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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSergey Samoilenko post on Trump is making the rounds.
July 1987, Moscow, USSR.
41-year-old Donald Trump arrives in Moscow with his wife, Czech model Ivana Zelnichkova, at the invitation of the Soviet Ambassador to the United States (!!! ) Yuri Dubinina. The invitation was approved by the politicalburo of the ck kprs.
Trump, who is in a financial crisis - his assets are plummeting rapidly and the debt is rising - reflects on his condition in a famous joke:
-- "See that beggar in the hat on 5th Avenue?" "- he tells his companion, who just gave a diamond necklace.
"That man is 1.5 billion dollars richer than me! "
"But he's got nothing!" "
"He has nothing, but I have 1.5 billion in debt!" "
Returning from Moscow, bankrupt Trump unexpectedly receives a loan from a consortium of 16 banks and buys a Plaza Hotel in New York. Soon, it will get another loan from a consortium of 22 banks to buy Eastern Air Lines Shuttle (renamed Trump Shuttle).
What happened in Moscow in 1987? Who has been funding Trump?
Financing came from Soviet sources of KGB in the United States - through guarantees of loans, not direct monetary payments. In Moscow-1987, Trump's first political contract took place - he was offered support for a future US presidential campaign, and he agreed.
https://www.facebook.com/sergey.samoilenko.5/posts/pfbid02BkuN9asrJ3CU4Z5TU7wcS4SCAFsgLFxospJErrzyeynm3Fkp3TSh1GVbBmsh61MGl

Tickle
(3,954 posts)I am now.
Good grief
Irish_Dem
(67,821 posts)niyad
(123,162 posts)MadameButterfly
(2,762 posts)Last edited Mon Mar 24, 2025, 07:47 PM - Edit history (1)
evidence, proof even?
Mtnmama
(7 posts)Their jobs are on the chopping block if they oppose him. And neither do his supporters. They, even when such facts are brought to their attention, brush it off and continue the worship of their idol.
Irish_Dem
(67,821 posts)They are done with democracy.
MadameButterfly
(2,762 posts)or their kid gets deported. Or they can't pay their mortgage, their local school and hospital closes, they get taxed for a foreign war, they can't buy a car, they need a government service that no longer exists, someone they care about gets arrested for speaking....For them, autocracy is too abstract. They don't understand the protections they have until they lose them.
The sooner we can educate them so it doesn't have to go this far, the better. We have to make them care.
Irish_Dem
(67,821 posts)It is only the regular guy who has to worry.
MadameButterfly
(2,762 posts)so will the politicians. As long as we ensure elections.
Irish_Dem
(67,821 posts)We don't know if we will have real elections again.
Unfortunately we are well past the point at which this has any resilience for this country. It burns our arse, but their 1/3 know this and are perfectly fine waiting it, and the "middle" 1/3 simply don't care at this point.
TheRickles
(2,676 posts)So this is important info to add to the mix.
Lonestarblue
(12,539 posts)I’m sure it was obvious to anyone in the Politburo that Trump is a weak man with no principles easily manipulated by money. It’s quite a coup for Russia to have placed one of their assets in the Oval Office.
Walleye
(39,475 posts)dchill
(41,917 posts)Walleye
(39,475 posts)dchill
(41,917 posts)Walleye
(39,475 posts)dchill
(41,917 posts)Walleye
(39,475 posts)Meowmee
(8,524 posts)Last edited Mon Mar 24, 2025, 06:31 PM - Edit history (1)
There was another article more recently 2-3 weeks ago maybe by one of his russian contacts.
FalloutShelter
(13,241 posts)From Louise Mensch already knows all of this….
And I also remember her getting dragged and pretty much cancelled.
All of this has been out there and ignored.
WTFU America.
live love laugh
(15,146 posts)Walleye
(39,475 posts)live love laugh
(15,146 posts)Walleye
(39,475 posts)Evolve Dammit
(20,493 posts)BoRaGard
(4,922 posts)money money money
niyad
(123,162 posts)niyad
(123,162 posts)immigrants, and he cheated on all of them.
rickyhall
(5,097 posts)RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA IS COVER.
markodochartaigh
(2,603 posts)after the fall of the Soviet Union state assets were sold to oiligarchs. It would be interesting to know how the KGB's assets were distributed.
erronis
(18,893 posts)He brought a lot of comrades along from his time in the KGB. A very smart and very evil operator.
multigraincracker
(35,413 posts)So he can’t stand her. Plus he fears dogs and has never owned one.
The_REAL_Ecumenist
(903 posts)Putin's former Security Chief & present his"Presidential Aide" though a statement he gave to the Russian newpaper Kommersant, when Patrushev said: "To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them."
This has been a BLARING KLAXON that EXPLICITLY informed the world that the Nacho Nero was ASSISTED in his "WIN" in the 2024 General Election. When I pointed out that the election was wonky and was clearly problematic, some Duer's made it seem as if I were a conspiracy theorist. Pootie's been all but OUTRIGHT admitting that minus his "HHELP", dump wouldn't NOT have "Won". Anyone remember "COZY BEAR" in the 2016 General election? Why are SO many people determined to ignore what the Russian Govt has been laughing and telling the world what they did? I don't get it.
Kid Berwyn
(19,896 posts)Craig Unger lifted up the lid...
Trump’s Russian Laundromat
How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.
By CRAIG UNGER
The New Republic, July , 2017
Excerpt...
Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987, only a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Invited by Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, Trump was flown to Moscow and Leningrad—all expenses paid—to talk business with high-ups in the Soviet command. In The Art of the Deal, Trump recounted the lunch meeting with Dubinin that led to the trip. “One thing led to another,” he wrote, “and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.”
Over the years, Trump and his sons would try and fail five times to build a new Trump Tower in Moscow. But for Trump, what mattered most were the lucrative connections he had begun to make with the Kremlin—and with the wealthy Russians who would buy so many of his properties in the years to come. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. boasted at a real estate conference in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
The money, illicit and otherwise, began to rain in earnest after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. President Boris Yeltsin’s shift to a market economy was so abrupt that cash-rich gangsters and corrupt government officials were able to privatize and loot state-held assets in oil, coal, minerals, and banking. Yeltsin himself, in fact, would later describe Russia as “the biggest mafia state in the world.” After Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin as president, Russian intelligence effectively joined forces with the country’s mobsters and oligarchs, allowing them to operate freely as long as they strengthen Putin’s power and serve his personal financial interests. According to James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey & Company who consulted on the Panama Papers, some $1.3 trillion in illicit capital has poured out of Russia since the 1990s.
At the top of the sprawling criminal enterprise was Semion Mogilevich. Beginning in the early 1980s, according to the FBI, the short, squat Ukrainian was the key money-laundering contact for the Solntsevskaya Bratva, or Brotherhood, one of the richest criminal syndicates in the world. Before long, he was running a multibillion-dollar worldwide racket of his own. Mogilevich wasn’t feared because he was the most violent gangster, but because he was reputedly the smartest. The FBI has credited the “brainy don,” who holds a degree in economics from Lviv University, with a staggering range of crimes. He ran drug trafficking and prostitution rings on an international scale; in one characteristic deal, he bought a bankrupt airline to ship heroin from Southeast Asia into Europe. He used a jewelry business in Moscow and Budapest as a front for art that Russian gangsters stole from museums, churches, and synagogues all over Europe. He has also been accused of selling some $20 million in stolen weapons, including ground-to-air missiles and armored troop carriers, to Iran. “He uses this wealth and power to not only further his criminal enterprises,” the FBI says, “but to influence governments and their economies.”
In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. In 2005, Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian intelligence agent who defected to London, recorded an interview with investigators detailing his inside knowledge of the Kremlin’s ties to organized crime. “Mogilevich,” he said in broken English, “have good relationship with Putin since 1994 or 1993.” A year later Litvinenko was dead, apparently poisoned by agents of the Kremlin.
Continues...
https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate
niyad
(123,162 posts)visibility?
Kid Berwyn
(19,896 posts)Clouds Passing
(4,323 posts)
dchill
(41,917 posts)PCIntern
(27,251 posts)and everyone else.
John LeCarre couldn’t come up with the rationale for why this is acceptable .
Sneederbunk
(16,029 posts)niyad
(123,162 posts)republianmushroom
(19,426 posts)lastlib
(25,691 posts)The Felon/Crime Minister is CLEARLY in bed with some bad actors, Vladdy-Daddy being at the top of the list. This needs to be spread far and wide!
Liberal In Texas
(15,090 posts)UpInArms
(52,548 posts)The disinformation capital
niyad
(123,162 posts)and comes from multiple sources, including the documentary, "Active Measures", and David Enrich's book, "Dark Towers", as well as those by Craig Unger. And we have spawn four's boast that they got all the money they needed from ruzzia.
I do believe TFG is a Russian asset … I just don’t know how much weight I would give to the fb post
SergeStorms
(19,547 posts)on every form of media in the country.
What's that? Conservatives own nearly every form of media in the country? Never mind.
DFW
(57,718 posts)In the 1980s, there was a high-ranking KGB agent, stationed for a while in Geneva, Switzerland, named Anatoly Samoilenko.
Maybe a connection, maybe not................
SleeplessinSoCal
(10,034 posts)Read about it's history of ownership winding presently with Katara Hospitality "formerly known as Qatar National Hotels Company, is the largest hotel owner, developer and operator in Qatar."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Hotel?wprov=sfla1
joanbarnes
(1,982 posts)Hekate
(97,148 posts)Karasu
(920 posts)TBF
(35,075 posts)although I must say she is not very good at hiding how much she hates her job.