What President Trump’s Foreign Policy Will Look Like by David Ignatius, Washington Post
Donald Trump proclaimed “America First” on his way to his head-spinning victory in Tuesday’s presidential election, and the success of that message will rock many foreign capitals where leaders have feared that Trump would alter the basics of U.S. foreign policy.
Making predictions about Trump’s foreign policy is difficult, given his lack of experience. But the most likely bet is that as president he will seek to do what he promised during the campaign in breaking from current U.S. approaches to Russia, the Middle East, Europe and Asia…
A Trump foreign policy, based on his statements, will bring an intense “realist” focus on U.S. national interests and a rejection of costly U.S. engagements abroad. It will likely bring these changes:
A move to improve relations with a combative, assertive Russia…
A joint military effort with Russia and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to defeat the Islamic State…
A new push for European allies to pay more for their own defense…
An attempt to alter the terms of trade in Asia by renegotiating trade pacts and forcing China to revalue its currency…
Comments
WHAT did former intel General Flynn holding at least a TS/SCI PROMISE the US Russian Ambassador and did he in fact violate the Logan Act???????
..and there is absolutely no connections between Trump and his staff and Russians.....MAYBE there was far more to the Buzzfeed 17 reports than we think there is?????
Wow, the Post's David Ignatius on Flynn and the Russians.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini....ae8d7e453fff#
REMEMBER Flynn is not yet officially a representative of the US government nor is Trump yet ...YET both he and Trump act as if they are now running the government....
Do not think that Trump FP tweets are cutting it lately with China.....
Chinese tabloid says U.S. needs to 'wage war' to block off South China Sea islands
http://reut.rs/2jpSeOS
Russia's state-sponsored TV: "In response to leaks, Trump might investigate the outgoing White House admin for creating & supporting ISIS."
BUT WAIT ...there is more than ample...actually massive real evidence of Russian...Iranian and Assad support to IS in their early days continuing up to now with the lack of Russian and Assad air strikes on IS...
APPEARS Russian state TV has the wrong subject matter...MAYBE should be ..Russian involvement in and with IS...especially the long years in the illegal oil trade business out of Syria for starters....
SO is the American media and the American people getting a "massive snow job" during the Trump nominee confirmation hearings...APPEARS we are.....
Important statements from Mattis but Spicer says, "at the end of day, each one of them is going to pursue a Trump agenda and a Trump vision".
So SoS and SecDef and future CIA Director are hard on Russia BUT Trump is Putin friendly.....
SO will they walk if called out and must change their state views because of the Trump proRussian tilt...
87 US tanks and troops in Poland are a threat, #Russia says.
How many Russian tanks are in Ukraine, BTW?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38592448
Russian tanks in eastern Ukraine....over 800
BUT WAIT...the new Trump Chief of Staff Preibus stated...they can have their opinions but they trump sets the agenda and vision....WHICH for his friend Putin and lifting Crimea sanctions and working together in Syria with Assad is again exactly not what the SoS..SecDef and CIA Director stated this week.....
Fake source calls intelligence authorities for their "fake evidence". Why not.
Alleged Russian Hacker ‘Guccifer 2.0’ Is Back After Months Of Silence
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/all...ths-of-silence
Quote:
"I’d like to make it clear enough that these accusations are unfounded. I have totally no relation to the Russian government. I’d like to tell you once again I was acting in accordance with my personal political views and beliefs,” Guccifer 2.0 wrote. “The technical evidence contained in the reports doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. This is a crude fake.”
Russian hacker claiming to be Romanian who yet cannot speak Romanian telling the US he is not Russian and telling the US IC that YES he did hack DNC..BUT yet he is not Russian nor works for GRU.....
Interesting the Russians roll him out to support Trump's view on the 400lb kiddie hacker on his bed hacking DNC....
SURE hope Giuliani knows a thing or two about hacking BUT hey Trump stated he was both smart and knew about hacking....
Giuliani better get the Trump proposed hacking group up to speed in a hurry.....
Israeli Controversial Phone-Hacking Firm "Cellebrite" Got Hacked; 900GB Of Data Stolen
http://thehackernews.com/2017/01/mobile-hacking-cellebrite.html
BBC News - US tanks and troops in Poland a threat, Russia says
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38592448
Let's see one ABCT is a speed bump....Russian creates an entire new Army Tank Group across the border from the US speed bump.....
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/13/trump-s-man-stephen-ba…
Steve Bannon’s Dream: A Worldwide Ultra-Right
Bannon and Breitbart are looking to build a Trumpian media empire in Europe by courting its most mediagenic right-wing extremists.
Christopher Dickey
Asawin Suebsaeng
11.13.16 10:06 PM ET
PARIS—Never mind that the French cable television report on Stephen Bannon made him look like one of the winos living on grates in Paris, or that it compared Bannon, Donald Trump’s grizzled éminence grise and newly-named White House chief strategist, to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief Josef Goebbels.
And never mind the program’s citations of rampant sexism on Bannon’s pseudo-news service, Breitbart. All he had to do in that clip was say he’d like to expand Breitbart’s operations to France and allude to Marion Maréchal-Le Pen as “the new rising star” on the French version of the alt-right and she started gushing on Twitter in English:
Interestingly, the citations from Bannon on that broadcast by the mainstream LCI network did not mention Marine Le Pen, the 48-year-old woman who has turned her father’s fringe right-wing party, the National Front, into the most dynamic and aggressive political force in the country.
The reference cited was to “the Le Pen women” generally, as if there were so many, and then to the comely Marion, a member of the French parliament who is only 26 years old and has the xanthachroidal allure of a younger Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham.
Must be something in the air, l’esprit du temps, as they say. Let’s take a breath and look at what’s really going on here.
Bannon’s support for European far-right parties runs far deeper than his interest in Marion Maréchal-Le Pen or the National Front. He brags about his international Breitbart operation as “the platform” for the American alt-right, and has for years been thinking globally, with an affinity for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Alternative for Germany (AfD), and the Party for Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands, all of which have earned glowing coverage on the pages of Breitbart.
But the election of Bannon’s man Donald Trump as president of the United States has made the globalization of Breitbart and its message infinitely more plausible than it ever was before, and politicians once considered Europe’s deplorables are now rushing to bask in the gilded glow of Trump and Bannon.
On Saturday, Britain’s Nigel Farage, whose blatant and acknowledged lies helped convince his countrymen to opt out of the European Union in the Brexit vote, visited the president-elect in his eponymous Fifth Avenue tower.
Farage emerged from the meeting looking like he’d just won the jackpot at one of the pre-bankruptcy Trump casinos, suggesting that the new president’s “inner team” was not too happy with Tory Prime Minister Theresa May, since she’d been skeptical of Brexit before the vote. Would that “inner team” be Bannon? In our post-factual world, maybe we can say, “People say…”
Breitbart, which currently has operations in London and Jerusalem, certainly has plans to expand in France and Germany with new bureaus to cultivate and promote the populist-nationalist lines there.
“He has long wanted to work with all of those parties, but that was only in promoting them with Breitbart,” a source close to Bannon told The Daily Beast. “Now he has the power of the White House to do it.”
Bannon, elevated Sunday night from the head of Trump’s favorite public-relations outfit masquerading as news outlet to a White House senior counselor, is right now the direct line between the European far-right and Donald J. Trump, leader of the free world.
“If Stephen gets the offer to be Chief of Staff and says yes, then he runs the show,” a Trump aide told The Daily Beast before Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus was picked for that job, and Bannon received his very, very senior position.
That’s more than a little bit disturbing, considering that Bannon was openly influenced by Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, who rose to prominence as a blonde bombshell before producing such masterpieces of propaganda as “Triumph of the Will.”
But again, the Trumpian zeitgeist makes us digress.
So strong are the winds of right-wing change at the moment—even if it’s not clear whether they’re just gusts or sustained—that when the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, convened EU foreign ministers for an urgent dinner Sunday night to discuss the impact of the Trump victory, two quickly declined: Britain’s once and future Brexiteer, Boris Johnson, which was not much of a surprise; and France’s Jean-Marc Ayrault, who demurred as if he had something better to do.
In fact, his Socialist government is scrambling to find right-wing credibility before elections next spring: a Sisyphean task given polls showing President François Hollande now has an approval rating of 4 percent (you read that right: 4 percent).
From the Netherlands, The Daily Beast’s Nadette De Visser reports that Geert Wilders (famous for his dyed blonde hair) is tapping into Trump's one-liners: “We will make the Netherlands great again,” he tweets, adding: “I will give the Netherlands back to the Dutch because the Netherlands is our country.”
“Everywhere democratic revolutions are underway. They will drive the elites from power,” says Wilders, whose Twitter feed seems to mirror Trump’s—or is it Bannon's?—at every turn.
Similartly, Wilders has no qualms about using the Kremlin’s RT television network to broadcast his message. In an interview with RT, Wilders said, “Politics will never be the same and what I call the ‘patriotic spring’ is an enormous incentive. What I say to the Europeans is, ‘Look at America, what America can do, we can do as well.’”
And up to a point the strategy appears to be working. Geert Wilders’s PVV is on the rise in some of the polls, which suggest it will be the biggest political party in the Netherlands. After Trump’s victory, the PVV went from 27 to 29 potential seats in the Dutch parliament, which would make it the single biggest bloc. But Wilders's record shows he’d find it almost impossible to pull together coalition partners in the 150-seat assembly.
So where he’ll continue to build his notoriety will be on the international stage—a mission Breitbart is likely to make very possible.
Barbie Latza Nadeau reports from Rome that Matteo Salvini of the Northern League, who may be the most blatantly racist and xenophobic of all the West European wingnuts, says he’s offered to help Trump make inroads in European politics. “If Brexit teaches us something, if the election of Donald Trump teaches us something,” Salvini tweeted, “it is that today we get going to take over the power.”
But not everybody is as flattered by Trump/Bannon’s attentions as Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, and Matteo Salvini have shown themselves to be. And the least flattered, most offended of all may be the European leader most often compared to Donald Trump in terms of background and style.
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is patently offended by the analogy. “Of course there are some similarities in that he is an entrepreneur who decided to use his expertise to help his country,” Berlusconi said of Trump to Corriere della Sera. “But I have never opted for protectionist or isolationist policies that would hurt the country,” and “politics has taught me that people are not judged by programs, but by their behavior. Let’s see him at work.”
Good idea. And once the Trump tsunami has passed, let’s see what is left of Europe.
French far right leader Marine Le Pen seen at Trump Tower
http://reut.rs/2jnCAnb
.@seanspicer tells me Marine le Pen is NOT meeting w/ PEOTUS or anyone else from transition team. Adds “Trump Tower is open to the Public”
Yesterday Trump compared US intelligence community to Nazis. Today leader of France fascism Marine Le Pen spotted in Trump Tower.
You have to wonder if Donald Trump was dumb enough to invite the Russia funded Marie Le Pen to Trump Tower. 21M euros was the loan until the Putin suggested bank went into bankruptcy and now Russia is demanding back the first 9M Euros paid out....and she is asking for another 20M Euros as her Party is out of funds for the coming election....
Great way to start off your relations with current French government.
Trump continues to use the Russian SIXDs f propaganda when he tweet...in this ne he is using DEFLECT...DISTORT...DISMISS.....WHY dose does he in fact lie at any chance he has????
WHY is a US President using Russian propaganda tactics on the American general population....
Trump falsely says DNI Clapper said the dossier was phony, in fact he said the IC had not made a determination about its reliability.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 3h
3 hours ago
James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated. Made up, phony facts.Too bad!
Trump Shows How to Smother a Scandal: With a Bigger Story
https://nyti.ms/2jzIBwe#
Think about this....
"early symptoms of several of the shortcomings afflicting unconsolidated democracies and competitive authoritarian regimes around the world"
DOES the US now have a vengeful President in the form of a Nixon 2.0????
AT&T is seeking to buy Time Warner, including CNN. A few minutes after the AT&T execs arrived, Trump sent his anti-CNN tweet.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 1h
1 hour ago
.@CNN is in a total meltdown with their FAKE NEWS because their ratings are tanking since election and their credibility will soon be gone!
Freedom of the press and free speech needs to be defended in the US...really?????
Creeping authoritarianism watch - member of Congress calls on reporter to be fired/banned for asking questions of president-elect. Not good.
Go back to the actual recording of this exchange and you will NOTICE the so called President elect completely disrespecting a citizen of the US ......
What has happened to the rule of law...good governance and transparency these days under Trump...gone forever it seems now...
US to #Israel: "Don't share intelligence with us under #Trump or #Putin will know."
Let this melt in your mouth.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...0.html#…
Kleptocracy...Russian black money and real estate deals.....
Kleptocracy Intv. @KleptocracyIntv
Must-read from @HarvardIR on the link between kleptocrats, anonymous companies, and US real estate:
http://hir.harvard.edu/lifestyles-rich-infamous-confronting-dirty-money…
WHY was the FBI FISA request to monitor the Trump campaign turned down?????
Amazing. FISA court turned down 12 warrant requests, total, out of 38,000 between 1979 and 2015. But this one it rejected. WHY was that??????
Guardian says FBI demanded a FISA warrant to monitor the Trump campaign.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier… …
FBI applied for FISA warrant to monitor 4 members of Trump team suspected of contacts with Russian officials.
Now imagine if Comey had revealed *this* during the campaign
In Gallup polling, highest disapproval ever for incoming prez was 25%. Per @ThePlumLineGS @QuinnipiacPoll puts Trump at double that: 51%.
Trump starts out with an approval rating of 37%, a new Quinnipiac poll finds:
https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2415 …
Russia is lying again...which in itself is nothing new these days....
The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was "total nonsense" that Russian officials had assembled a file of compromising information on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Two U.S. officials said on Tuesday evening that the heads of four U.S. intelligence agencies had last week presented Trump with classified documents which included unverified claims that Russian intelligence operatives had compromising information about him.
Addressing reporters on a conference call, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the dossier containing the claims was a hoax which had been dreamt up to further harm U.S.-Russia relations, which are already at their lowest level since the Cold War.
"It is an attempt to damage our bilateral relations. It is pulp fiction," said Peskov, who also roundly dismissed as false assertions in the dossier that he himself was heavily involved in running a Russian campaign to undermine defeated presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
"You have to react to this with a certain humor, but there's also a sad side to this. Hysteria is being whipped up to maintain a political witch hunt."
Peskov said the Kremlin did not engage in compiling compromising dossiers on anyone and was focused on building relations with Russia's foreign partners instead.
On Tuesday evening, Trump dismissed the reports that Russia had compromising information on him. "FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!" he wrote in a Twitter post.
Asked to respond to the prospect of new U.S. sanctions affecting Russia's oil and gas sector, Peskov said such measures, if they happened, would damage Russia, bilateral ties, and the global economy.
The Russian energy sector would definitely get compensation if such sanctions were imposed, he added.
Peskov said the Kremlin was unfazed by reports that Trump's pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, would say at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday that Russia posed a danger.
It has previously praised Tillerson, who has experience of working with top Russian officials in the oil sector.
Peskov said the Kremlin stood by its assessment of Tillerson as someone who was willing to listen and was constructive, but was aware he was likely to be a tough operator too.
"We understand that Tillerson will continue to be quite tough in pursuing his line," said Peskov, saying the Kremlin was not wearing rose-tinted glasses when it came to the former U.S. oilman.
NOTE: Putin's own spokesperson failed to mention that when one visit the current Russia and even worse during the soviet days....
You must file a visa application at least four weeks in advance...when the US Army sent an exercise planning team to Moscow in 2013 all military personnel had to fill out in detail virtually their lives on the application before the visa was issued...when they arrived in Moscow their Russian military counterparts even knew about their social media sites and information taken from those sites....
So when a Trump visits the Soviet Union in 1987 during the Cold War nothing was collected and archived on him as well as his visits since then....COME on if you believe that did not happen I have an entire desert in the North Pole to sell to you....
As someone who visited the SU in the 70s all walls and electrical outlets in rooms used by any American "had eyes and ears"...and it led to the KGB...no different in the 2000s
NOW the interesting question is...is a video tape compromising him to be considered as a dossier....??? No not rally so in fact it might be the truth..BUT if one asked do you have any materials on Trump...then he is lying if he says no we do not....
Especially since Trump had a lot of financial dealings with some very rich Russians who are very close friends to Putin....
Reference the Buzzfeed article...some truth in this comment.....MSM has never been interested in ethnics...fact checking...Russian fake news and trolling and or following up critical items when it was concerning Trump....were they?????
Oh NOW we have a debate over journalistic ethics? Where was that when Wikileaks hit pieces were being published??
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan
/10/buzzfeed-publishes-donald-trump-russia-documents-ethics-questions?CMP=share_btn_tw
FROM a very good and knowledgeable about Russia US writer about this article
As often the case, @MarkGaleotti has among the quickest and sharpest thoughts on Trump dossier. Questions>answers.
http://www.raamoprusland.nl/417-the-trump-dossier-dynamite-or-disinform…
Could be disinformation and interesting if so....
Appears Trump...Manafort...Page...Flynn...Bannon..are at odds with the new incoming SoS.....
Tillerson: Russia must be held accountable – CNN
http://www.unian.info/world/1718456-tillerson-russia-must-be-held-accou…
An alarmed @SenJohnMcCain gave FBI dossier written by reputable source alleging secret Trump-Russia ties, collusion
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier…
NOW you see the exact reason Putin needed Trump as President...regardless of how many times he has stated the sanctions do not hurt...they hurt..WHAT is equally interesting is that the bulk of the sanctions are Europea..BUT makes the US sanctions hurt is that it effect the flow of Russian held USDs as they must clear through the NYC Federal Bank thus are sanctioned and that hurts...
Finance Ministry: #Russia's Reserve fund to be exhausted in 2017
http://tass.com/economy/898846
Will #Putin invade another neighbor to distract?
BUT WAIT Russian military supported mercenaries have been attacking Ukrainian UAF an average of 44 times per day for the entire 2016...THUS he is already full at war with Ukraine...
Putin’s Real Long Game -late to this but it's one of the best things written on the subject.
http://politi.co/2hYKp1l
Pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia duly notes Rex Tillerson's tough talk on dangerous, resurgent Russia. Strap in, boys!
http://izvestia.ru/news/656755
AGAIN coincidence or not???? It is amazing that this below has been reinforced by both Trump tweets and Trump surrogate statements and interviews that the DNC email hack and WL leaking was really designed to target Sanders voters....AND had nothing to do with pushing voters to vote for Trump....
CarterPage promoted using Wikileaks emails during DNC to exploit anti-establishment young Sanders supporters to turn against Hillary
REMEMBER when Trump was tweeting constantly about Obama's allegedly being Muslim and his birth certificate being fake....Trump was then the leading social media birther and yet now he complains again via twitter....
there is this ancient US saying...."Live by the sword....die by Twitter"...
The interesting thing with the Buzzfeed article is that now social media here in Europe is matching Russian events to the actual article and the similarities are impressive....
These tweets. One can't fake dead bodies even when the story is supposedly by Trump utterly fake.
https://twitter.com/lennutrajektoo
r/status/818931546367361026
…
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/
status/813387571690610688
…
https://twitter.com/lennutrajektoo
r/status/808758679080206336
…
Somebody at Russia's Embassy has been hitting heavily the vodka. Mad, rambling press release y'day about impending Russian witch-hunt
http://www.rusemb.org.uk/fnapr/5932
THERE are those Trump tweet words again...."witch hunt"...
Russian embassy on the talk of impending official anti-Russian witch hunt in Britain
Judging by media reports (The Sunday Times is particular), the British authorities are planning to emulate the Obama Administration and launch an official campaign to counter presumed “concerted drive by Russia to undermine the UK”. It follows the EU summit and the successful humanitarian evacuation from Eastern Aleppo, brokered by Russia, Iran and Turkey, which helped save lives of thousands people and separate bona fide Syrian opposition from foreign terrorists/jihadists, and the adoption of the UN Security Council resolution 2328 on Syria. Now there is a ceasefire in place endorsed by another UNSC resolution. HMG is also widely suspected of and expected to brief the incoming US Administration against Russia.
1. Why now? Is it, like in the US, to provide grounds for a rerun of the June referendum, now assumed to be tainted by “Russian influence”? Or is it to help save the status quo in Europe, under siege by the electorate demanding change? The British experience of this sort includes jingoism of the media at the time of the Crimean War, when Sidney Herbert was hounded for being a relation of Russia’s governor of Novorossiya.
2. It seems that the Western elites will go to great lengths to save their own world with its Washington consensus, Davos and austerity, even if it does no longer benefit anybody else. Its demise is presented as the end of the world, another twilight of Europe. This panic and hysterics is a response to the overall loss of control, which brought about war a hundred years ago. It is also a loss of control over the public debate, exercised by way of the Orwellian newspeak of political correctness. Will the elite protect its vested interest with taxpayers’ money and that of TV licences?
3. Unfortunately, as always, British special services are all too willing to oblige. There exists a longstanding tradition of giving them the benefit of the doubt, partly because ever since Elizabethan age literati and established authors moonlight for the intelligence. As John Le Carre put it, intelligence services are a spiritual home of the political elites. Does it mean that now the Government want the British people to worship in this church? We are surprised by Richard Dearlove’s taking part in this game.
4. Sir Richard, as former MI6 Director, knows as nobody else, that for example, most of the damage to America and its place in the world was done by the George W.Bush Administration. No foreign agents could have accomplished that much. The same is true for former British Governments, although in a less spectacular fashion and on a smaller scale, mostly through inaction. Stephen Hadley recently said that globalisation had been a mistake for its destructive impact on Western society. Lionel Barber writes that the Globalisation 2.0 period is over. Why blame Russia for that?
5. What is untrue about Syria? That the Western intervention in Libya misled both the Government and the opposition? That in 2012, when, by the way, the first convoy of jihadists arrived in Aleppo from Turkey, the US outsourced regime change to its regional allies? That “Islamic State” was born about the same time? That the US-led coalition didn’t bother about “Nusra”, affiliated to “Al-Qaeda”? That the cause of the opposition, whatever it was, has been hijacked by terrorists? That the West was anticipating a fall of Damascus to Isis in October 2015 and didn’t mind? That the British Government’s harsh rhetoric on Syria is meant to cover up its complicity in the deliberate obliteration of Yemen to make it dependent on outside financial assistance in reconstruction?
6. And, of course, history matters. Max Hastings reminded us (in The Spectator) that the appeasement of Hitler was caused by the fact that upper classes had been frightened out of their mind by the Russian revolution. In fact, they decided to outsource resolution of the “problem” of the Soviet Union to the Nazis. It meant experimenting with fascism, the Cliveden Set, Munich, all the way to the Phoney War and Dunkirk. It is worth remembering that Sir Winston Churchill was considered a maverick at the time. Ultimately, defeating Nazi Germany was “outsourced” to the Soviet Union. In Syria, overlooking Isis and then “Nusra”, both proscribed by the UN, means pretty much the same. The latest developments prove precisely that. If we weed the terrorists out of the Syrian landscape, the pro-Syrian opposition and the Government will find middle ground. The next in Syria is a restart of intra-Syrian talks in Kazakhstan.
We don’t expect HMG to win this argument in an open and reasoned debate. We also think that it is plainly wrong for one UNSC permanent member to brief against another. And we challenge the mainstream British media to publish this comment.
Very interesting is the choice words Trump uses in this push back tweet of his on the 35 pages.....
"Witch hunt" are the words he uses WHICH he used as the Russian hacking story heated up and THEN "the witch hunt" turned out to be proven to be true by the US IC......
BTW...WHAT turned off the ongoing first sex scandal from 2005 in the campaign....SUDDENLY the FBI redo of supposedly just found long lost Clinton emails....on new computers and in the end ..absolutely nothing came out of this FBI surprise effort to support Trump..came out of the FBI NYC office a well known anti Clinton group...
Now again the words "witch hunt"....ARE being used again...
WHAT do we know......
1. the former State Security Agency of Czechoslovakia (BtS) does indeed have files on Trump and his first wife from the 80s..EVERYTHING in the 80s was shared with the Soviet KGB....
2. we know Trump was given special treatment in his invitation to the soviet Union in 1987
3. it has been verified by a US Court of Law that the casino empire owned and run by Trump engaged in money laundering operations and was fined 10M USDs for that activity
4. we know that Trump denied knowing that a highly wanted by the FBI Russian mobster was living and working out of Trump Tower
5. we know that Trump has a very high volume of Russian oligarch investment into his real estate properties AND he is carrying a debt load of 650M USD that needs to be serviced
6. we know that after his SEVENTH bankruptcy he was cut off from all US bank lies of credit and suddenly money flowed from unknown sources in 2000
7. we know that he has been associated clearly with known Russian oligarchs with close ties to the Russian mob
8. we know his son-in-law did a 256M USD deal with a known Russian mobster
In addition we know Trump denied bitterly that the Russian meddled in the election and to his benefit...AND we know he rejected all IC intel until confronted directly with the evidence....
AND we know that a number of his advisors starting with his natsec advisor has close ties and connections to Russians in Moscow THAT have not been explained as Trump felt it was unnecessary and his voters did not care...HIS quote......
AND we have Trump not wanting to reveal any of his tax information now deconflict himself from his businesses....
BTW....when the Democrats and social media were pushing countless complaints of fake news being used to support Trump..Trump said nothing about fake news...NOW he screams against so called "fake news"....
AND then we are to believe his tweets........
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 9h
9 hours ago
FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 8h
8 hours ago
'BuzzFeed Runs Unverifiable Trump-Russia Claims' #FakeNews
IMPORTANT....WHEN Trump feels he can sue to end a story or block publication of something negative about him..he goes all out...HE FULLY understands the UK liable laws...
BUT this time...utter silence on the threat of liable suing front...WHY can it be possible that Buzzfeed has backup materials that they could produce at a court hearing on liable and Trump knows this....????
REMEMBER when a UK boulevard press outlet ran the story that Trump's wife had worked the prostitution side during her early modeling years....he pushed back and she even threatened to sue in England under the UK liable laws...BUT nothing came of the threat...out of fear that in fact something was indeed there...
MAJOR BET on my part....
I am betting that the so called Trump press conference today will be nothing more than his reading a statement and taking no questions..as he must know the questions on Russian hacking...his and his advisor ties to Russians and Russian money and now the Russian sex article WOULD automatically be asked about....WHICH brings back up his 2005 sex statements
European based social media open source analysts are moving as fast as they can to confirm and or deny this as true and or "fake news"...if "fake" then they are concerned about possible damage to Trump critics.....who might run with these 35 pages.....as the source of much of this comes from "Russian sources"....
EVER NOTICE that US MSM shies away from actually conducti g investigative journalism?????
CNN appears to have buried the lede a bit
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report…
Waiting for WaPo to engage as they announced a rapid response team of journalists to research and respond quickly to raising articles....
......the existence of the 35-page unverified dossier was mentioned in the synopsis; it wasn't the entirety (or even the bulk) of their info.
This 35 pages allows one to see the dotted lines between individuals and events inside and outside Russia and the US Trump campaign...
Interesting: Head of Putin Admin & Leningrad pal Ivanov became worried & angry, came to oppose Trump op in August. He was sacked same month.
I keep going back....WHEN the IC felt the need to include a so called unverified report....THEN there is a fire somewhere....if they collectively felt that it was a farce then it would not have been included....BUT I highly suspect they were able to confirm and or deny pieces and or complete portions based on the travel records of say Carter Page....and definitely Manafort's activities did not go unseen...
REMEMBER there are a few US ex CI field agents that worked Europe for years and fully understand the KGB/FSB....that have indicated the US IC has been watching Trump for over 30 years......
AND there is more than enough open source finance data available on Trump Russian black money ties.....
THIS is extremely interesting for one core reason....the Ukrainians have discovered the paper trail but until now ...at least publicly available .... the FBI has not requested Ukraine release those documents.....
Source reports that ousted Ukraine president Yanukovych told Putin he authorized kickbacks to Manafort as media reported but left no trail.
The paper trail amounted to 12.7M USDs.....the NYTs' did a story on this but it did not gain much traction before the election and was largely dismissed by both Trump and his campaign team...
Buzzfeed published 35pp memos on #Russia having compromising evidence of #Trump in perverted sex acts
https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-de… …
"there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian govt" @CNN
NOTE:...it is interesting that carter Page showed up in Paris meeting Russian reps and talked supposedly about Syria....and then Page being in Moscow recently claiming to be an advisor for Trump when the transition team was stating he was not....
Hackers in Romania and Bulgaria worked to hack Clinton camp under Kremlin's direction and were paid in cash by BOTH Trump & Russian sources.
Trump lawyer Michael Cohen (married to Russian) was Kremlin liaison for damage control, covering up scandals re Russia's op, Manafort, Page
Sechin so wanted sanctions lifted, he offered Page/Trump 19% brokerage stake in Russia's Rosneft. Page agreed
The Rolling Stone article on Trump being compromised is now coming back to haunt Trump...the article was released shortly before the election and largely even shredded by ex CI agents and the US MSM because he would not reveal his sources some in Russia...BUT they seemed to have forgotten that it was HUMINT based and as HUMINT the quality of the information is always F6 until confirmed and or denied......
APPEARS that the info came from a ex UK spy with an excellent track record for delivering quality information THUS it forced them to at least consider the source and the information which they did and thus informed Trump about it....the single fact that they felt the need to inform suggests to me that they feel there is something to the accusations about compromising materials....
Secondly, it is interesting that Trump's Russian finance ties are coming more and more into the view of the FBI...admitted to yesterday by the FBI Director....
It is extremely interesting that those that voted for Trump did not realize that his casino's had been fined 10M USD..the largest ever fine for a casino operator for "laundering black money"....
IMPORTANT POINT THAT TRUMP HAS BEEN OVERLOOKING..DELIBERATELY....BUT uses to support his view he is a legitimate President....he claims that the IC report did in fact support his view that there was not impact on his election....
.@Sen_JoeManchin: ... IC say the election outcome wasn't altered.
Clapper: I have to correct you. We didn't assess that. It's not our remit.
Biting comment concerning Trump's use of 140 characters to drive FP by Kerry.....
.@JohnKerry makes his most pointed public comments about Trump since the election:
http://reut.rs/2id645b
Kerry warns of 'authoritarian populism,' takes jab at Trump tweets
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday warned of the dangers of authoritarian populism and offered a thinly veiled critique of Donald Trump's prolific use of Twitter, saying it allowed the president-elect to avoid accountability.
In his most pointed public comments about Trump since the Nov. 8 presidential election, Kerry also suggested that the president-elect's Cabinet nominees were getting a free pass from Congress for failing to submit tax returns and other documentation before their Senate confirmation hearings.
"Every country in the world better ... start worrying about authoritarian populism and the absence of substance in our dialogue," Kerry told a Washington forum.
"If policies are going to be made in 140 characters on Twitter, and every reasonable measurement of accountability is being bypassed, and people don't care about it, we have a problem," Kerry said.
As an example of the absence of substance in the political debate, he said climate change was given short shrift during the campaign between Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
He contrasted his own vetting for secretary of state and the paperwork he had to provide with exceptions he said are being made for Trump Cabinet nominees before their confirmation hearings.
In December, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker said the panel had not asked Rex Tillerson, Trump's choice for secretary of state, to provide his tax returns, which Corker said was in accordance with precedent.
Tillerson, the former chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil Corp (XOM.N), has not submitted tax returns, but his financial disclosure and ethics agreement has been made public.
Kerry, a former senator and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee who became President Barack Obama's secretary of state in 2013, said it is "quite amazing when you think the hoops I had to jump through with respect to papers submitted, documentation submitted and tax returns. ...
Suddenly that's not as important."
Asked if he believed Trump's nominees were getting "a free pass," Kerry chuckled and dodged the question.
Walter Shaub, director of the federal Office of Government Ethics, said in a letter to senators last week that he had "great concern" about the hearing schedule for Trump nominees who had not completed the ethics review process, and said it would be "cause for alarm if the Senate were to go forward with hearings on nominees whose reports OGE has not certified."
With 10 days to go before Trump takes office, Kerry said there had been few high-level contacts between current State Department officials and Trump's transition team.
Asked about the transition at a forum at the nonpartisan U.S. Institute of Peace, Kerry said, "It's going pretty smoothly because there's not an enormous amount of it."
"There are some people who have been in the building for a period of time, but you know quite candidly, I think there has not been a lot of high-level exchange at this point in time," Kerry said.
Kerry said he had not yet met with Tillerson, but expected to do so soon. Kerry and Tillerson spoke last month by telephone, according to the State Department.
A spokeswoman for the Trump transition team said she had no comment on Kerry's remarks.
Tillerson's Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, and will be closely watched in part due to concerns about his relationship with Russia as ExxonMobil's top executive.
Trump has called for better ties with Russia, while some fellow Republicans in Congress are pushing for a harsher response to what American intelligence agencies have concluded was Kremlin meddling in the presidential election
BUT THEY voted for him...??????
52 percent of those polled said Trump wd be a "not so good" or "bad" president
https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2415
They are correct
.@SenJohnMcCain said 99 senators believe #Russia hacked the #USElection and 1 does not. Now we know who that 1 is...
Wow. Lindsey Graham asked Jeff Sessions if he believes Russia was responsible for hacking. Sessions won't answer.
Sessions skirts Russia hacking Qs at confirmation hearing, won't say interfered in election, follows Trump language, refers to China etc.
AND he is to be the AG of the US enforcing anti hacking laws....
THIS supports the Trump thesis that a 400lb kid hacked DNC.....
RU ambassador to US: "I wouldn't exclude that some trigger-happy hacker did hack .. but my country had nothing to do"
Ah...Carter Page again at work...was recently in Moscow.....
Trump foreign policy aide tells Kremlin propaganda arm that US intel can't be trusted.
https://www.rt.com/usa/373139-carter...odni-hacking/#
WHEN he was in Moscow he claimed to have been a Trump advisor when he was not suppose to be one...as the Trump transition team was asked about his Moscow comments...they denied he was an advisor....
REMEMBER I posted here that Trump did not on his own admit publicly that he accepted the IS report...
Republican intel chairman Burr: "No reason to doubt" CIA/FBI/NSA findings that Russia intervened in the US election in favor of Trump.
Spencer Ackerman
✔
@attackerman
Warner wants intel cmte to include in review "contact between the Russian government & its agents, & associates of any campaign & candidate"
"Trump will find most of his goals are out of reach of an America acting alone. Deals are no substitute for allies."
https://www.ft.com/content/ae092214-d36f-11e6-b06b-680c49b4b4c0
US is not the only country where Russian influence ops is ongoing .....
Russia's information war in Sweden: Empirical study details active measures–propaganda, fake news,forgeries, disinfo
http://www.thelocal.se/20170107/swedish-think-tank-details-russian-disi…
AND now it starts.....
Hungary Plans to Crackdown on All Soros-Funded NGOs
by Zoltan Simon
January 10, 2017 5:44 PM CET January 10, 2017 6:39 PM CET
Ruling Fidesz party vice president pledges to ‘sweep out’ NGOs
Premier Orban, Trump backer, vowed to build ‘illiberal state’
Hungary plans to crack down on non-governmental organizations linked to billionaire George Soros now that Donald Trump will occupy the White House, according to the deputy head of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party.
The European Union member will use “all the tools at its disposal” to “sweep out” NGOs funded by the Hungarian-born financier, which “serve global capitalists and back political correctness over national governments,” Szilard Nemeth, a vice president of the ruling Fidesz party, told reporters on Tuesday.
No one answered the phone at the Open Society Institute in Budapest when Bloomberg News called outside business hours.
“I feel that there is an opportunity for this, internationally,” because of Trump’s election, state news service MTI reported Nemeth as saying. Lawmakers will start debating a bill to let authorities audit NGO executives, according to parliament’s legislative agenda.
Orban, the first European leader to publicly back Trump’s campaign, has ignored criticism from the European Commission and U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration for building a self-described “illiberal state” modeled on authoritarian regimes including Russia, China and Turkey.
In 2014, Orban personally ordered the state audit agency to probe foundations financed by Norway and said that civil society groups financed from abroad were covers for “paid political activists.”
Orban and his administration have frequently singled out NGOs supported by Soros, a U.S. Democratic Party supporter with a wide network of organizations that promote democracy in formerly communist eastern Europe.
‘Power Structure’
Trump also accused the 86-year-old billionaire of being part of “a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.”
In a pre-election commercial, he showed images of Soros along with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, all of whom are Jewish. The Anti-Defamation League criticized the ad for touching on “subjects that anti-Semites have used for ages.”
REMEMBER Russia via Putin influences have been requiring all NGOs to register as "foreign agents" who then get disbanded if Russia finds any problems with them...
Two Trump Companies Discovered In Cyprus, EU's Russian Off-Shore Banking Haven
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/two-trump-companies-discovered-in-c…
toomas hendrik ilves
✔
@IlvesToomas
I signed, along with allies, a letter. "European allies to Trump: Putin does not want to make America great again"
http://wpo.st/d8gQ2
McCain, Graham to unveil bipartisan Russia sanctions bill over Russian hacking
http://politi.co/2iA79VX
Reuters Top News
✔
@Reuters
Few high-level contacts between State Dept, Trump transition team: Kerry
http://reut.rs/2ieACqw
Mexico again says there is 'no way' it will pay for Trump wall
http://reut.rs/2jqGs61
Donald Trump’s "first attempt to ignore the law"
http://wapo.st/2ibT4x2
If Trump Is Talking, He's Lying: Fact Checkers Find 96% Of Trump Statements Some Degree Of False.....
http://ln.is/www.politicususa.com/CjVZM
Reference the coming kleptocracy of Trump with his son-in-law.....
As this graphic notes, so much Russian $$ pours into Trump in FL, "coastal Miami becomes Little Moscow"
NEW Trump-Russia link: Son-in-law's $295M deal with Putin pal Lev Leviev, Soviet-born billionaire
Kushner bought property from Leviev, Putin associate.
Leviev formerly employed Rotem Rosen, the Trump SOHO investor
Point is Donald "no Russia ties" Trump lied, plus his advisers met with people on US sanctioned list
Putin paid Manafort millions for Ukraine's Yanukovych's image makeover.
Was Burnett paid for Trump's re-invention?
Burnett met with Putin before re-inventing Trump in (Putin's?) "Apprentice" and now stage-managing his inauguration ....he blocked release of tapes from the filming of The Apprentice which were rumored to worse than the released 2005 video of Trump and his language towards women....
2001 NYT article on how Mark Burnett, who reinvented Trump as reality star, is also tied to Putin http://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20010128mag-burnett.h… … (h/t @Khanoisseur)