...don't think Russia entrapped Trump, he's a willing participant. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is the point. The trap had to be so clever that Trump sees himself as its central willing player.

So it could be that Trump just consistently has adopted the Russian geopolitical agenda as his own. He had a nice time being wined and dined in Moscow. They seemed keen for him to build a Trump tower there. Gorbachev and Perestroika were still in play. It wouldn't have been so treasonous to see Russia as being a future democratic ally and lucrative business partner.

It could just be that Trump was a very impressionable person. He received warm hospitality. He was encouraged that he could be a larger political voice. Being Trump, that was all he needed to imagine a tilt at being president.

It was a co-incidence that his first policy statements reflected Russian wishes - quite reasonable wishes - for a breaking down of Nato and a united Europe as a precursor to a geopolitics which would give the new Russia some growing room. Also, if the US could wind back its international defence presence generally, that would be comradely too.

Trump was grasping for something interesting to say. So he parroted what he had heard conversationally over a few vodkas and strippers a few months earlier.

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

All very innocent really. But why now, when he is actually president and horrifying his own hawkish generals and intelligence chiefs, is he persisting with this anti-Nato line?

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

So yes. It all could have started in the most untreasonable fashion. Russia was on the way to becoming a friend in 1987. It was a valid question why US tax dollars would be needed to create a ring of Nato and US military bases around the now broken up and broken down USSR. Regan had won the Cold War. Time for the conciliation. One can see that the only thing truly of interest to Trump was a golden phallus powering into the Moscow skyline with his name written in giant capitals.

But now, there is a question of why he would continue to push the same line in a way that today has real geopolitical consequences in a time when it is clear that Russia under Putin is a very different animal?

What's in it for Trump? Does he still just want a Moscow Trump tower? Is he just loyal to old friends? Who can explain the psychology of taking a line that must offend his own US fan-base - assuming of course they see that collapsing Nato and fracturing Europe is not in the US self-interest on any count.

Got an email from Avaaz who are outing Trump as a Russian money launderer. A lot of evidence on this :

Trump’s Russian Laundromat (The New Republic)
https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate

Everything We Know About Russia and President Trump (Committee to Investigate Russia)
https://investigaterussia.org/timelines/everything-we-know-about-russia-and-president-trump

Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers (Buzzfeed News)
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/thomasfrank/secret-money-how-trump-made-millions-selling-condos-to

Trump’s Russian connections (Financial Times)
https://ig.ft.com/sites/trumps-russian-connections/

Dirty money: Trump and the Kazakh connection (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/33285dfa-9231-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a923

Trump's oldest son said a decade ago that a lot of the family's assets came from Russia (Business Insider)
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-jr-said-money-pouring-in-from-russia-2018-2

Sales of Trump properties suggestive of money-laundering - researcher (Reuters)
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-russia-fusion/sales-of-trump-properties-suggestive-of-money-laundering-researcher-idUKKBN1F8058

Tower of secrets: the Russian money behind a Donald Trump skyscraper (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/trumptoronto

Trump Tower Toronto Was 'Investment Scheme And Conspiracy': Lawsuit (Huffington Post)
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/11/07/trump-tower-toronto-lawsuit_n_12849150.html?guccounter=1

If Trump Is Laundering Russian Money, Here’s How It Works (Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/if-trump-is-laundering-russian-money-heres-how-it-works/

Trump's casino was a money laundering concern shortly after it opened (CNN)
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/trump-taj-mahal/index.html

Donald Trump and the mansion that no one wanted. Then came a Russian fertilizer king (Miami Herald)
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article135187364.html

Everything you want to know about Donald Trump's bankruptcies (CNN)
https://money.cnn.com/2015/08/31/news/companies/donald-trump-bankruptcy/

Canada's highest court upholds ruling that Donald Trump did mislead investors (The Independent)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-lawsuit-canada-court-approves-legal-case-against-us-president-a7623566.html

Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/

Why did a Russian pay $95M to buy Trump’s Palm Beach mansion? (The Seattle Times)
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/why-did-a-russian-pay-95m-to-buy-trumps-palm-beach-mansion/

The Russia investigation and Donald Trump: a timeline from on-the-record sources (updated) (Politifact)
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/jul/16/russia-investigation-donald-trump-timeline-updated/

Donald Trump’s Worst Deal: The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (The New Yorker)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/donald-trumps-worst-deal

Trump’s Business of Corruption (The New Yorker)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/trumps-business-of-corruption

Trump lawyer 'paid by Ukraine' to arrange White House talks (BBC)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44215656

After becoming President, Trump has sold millions in real estate in secret deals (Newsweek)
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-real-estate-secret-buyers-777276

Just What Were Donald Trump's Ties to the Mob? (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910

Russian lawyer from infamous Trump Tower meeting admits to being an informant for the Kremlin: Report (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/27/emails-show-new-ties-between-trump-tower-russian-and-kremlin-nbc.html

I read something yesterday about some Russians buying property from Trump for something like $100 million in cash.

Edit: Here

They bought a property of his that was worth $45 million for about $100 million likely for reasons of money laundering. He's in it deep. No wonder he didn't want to become president.

Re: edit. Seems to be a different story to the one I thought. So many of them.

Always careful to side-slip the substance and never, ever meet it openly or address it directly. Because that's not the point, is it? — tim wood

Address what directly? You merely said “reports”. Nothing for me to side-slip from because “reports” says zero.

You offered no qualification.

Don't bother introducing raza to any facts, that's rather pointless. — Metaphysician Undercover

As soon as I opened that article this was in large letters beneath it’s headline.

“A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion“

Now if you can explain how a plausible theory is a fact go right ahead.

Now if you can explain how a plausible theory is a fact go right ahead. — raza

A plausible theory, in order that it is plausible, is of necessity built on facts. Notice I said "facts", and you ask how the theory could be a "fact". So the article goes through some facts, and builds a theory based on those facts.

But as I said, it seems rather pointless to bring any facts to your attention. You shrug them off, disregard them, and change the subject. Then the theory is completely implausible to you who is ignorant of the facts.

It’s an opinion piece.


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.

A court is supposed to look at such things in an objective manner so if there is an indictment and it goes to a court, where ‘discovery’ can come into play (which can bring to light HOW such events could have been creatively construed), then that would be that.

However, in the meantime objectivity is not necessarily, or automatically, the business of corporate news outlets who often tie themselves to various political lobby structures.

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

Right, now let's not ignore all those facts.

hey look, you’re entitled to believe whatever story teller is telling you.


We’ll just all have to wait and see how it shakes down.

When the so-called "facts" are corroborated by many different sources, I tend to believe them as facts.

“When the so-called "facts" are corroborated by many different sources, I tend to believe them as facts”

Perhaps do some math.

6 CORPORATIONS CONTROL 90% OF THE MEDIA IN AMERICA

https://www.morriscreative.com/6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america/

Six different corporations adds up to a lot of competition. Add on to that all the foreign sources, and where's the cause for doubt?

No cause for doubt?

Spoken like a true religionist.


Just believe, eh? Belief is everything.


Please do not ever accept to do jury service for the sake of justice.

You're a clown. The best that can be done is to laugh at you, not that you're that funny. You don't need me or my reports; there is a constellation of news reports for you to refute. Good luck with that, clown!

You are an outstanding student of mediocrity.

Trollololo.

:lol:

Thank you for establishing my base and foundation. I aspire always but at least according to you I'm never worse than average. How about you? You're not even mediocre....

And you think you triumph because the issue of Trump is derailed. It is not derailed. It's you that's derailed. It's possible you have something useful to contribute - but when will you do it? Don't you think that when a man walks, acts, and quacks like a duck, that it's odd and noteworthy that Raza will pull out every rhetorical trick to deflect from any consideration that the man either is, or is certainly acting like, a duck? If he is a duck, then he's uniquely dangerous, capable of incalculable harm, but of course since he is not a duck - did someone just quack? - since he is not a duck, don't even consider it!

Just believe, eh? Belief is everything. — raza

See why I said it's pointless to introduce you to any facts?

Two other stories deepen the impression of Putin exploiting useful right-wing idiots as part of his long-term geopolitical cold war.

First, just as Trump's attempts to break up Nato are a puzzle, so was Trump's attack on the Iran nuclear deal. So who wins if Iran is constrained on its oil exports? Well Russia of course.

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

And then there is Putin's engineering of Brexit, another intelligence coup exploiting the gullible right.

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

As background on Putin, this is interesting. He was always much more the outsider than I realised. It may have taken Western intelligence some time to wake up to the extent of Putin as a threat.

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/

And the American people are happy to have as an inept a deal-maker as Trump locked up in cosy one-on-ones with this guy?

Thanks, I hadn't realized the extent of the other angles. Credit where credit is due, Russia with Putin is punching well above its geopolitical weight. Time to wake up and smell the кофе.

Them Ruskies are cunning. First it was always the left-wing - trade unions and students - as the way to undermine the UK establishment in the Cold War years. Now the right-wing seems the best way to affect domestic politics.

The wind of reform used to blow from the globalising international direction. Now it blows from the populist nationalist direction. Russia is set up to exploit the wind whichever way it blows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nato-uncovers-russian-plot-spark-12044455
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-plot-against-the-west-vladimir-putin-donald-trump-europe/
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/07/12/how-the-bbc-lost-the-plot-on-brexit/

I think Trump has stuffed up in his latest argument with Iran. In the past leaders have just allowed Islamic leaders like Rouhani to huff and puff and then they just get on with it behind the scenes anyway.

It seems to me that, by engaging Rouhani publicly and giving an opportunity for war, Trump is empowering Iran. It's not as though the US needs to throw more lives and resources down the Middle Eastern black hole. Any conflict would cost both Iran and the US dearly. Meanwhile China will forge ahead with its strategic goals without such distractions.

Then again, he might be figure that a war usually guarantees a win at the next election via patriotic fervour and a wish not to disrupt the war machine. A war wouldn't hurt his fossil fuel investments either.

If you want to be really paranoid, ask yourself which country has a vast swathe of territory too cold to be much habitable, that might benefit from a bit of global warming?

Fuck the system

Perhaps this should be its own thread; but I will put it here, so it gets seen.

You are on the back of a tandem, riding along comfortably. For a while, the bloke up front changes gears at the right time so that you both get a comfortable ride up hill and down. For a while, he talks to you and steers were you both agree is pleasing.

But over time, he starts to take his own path more often than the one you want; he sits back and lets you do the peddling up hill; he even pinches some of your water.

But you go on peddling, talking gently and trusting that it will turn out alright.

Eventually, your seat has fallen off, your water is gone, you have been steered to a place you do not want to go, and the brakes are only on the front handle bar, so you can't stop.

The only solution becomes to stick your foot in the wheel. You know it will hurt, you know that the guy up front will be pissed, but you know that things have to change.

This strikes me as a reasonable reason for voting for Trump. When the system is so fucked that you can't get any advantage, but won't fix itself, bring it to a stop.

I now suspect that this is what @ArguingWAristotleTiff was trying to tell me. Perhaps I now understand.

Probably. Some. Those that don't just hate immigrants and Muslims like he does. But a heart attack is probably not the best cure for cancer.

This strikes me as a reasonable reason for voting for Trump. — Banno

Trump is plainly incompetent for the job. The only reason he got elected is that there are sufficient numbers of people who are incapable of comprehending that basic fact, and they project all their fears and hopes onto him. That also explains why, no matter what he does, 'Trump's base' will stick with him - because in their world, facts don't matter. So they're not going to bring anything to a stop, they're going to follow him off the precipice, whereupon everyone will perish.

In breaking news, US scientists have abandoned attempts to clone mammoths, cave lions, and thylacines, and are now working feverishly to clone Lee Harvey Oswald. — Lee Battersby