"America's Gorbachev"

[Kid Berwyn]

... Is what they call Donald J Trump in the Kremlin.



And here's why:

Putin Is Banking On a Trump Win for His New World Order

Donald Trump’s nickname in the Kremlin? The American Gorbachev. Officials believe his chaos will be the downfall of the US.

By Mikhail Zygar
Vanity Fair, June 25, 2024

Idon’t know which moment in American history Donald Trump imagines when he says, “Make America great again.” He has never given a clear answer in any speech or interview. But I know exactly which moment Vladimir Putin imagines in his own vision for Russian greatness. It is February 1945, when Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill divided the world in Crimea.

Three months remained before the surrender of Nazi Germany, but it was clear that the Allies were winning. To determine what the world would look like after the defeat of the Third Reich, the US president, British prime minister, and Soviet leader went to the city of Yalta, a resort area in Crimea. Stalin achieved everything he wanted: He convinced his then allies that he should have his own “sphere of influence,” which included all of Eastern Europe—Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the former Czechoslovakia, and the former Yugoslavia. The leaders also devised the United Nations Security Council, on which they secured permanent member seats for their countries.

SNIP...

The fantasies of Kremlin strategists have developed like this: A new Yalta Conference with Putin and Trump might not necessarily take place in Crimea. For greater symbolism, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, roughly equidistant from Russia and the US, would be more suitable. My sources in Moscow, who wish to remain anonymous for security reasons, suggest that such a summit could look good on Fiji. The Pacific archipelago is conveniently equidistant from Russia and the US.

Putin’s entourage understands that despite his ambitions, he is not like Stalin in 1945, and today’s Russia is no match for the Soviet Union. Therefore, the dreams of the current Kremlin inhabitants suggest that another participant in the new “Big Three” should be China, represented by Xi Jinping. They believe that the real Cold War is beginning between China and the US, so the upcoming “Yalta: Fiji” should formulate the rules of this confrontation. And Putin is ready to be content with the role of the third partner, a kind of modern-day Churchill. Of course, he wants to secure his place on the global board of directors that is the UN Security Council and expects to be allotted his sphere of influence: the countries of the former Soviet Union.

SNIP...

For them, Mikhail Gorbachev is not a democrat or a reformer. For former KGB officers, Gorbachev is a demagogue and a narcissist who desperately wanted to please the audience but had no plan of action; a president whose policies were so chaotic that the empire began to fall apart, with different parts declaring their independence. This is wishful thinking, but Putin’s inner circle would like to believe that Trump could become just such a president.

CONTINUES...

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/6671dc515e0117f807af4351/master/w_1920,c_limit/VF102024_NewYalta_MarkHarris.jpg

America's main adversary, Russia, helped Trump win in 2016, 2020 and, going just from the bots on X, in 2024. Their aim is to destroy the United States of America. And to think We the People are turning over the reigns of power to Putin's tool without even raising a question about the legitimacy of the election makes me sick.

[Irish_Dem]

1. Putin has achieved his goal.

The downfall of the US.

And Russia becoming the new global superpower.

[Fish700]

2. China, but I get your point.

[Irish_Dem]

3. Russia, China, North Korea, Saudi, Iran, South Africa.

More people will read comments if they are brief and to the point.

But yes the geopolitical tectonic plates have shifted enormously.

We see the new global superpowers lining up and dividing their spoils of war.

Putin gets Europe and the US.

China the Pacific and Taiwan will be next to fall.

We could write a book about how this will unfold.

[Kid Berwyn]

5. The most successful spy operation of all time.

While the Orange Turd may be held to account for "election interference" by hiding hush money payments, "mishandling" Top Secret and Sensitive Defense Information, "stealing" a presidential election, "hiding" money from various banks and the taxman, plus who knows what high crimes and misdemeanors else, one important area has not been addressed by Special Counsel or the investigative units of mainstream media:

As pee-resident, Trump represented the most successful spy operation of all time: Putin’s insertion of an active agent into the Oval Office.



Unretouched photo in which then-President Donald Trump sends former KGB colonel Vladimir Putin a conspiratorial wink.

Trump hid his calls with Putin. Now, Biden has access to them.

What was said between the two leaders is a great mystery, one that advisers to the current president say is imperative to find out.

By NATASHA BERTRAND and DANIEL LIPPMAN
Politico, 02/09/2021

Few Trump-era mysteries are as intriguing as what the 45th president said to Vladimir Putin in at least a dozen rambling, off-the-cuff calls and meetings over four years. Understanding what was said between the two could help illuminate whether Trump ever revealed sensitive information or struck any deals with the Kremlin leader that could take the new administration by surprise.

Now that President Joe Biden is in the White House, he can see for himself.

“They don’t need our approval to see those [records],” a former Trump White House official said, referring to the new Biden national security team. “Biden owns all the call materials. There is only one president at a time.”

SNIP…

“It is a national security priority to find out what Trump said to Putin” over his four years in office, said one former national security official who is close to the new president. “Some things, like what happened in some face-to-face meetings where no American translator or note-taker was present, may never be fully known. But I would be very surprised if the new national security team were not trying to access” the call records.

SNIP…

Trump went to particularly great lengths to keep his in-person conversations with the Russian leader private, from confiscating his interpreter’s notes to forgoing American translators and notetakers altogether in their meetings. That desire for secrecy has extended even past his time in office. One former Trump official argued last week that records of Trump’s conversations with Putin, which often lasted an hour or more, should not be made available to his successor.

SOURCE: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/09/biden-can-access-trump-putin-calls-468100

In his capacity as pee-resident, Trump represented an existential threat to national security as an agent working to advance the interests of Vladimir Putin. Therefore, in lieu of an investigation by the press or Congress, it would advance the national interest for the Department of Justice to investigate the troubling relationship between Boss Putin and Toad Trump. (Otherwise, without involvement by DoJ, Every Good American would want to perform a Citizen's Arrest the next time the guy is in town.)

Trump’s Top Targets in the Russia Probe Are Experts in Organized Crime

Some of President Trump’s favorite targets in the Russia probe have spent their careers in the Justice Department and the FBI investigating organized crime and money laundering, particularly as they pertain to Russia.

NATASHA BERTRAND
The Atlantic, AUG 30, 2018

Bruce Ohr. Lisa Page. Andrew Weissmann. Andrew McCabe. President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked these FBI and Justice Department officials as dishonest “Democrats” engaged in a partisan “witch hunt” led by the special counsel determined to tie his campaign to Russia. But Trump’s attacks have also served to highlight another thread among these officials and others who have investigated his campaign: their extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia.

snip...

Trump’s latest obsession is with Bruce Ohr, a career Justice Department official who spent years investigating Russian organized crime and corruption—an expertise he shared with another Trump target named Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative who provided valuable intelligence on Russia to the State Department and the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force prior to authoring the Trump-Russia dossier in 2016. Ohr and Steele met in 2007, according to The New York Times, and stayed in touch as a result of their shared interests and mutual respect. Trump has tweeted about Ohr nearly a dozen times this month alone, complaining about his relationship with Steele and Ohr’s wife’s past work for Fusion GPS—the opposition-research firm that hired Steele in 2016 to research Trump’s Russia ties.

snip...

Trump’s fixation with seeing Ohr ousted from the Justice Department could be perceived as yet another attempt to undermine the credibility of the people who have investigated him. It could also be interpreted as an attack on someone with deep knowledge of the shady characters Trump and his cohort have been linked to, including Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob boss, and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate close to Putin who did business with Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Incidentally, another Manafort associate, the Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, admitted that he only managed to be in business because Mogilevich allowed him to be, according to a leaked 2008 State Department cable.) Ohr was involved in banning Deripaska from the U.S. in 2006, due to his alleged ties to organized crime and fear that he would try to launder money into American real estate. Nearly a decade later, Ohr and the FBI sought Deripaska’s help in taking down overseas criminal syndicates.

Snip...

The president has denied having any business ties to Russia, and his dream of building a Trump Tower Moscow never materialized. But his links to Russian oligarchs and mobsters from the former Soviet Union have been documented: Millions of dollars from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump’s developments and casinos throughout the 1990s, as the journalist Craig Unger has chronicled, as oligarchs looked for a place to hide their money in the West. The Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was once known as a hot spot for Brooklyn mobsters associated with the Russian Mafia, and quickly became the “favorite East Coast destination” of the top Russian mob boss Vyacheslav Ivankov, according to the 2000 book Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America. It was also repeatedly cited by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for having inadequate money-laundering controls.

Continues...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/trumps-top-targets-in-the-russia-probe-are-experts-in-organized-crime/569056/

So. How many Americans even know this story? Most all the people I have asked about it have no clue. And for that ignorance, I blame the Media Monopoly, AKA the mainstream press, comprised of broadcast news organizations and America's major newspapers and news magazines, such as they are.

Of course, there's more to the Trump-Putin Love Story. Trump actually invited the GRU into the Oval Office.



The photo of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and dip above was taken by TASS, the official Russian news agency. The US media were not informed about the 2017 visit. We learned about it because the Unhinged Moron himself spread the pic proudly on social media.

How many people do you know who’ve seen that picture or the one below, taken on an earlier date in the Oval Office? Again, very few.



“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said, according to The Times. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off.”

"I'm not under investigation," he added.

Sources:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/10/527755991/trump-meets-with-russias-lavrov-at-the-white-house-today

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nut-job-james-comey-russia-2017-5

The polls indicating the 2024 Presidential Election currently is a dead-heat demonstrates the power of propaganda and the corrupt nature of America’s profit-driven news media. Were it otherwise, most Americans would know Trump hosted Russia’s top spies and fired America's top counter-espionage agents specializing in catching Russian spies. Putting Trump on trial as a dirty rotten spy would change the narrative, as they say.

That's where the facts led. And that is where criminal investigations should have begun: Trump should be facing a third federal trial, answering charges of espionage on behalf of Russia. Now he's heading back into the Oval Office, a place where the Russians are most welcome.

[Irish_Dem]

7. One of the most successful criminal operations and covert war in world history.

Utterly brilliant and successful.

And most of the US doesn't even know it happened.

[malaise]

8. THIS

Rec

[surfered]

4. He's more like Boris Yeltsin: compliant, demented, befuddled.

The only difference is Trump’s dementia didn’t come from vodka abuse.

[Kid Berwyn]

6. Putin was selected as Yeltsin's replacement by America's oligarchs.

A: The Carlyle Group and Friends.

Who’s Enabling Putin’s Enablers?

BY SAM PIZZIGATI
CounterPunch, March 29, 2022

Where would Vladimir Putin be without the Russian oligarchy? Without Russia’s oligarchs, political leaders of the Western world have concluded, Putin would be tottering. Western leaders have made squeezing Russia’s richest a central piece of their strategy to end Putin’s Ukraine cross-border assault.

These same Western leaders, unfortunately, have failed to take seriously what ought to be an equally pressing question: Where would Russia’s oligarchs be without the West, without the Wall Streeters, wealth managers, and assorted other high-finance riff-raff “paid millions,” as Institute for Policy Studies analyst Chuck Collins puts it, “to help billionaires sequester trillions”?

Western leaders have essentially been ignoring this question almost ever since the old Soviet Union collapsed. And now we’re paying the price. Those Ukraine sanctions against Russia’s oligarchs? They come with a huge loophole. The Western world’s opaque web of tax havens and anonymous corporations is essentially rendering much of those sanctions ineffective.

Snippe…

The U.S. wealth defense industry, we need to remember, hasn’t just been helping Russian oligarchs hide their fortunes. America’s money-handlers have for years been helping them pile up ever grander fortunes. They’ve steered the illicit funds of Russian oligarchs into U.S. real estate, investment funds, and “even factories,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Bernstein, a senior reporter on the 2016 bombshell “Panama Papers” tax avoidance exposé.

The Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has used “a network of banks, law firms and advisers in multiple countries,” the New York Times just reported, to invest “billions in American hedge funds.” Along the way, he tapped the expertise and contacts of U.S. high-finance giants ranging from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to BlackRock and the Carlyle Group.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/29/whos-enabling-putins-enablers/