...don't think Russia entrapped Trump, he's a willing participant. — Metaphysician Undercover
1986 — Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announces perestroika, economic restructuring
1986 — Soviet Ambassador invites Trump on all-expenses-paid trip to Soviet Union. Trump had lunch with Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin. At the lunch, Dubinin told Trump that the ambassador’s daughter “adored” Trump Tower. Dubinin proposed that Trump build a similar tower in the Soviet Union. Soviet officials then visited Trump in New York, inviting Trump on an all-expenses-paid trip.
July 1987 — Trump’s first trip to Soviet Union. He told reporters that he’d read Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika to prepare for the trip. Trump told reporters that he was invited to go to Moscow for a possible plan to build a hotel across from the Kremlin.
Sept 1987 — Trump drops first hints that he’s considering a run for U.S. presidency. He spends $94,801 to buy full-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. The ads read, “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.” And that America “should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves.” The advertisement also criticized American foreign policy “as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”
Dec 1987 — Trump talks with Gorbachev at State Department lunch . Gorbachev asked Trump to build a hotel in Moscow, Trump told reporters.
https://medium.com/@abbievansickle/timeline-of-trumps-relationship-to-russia-5e78c7e7f480
In July 2013, Trump visited Moscow again. If the Russians did not have a back-channel relationship or compromising file on Trump 30 years ago, they very likely obtained one then.
The leaked conversation also revealed something else about the Republican Party: Putin had, by then, made very few American allies. Among elected officials, Trump and Rohrabacher stood alone in their sympathy for Russian positions. Trump had drawn a few anomalously pro-Russian advisers into his inner circle, but by early 2017, Manafort had been disgraced and Flynn forced to resign, and Page had no chance of being confirmed for any Cabinet position. Trump’s foreign-policy advisers mostly had traditionally hawkish views on Russia, with the partial exception of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon CEO who had won a Russian Order of Friendship award for his cooperation in the oil business. (Romney had been Trump’s initial choice for that position, The New Yorker reported, but Steele, in a separate dossier with a “senior Russian official” as its source, said that Russia used “unspecified channels” to influence the decision.)
Now that he’s in office, Trump’s ties to Russia have attracted close scrutiny, and he has found his room to maneuver with Putin sharply constrained by his party. In early 2017, Congress passed sanctions to retaliate against Russia’s election attack. Trump lobbied to weaken them, and when they passed by vetoproof supermajorities, he was reportedly “apoplectic” and took four days to agree to sign the bill even knowing he couldn’t block it. After their passage, Trump has failed to enforce the sanctions as directed.
Trump also moved to return to Russia a diplomatic compound that had been taken by the Obama administration; announced that he and Putin had “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit” to jointly guard against “election hacking”; and congratulated the Russian strongman for winning reelection, despite being handed a card before the call warning: “Do not congratulate.”
More recently, as Trump has slipped the fetters that shackled him in his first year in office, his growing confidence and independence have been expressed in a series of notably Russophilic moves. He has defied efforts by the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, and Canada to placate him, opening a deep rift with American allies. He announced that Russia should be allowed back into the G7, from which it had been expelled after invading Ukraine and seizing Crimea. Trump later explained that Russia had been expelled because “President Obama didn’t like [Putin]” and also because “President Obama lost Crimea, just so you understand. It’s his fault — yeah, it’s his fault.”
During the conference, Trump told Western leaders that Crimea rightfully belongs to Russia because most of its people speak Russian. In private remarks, he implored French president Emmanuel Macron to leave the European Union, promising a better deal. Trump also told fellow leaders “NATO is as bad as NAFTA” — reserving what for Trump counts as the most severe kind of insult to describe America’s closest military alliance. At a rally in North Dakota last month, he echoed this language: “Sometimes our worst enemies are our so-called friends or allies, right?”
Last summer, Putin suggested to Trump that the U.S. stop having joint military exercises with South Korea. Trump’s advisers, worried the concession would upset American allies, talked him out of the idea temporarily, but, without warning his aides, he offered it up in negotiations with Kim Jong-un. Again confounding his advisers, he has decided to arrange a one-on-one summit with Putin later this month, beginning with a meeting between the two heads of state during which no advisers will be present.
“There’s no stopping him,” a senior administration official complained to Susan Glasser at The New Yorker. “He’s going to do it. He wants to have a meeting with Putin, so he’s going to have a meeting with Putin.”
Even though the 2018 version of Trump is more independent and authentic, he still has advisers pushing for and designing the thrusts of Trumpian populism. Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross are steering him toward a trade war; Stephen Miller, John Kelly, and Jeff Sessions have encouraged his immigration restrictionism. But who is bending the president’s ear to split the Western alliance and placate Russia?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/trump-putin-russia-collusion.html
Don't bother introducing raza to any facts, that's rather pointless. — Metaphysician Undercover
Now if you can explain how a plausible theory is a fact go right ahead. — raza
One can string facts (particular but separate events ) together to create a story which fits a chosen narrative. It goes on all of the time. — raza
Just believe, eh? Belief is everything. — raza
When President Donald Trump declared in May that he was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, he vowed to reimpose some of “the strongest sanctions that we’ve ever put on a country.” Among the biggest targets: Iran’s booming oil fields, an economic engine that fuels Europe and Asia with 4 million barrels of crude a day. But as Tehran and other world leaders recoiled, one country celebrated: Russia.
https://www.newsweek.com/2018/06/08/irans-loss-will-be-putins-unexpected-present-us-sanctions-drive-oil-prices-948173.html
In Britain, billionaire businessman Arron Banks financed the Brexit referendum with the largest donation in British history. Initially, he copped to having one meeting with Russian officials. After the Guardian obtained secret documents blowing up this claim, he admitted there were actually three meetings. Now the Times has even more information, and Banks concedes the number of covert meetings has grown to four.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/the-british-russia-collusion-scandal-is-breaking-wide-open.html
Putin was an outsider even to Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika (restructuring or transformation). He was posted in Dresden during the critical period when Gorbachev took the helm of the USSR.
Shevtsova and many others cautioned in 1999 against seeing Putin "as some kind of superman" based on his previous, and brief, position as head of the FSB, the successor to the KGB. They concluded that "he [Putin] will be greatly limited in what he is able to do."
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/how-the-1980s-explains-vladimir-putin/273135/
This strikes me as a reasonable reason for voting for Trump. — Banno
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