Trump line. Many of these comments were clearly written by Russian-speaking individuals. Others, perhaps most, were written by American members or adherents of the so-called “Alt-Right,” which also provided critical support for the ground game of the Trump nomination effort. This requires further discussion.
The Alt-Right is part of a Kremlin operation to create pro-Moscow ultranationalist and identarian fifth column movements in the West. The chief composer of the ideological synthesis of communism and fascism that the Kremlin created for this movement, Aleksandr Dugin, endorsed Donald Trump in March 2016. “In Trump we trust,” said Dugin (perhaps proposing the substitution of Trump for God in the American national slogan), as he mobilized the American Alt-Right against Trump’s GOP nomination opponents. It should be noted that the relationship between Dugin and the American Alt-Right is quite direct, as Nina Kouprianova, (pen name “Nina Byzantina”) the former wife of US Alt-Right leader, Richard Spencer, is Dugin’s American translator. Should anyone have further doubts about the Kremlin/Alt-Right links, Spencer and the Alt-Right provided confirmation themselves by holding a rally in Virginia on May 20, in which they chanted “Russia is our friend.”
It should be noted that while Hillary Clinton was the first major Trump opponent to call out the Alt-Right in the course of the campaign, the Alt-Right’s most important effort was directed not so much against her, as Trump’s GOP opponents and NeverTrump dissenters. This was done, as documented by National Review writer David French, through a campaign of terror, including death threats, targeting editors, writers, and others (including French, who at one point contemplated running as a third party conservative candidate against Trump and Clinton, an initiative, which if implemented, could have significantly harmed Trump’s electoral chances). Threats against French also included threats to his wife, which reached such intensity that French found it necessary to post a photograph on Facebook of his wife practicing with an AR-15 to warn off would-be assailants. Other conservatives threatened included NeverTrump supporters Rick Wilson, Erick Erickson, Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, Jonah Goldberg, Free the Delegates leader Kendal Unruh, and the editor of one conservative publication who informed me he could no longer carry my articles because of the threats he had received.
We thus see that Kremlin support for Trump’s election was been quite extensive. This support has been reciprocated. Trump has called the Russian dictator “a real leader” and dismissed his many murders of journalists and political opponents at home and abroad as “unproven.” Last January, a British court found that Putin had ordered the murder by Polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB agent who revealed that the 1999 apartment buildings bombings in Moscow that Putin used to seize dictatorial power were the work of Putin’s FSB itself. Disturbingly, the billionaire appears be fine with that too. In May 2017, Trump went so far as to invite Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the White House, where, on his own initiative, he shared top secret classified information.
Donald Trump has also expressed support for Syrian dictator Bashir Assad, who in alliance with Russian and Iranian military forces, is flooding Europe with refugees, thereby stoking the fortunes of the Kremlin-allied ultraright parties operating as part of Dugin’s fascist international. These include the anti-NATO French National Front, whose founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, also endorsed Trump. The National Front’s current leader, Marine Le Pen also supported the Russian takeover of Crimea, and is being openly bankrolled out of Moscow. In November 2016, Marine Le Pen traveled to New York to visit Trump Tower. According to Trump spokesman Sean Spicer, she did not meet with Trump. Subsequently, however, Trump openly supported her failed attempt to win the French presidency.
In line with his support of Le Pen, during the campaign, Trump supported the gutting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an objective that has been Moscow’s number one foreign policy priority since the beginning of the Cold War. He denounced NATO as being “obsolete,” and called for sharply reducing US commitments to the alliance that has been the bulwark of American security since World War II. Not only that, Donald Trump stated that as President, he would not necessarily honor the United States treaty commitment to defend a NATO ally if attacked by Russia. Trump’s frequent statements during the campaign that the United States should confront China also coheres with Kremlin desires, as Russia’s masters have no fonder wish than to see their two major global rivals take each other down.
Finally, it cannot reasonably be asserted that the combination of Kremlin support for Trump and Trump support for the Kremlin was coincidental. In fact, it has now been documented that, despite repeated false statements made by Trump camp spokesmen, there were at least 18 unreported contacts during the campaign between the Kremlin and Trump agents or representatives.
So, in summary, here was the deal: In exchange for Russian-supplied staff, funds, propaganda, trolls, thugs, and black operations support for his nomination and election, Donald Trump aligned himself with an effort to break the western alliance and deliver Europe to Kremlin domination.
Starting as a near-bankrupt dark-horse candidate with three-percent backing, Trump clearly could not have won the GOP nomination without the support of the Kremlin, its organized crime funding networks, and its Alt-Right foot soldiers. As for the election, it is probably true that Hillary Clinton could have beaten him regardless, had her campaign been run competently and had she not embraced the anti-industrial platform that cost her much of the labor vote in what had previously been the Democrats’ “blue wall’ midwestern stronghold.
Be that as it may, it is also true that the Nazis could almost certainly have conquered Norway in 1940 without the help of the treasonous Norwegian Defense Minister Vidkun Quisling. But the fact remains: Quisling was still a traitor.
Anyone who collaborates with a foreign adversary to seize power in the United States would be equally guilty. Republicans should stop trying to pretend that there is no evidence for such collusion, and instead demonstrate their patriotism by helping the nation’s security agencies get to the bottom of this sordid matter.
Here’s a hint to the GOP members of Congress: Vote with the Democrats to subpoena Trump’s tax returns. The truth will set you free.
Published in Politics
Just so. Every wealthy person likely has pretty complicated tax filings. In this environment there are not enough documents that could be released to satisfy his detractors. Every release would generate an unending story by the uncomprehending to the un-informable.
I agree. Those who demand his tax records be subpoenaed are just looking for ammunition. The press is upset that they didnt get to traipse through his taxes, yearbooks, kindergarten artwork – they’re looking for kryptonite – that one piece of information that will cause his base to second guess their support.
The bad news for the press is, that if the Billy Bush tapes didnt do it – I dont think there is anything out there.
A lot of people think of domestic political ills as, well, domestic political ills, not “globalization”.
It’s not impossible to relate domestic-policy problems to international oppression, but it’s just not obvious that, for example, failing public schools and oppressive regulatory agencies count as “globalization”. In order to blame domestic political problems on “globalization”, a case must be made for the relationship. The relationship can’t simply be assumed.
Which makes me think that some people watch way too much TV news if they are suckered into thinking this is a good idea.
I don’t and I’m not. Your statement is essentially correct. I don’t count the free trade advocates as advocating something that is a threat. I think the mindset that gives us our domestically coercive government lies principally with the same folks who push globalization, not from a free trade perspective, but from a governing perspective of wanting all individuals to consider themselves citizens of the world and be governed accordingly. Those are the folks who will relinquish our national sovereignty for one world government. It has very little to do with free trade. I favor free trade with all who are willing to reciprocate and I favor the United States remaining independent from any world governing concepts.
But then, I’m considered a right-wing extremist.
Of course, don’t you?
We know there is nothing in this tax records. If there was they would have been leaked by now.
Yes, probably a few things that would generate commentary like the previous one that showed his carry forward losses but if it showed he had any reason to favor Russia it would be public by now. I don’t think illegally leaking someone’s tax records is any more serious than leaking classified intelligence.
They already leaked part of one as a trial balloon to see how it went. Rachel Maddow took a hit. Trumps taxes are more useful to them as a wedge issue so they can keep bringing up that he is being audited.
In this thread, of course, we are talking mostly about Russia since that is what everyone uses to criticize the President. My recall of the campaign is that he said it might lead to better outcomes if we could turn the relationship from hostile to something better, even friendly, maybe. There’s a three decades process from the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, the disassociation of the former Soviet satellite eastern European nations, and the expansion of NATO into some of the latter. Some think the U.S. and NATO missed an opportunity for better relations with Russia by this last. This period coincides with the rise of Vladimir Putin.
I don’t remember ever hearing even an inkling of anything of concern about Trump and Russia until mid-2016 when his prominence rose in the election campaign and there were some other things going on with Russia and the DNC. Anyone dead set against Trump has since then tried their very best to connect these two distinct items and without much success except as the media goes.
They also fail to mention he’s been audited every year for the past 15 or 20 years, right? I think we would have heard something by now.
So if the left was serious about wanting to see Trump’s tax returns, they’d egg him on to prosecute Lois Lerner and John Koskinen, which would result in the IRS retaliating by leaking Trump’s returns.
The IRS does not need to be egged on. If there was something there they would have leaked it by now. I suspect they already leaked the most serious thing they found and it did not work.
Sure, but let’s pretend we don’t know that. Let’s challenge the left to push for prosecution of Lerner and Koskinen. They won’t, of course, but we shouldn’t pass up a chance to play with their minds.
This post is another embarrassing exposure of the fevered output of an obsessed and hate filled mind.
I don’t think it should meet the standards for contributor status on the main page, but that doesn’t mean I think it should be removed. I do think it is worth mentioning that posts from this contributor are sporadic enough that the outrageous nature of the opinions of the last post are mostly forgotten by the time the next post appears, leaving many who may not have been around the last time to take the contributor seriously at first read, making the ‘Just don’t read contributors you disagree with’ justification a bit less meaningful.
I read the Trump as National Socialist post, so I remember this contributor and take his contributions in that light. Many new members may not, and thus don’t know to take the ‘contributor’ status with a grain of salt.
But, it did generate some robust discussion, and even got a few of the die hard anti-Trumpists to speak out against it, so in that light it was successful. Nothing better to rally the troops than a blatant partisan hate smear.
So even if we can’t rally around the Republican president and the majority he delivered in congress, we can still all agree that Zubrin hates Trump so much that his commentary on the subject is over the top in its lack of basis.
So we got that going for us. And that’s nice…
HaHaHaHa!!! You obviously mistook this for MSNBC.
Bookmark.
Ah, thanks for the clarification! I see what you mean!