Donald Trump, tonight: “I think I would have a very, very good relationship with Putin.” So, no sign Trump’s backing off his pro-Putin foreign policy agenda anytime soon.
For over a year, Donald Trump’s long been a prolific Vladimir Putin admirer, and even hopefully mused, “[W]ill [Putin] become my new best friend?”
Oh, and Trump openly asked Russia to conduct espionage on Hillary Clinton, even going so far as to suggest that the country might be rewarded for doing so.
A minor slip-up would be one thing, but months of praising Putin, using Kremlin messaging, and hiring two staffers with deep ties to the Russian government is no accident.
There’s no denying the preponderance of evidence: Donald Trump is too close to Russia.
Trump Foreign Policy Adviser Carter Page’s Russian Investments And Ties
Another sketchy character with even more direct ties to Putin’s Russia is Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page. In July, Page visited Russia to push for a strengthened U.S.relationship with Russia — “[j]ust days before Republicans adopted a new, more Russia-friendly plank into their party platform.”
Previously, Page advised Gazprom, a mostly-state-owned Russian gas producer, counselling the company on investments and deals. As recently as March 2016, Page told Bloomberg that he remained an investor in the Russian company.
Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s chief campaign adviser, did work for Ukraine’s pro-Putin political party and had an office in Kiev as recently as May 2016, according to a New York Times report. The investigation also uncovered that Manafort may have received as much as “$12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments” from the pro-Russia political organization.
And then the Times of London uncovered that Manafort was also behind “a series of [2006] anti-Nato, anti-Kiev protests in Crimea led by Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian Party of Regions — now designated a criminal organisation.”
Further reports on Manafort’s ties to “undisclosed” — possibly illegal — foreign lobbying on behalf of a pro-Putin group reveal that Manafort’s firm “directly orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling political party, attempting to sway American public opinion in favor of the country’s pro-Russian government — something Manafort never disclosed, despite a legal obligation to have done so.
Ordinarily, it would be shocking to see an American presidential nominee pivoting to a bizarrelypro-Russia foreign policy doctrine. But Donald Trump is no ordinary candidate, nor are hisPutin-connected aides typical campaign advisers. And so here we are, with Trump:
- Openly requesting that Russia
conduct espionage on Hillary Clinton, and even going so far as to offer that the country might be rewarded for doing so; - Heaping praise on Vladimir Putin;
- Alternately saying he did and didn’t meet with Putin, to the point where it’s unclear which is the lie;
- Lobbying to make the GOP platform more pro-Russia;
- Claiming that he has “ZERO investments in Russia,” even though his son once claimed, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets”; and,
- Pushing Kremlin talking points — including that Russia never invaded Ukraine, although, if they did, the “people of Crimea…would rather be with Russia” — which has earned him folk hero-status among the Russian media.
Published: Sep 7, 2016