Truump has no scruples

Donald Trump's and Vladimir Putin's Shared Agenda Should Alarm Anyone Concerned About Democracy

This is all we should ask Trump about until November

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA—Back during the late Avignon Presidency, Josh Marshall ofTalking Points Memo noticed something hinky going on at the Department of Justice regarding the appointment and dismissal of various U.S. Attorneys around the country. So he dug around, stayed with the story and, eventually, it blew up as a legitimate scandal that touched not only the DOJ but also provided a window into the phony "voter fraud" campaigns that lie behind various voter-suppression schemes that continue to plague the country. Since then, when Marshall gets his teeth into something, the rest of us should start to pay attention, and right now he's onto the strange collusion between He, Trump and Vladimir Putin, and he is sounding a fire bell in the night, to borrow the image used by local Philadelphia transient Thomas Jefferson to describe slavery.

In brief: In his business dealings, He, Trump seems increasingly dependent on money from Russia and from the former Soviet republics within its increasingly active sphere of influence. This is because most of the big banks on this side of the pond won't go near him without HazMat suits. (Gee, could it be that his sudden emergence as a Warren-esque crusader against the "rigged system" of the banksters is less of a principled opposition and simply pure animal vengeance? Unpossible!) As Marshall points out, this isn't exactly a deep corporate secret, as The Washington Post explained:

"Trump has conveyed a different view, informed in part through his business ambitions. Since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world. "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Trump's son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

Read more: 

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a46984/donald-trump-vladimir-putin/

Trump & Putin. Yes, It's Really a Thing

Over the last year there has been a recurrent refrain about the seeming bromance between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. More seriously, but relatedly, many believe Trump is an admirer and would-be emulator of Putin's increasingly autocratic and illiberal rule. But there's quite a bit more to the story. At a minimum, Trump appears to have a deep financial dependence on Russian money from persons close to Putin. And this is matched to a conspicuous solicitousness to Russian foreign policy interests where they come into conflict with US policies which go back decades through administrations of both parties. There is also something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of evidence suggesting Putin-backed financial support for Trump or a non-tacit alliance between the two men.

Let me start by saying I'm no Russia hawk. I have long been skeptical of US efforts to extend security guarantees to countries within what the Russians consider their 'near abroad' or extend such guarantees and police Russian interactions with new states which for centuries were part of either the Russian Empire or the USSR. This isn't a matter of indifference to these countries. It is based on my belief in seriously thinking through the potential costs of such policies. In the case of the Baltics, those countries are now part of NATO. Security commitments have been made which absolutely must be kept. But there are many other areas where such commitments have not been made. My point in raising this is that I do not come to this question or these policies as someone looking for confrontation or cold relations with Russia.

Let's start with the basic facts. There is a lot of Russian money flowing into Trump's coffers and he is conspicuously solicitous of Russian foreign policy priorities.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-putin-yes-it-s-really-a-thing