<< This is my surprised face. Cue Trumpist victim-blaming in 3… 2… 1…
And in a related story…this is also big. David Corn has unearthed some interesting new information not seen anywhere else regarding Russian hacking into the trump organization. This hacking goes back 4 years, where the Russians used malware and created subdomains to all of trump’s main domain accounts, thereby having access to all communications from their IP addresses. What’s fascinating is that this was just discovered recently and trump and co. had no clue this was happening.
So kudos to him.
"Hey, Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you found all of TRump’s emails that are now missing. I think you will probably be surprised by the interest in them mightily by our press.”
Putin’s party, Unity *(then United Russia) has been developing vote-leveraging techniques since the start of the millennium. The Hungarian election in 2014 probably marked the entry to this new arrangement. Then there was Brexit, the US presidential, the French election, etc. A consistent theme beyond, mooslims, immigration and Brussels/Washington swamp cleaning, is oligarch friendliness. Anne Applebaum should get some credit for calling this aspect of Trump out early on. If your country does not have a monarchy, you need this to have the magic work.
In an August 2016 Post column, “The secret to Donald Trump: He’s really a Russian oligarch,” Applebaum also said that Manafort’s affiliation with Trump shows the extent to which the then-presidential candidate wasn’t just sympathetic to Russian oligarchs, “it’s that he is a Russian oligarch, albeit one who happens to be American.”
She explained that Trump is “an oligarch in the Russian style — a rich man who aspires to combine business with politics and has an entirely cynical and instrumental attitude toward both.” Oligarchs also use their political power to enrich themselves and their families, Applebaum said.
As it turns out, Ivanka and Jared didn’t need Manafort to stay on as campaign chairman or to have a role in the White House for Trump to continue exercising what Applebaum describes as his oligarch tendencies.
Since Trump took office, business has been booming at Trump family golf clubs and hotels, and several Trump family business ventures have moved forward in step with the president and first family conducting government affairs, Newsweek reported Monday.
Thank for the link. Does look big.
I had just read the whole AP story (what is posted here is about the first half) - it is worth reading the whole thing - as the second half gives an idea of how many resources must have been devoted to the effort. It is far more vast than realized. Scroll down to the heading “Working 9 to 6 Moscow Time” for the additional parts of the story.
You can tell which party is truly strong on defense by seeing who your enemy is fighting.
Defense spending under Republicans is just a misnomer for welfare and corrupt cronyism. For Republicans, it isn’t defense at all. It’s perpetual offense to keep the money and political favors flowing.
What is the exit strategy for the Middle East wars? When do Republicans plan to protect our country against Russian cyber attacks?
I just hope that this won’t fly by with cursory interest as was the case with Corn’s original reporting on the dossier in October of 2016, days before the election. His sources are generally very good.
I’ve had the nagging sense for some time that at least some of the reluctance to confront Trump is coming from background threats having to do with compromising documents from likely past attacks, including the rumored RNC email hack. Seems like an attack on Trump’s businesses would scare the crap out of those in Trump’s orbit, and as of 4 years ago that could include all sorts of peripheral dealings with donors, politicians and sympathetic media outlets. Maybe I’m being a little too conspiratorial and grandiose, but I can’t shake the feeling that the current level of coordination among the usual suspects seems a bit more desperate and frantic than simple political posturing would call for.
I read Corn’s original dossier reporting as I was getting ready to fly back to the US after a few days in Iceland. Along with that was a report on the server communication between alpha bank (?) and a Trump Org server. I was giddy getting onto the plane (but outside of the US media coverage/response). Surely this news/reporting would knock the last wind out of the Trump sails. Silly me. Long response to essentially say - I agree hope this gets more air time.