Tag: Vladimir Putin

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured

Obama White House Left Evidence Showing Connection Between Trump Campaign and Russia

Original reporting by The New York Times and NBC News report that in the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence. Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Mr. Trump’s associates.

Then and now, Mr. Trump has denied that his campaign had any contact with Russian officials, and at one point he openly suggested that American spy agencies had cooked up intelligence suggesting that the Russian government had tried to meddle in the presidential election. Mr. Trump has accused the Obama administration of hyping the Russia story line as a way to discredit his new administration.

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Donald Trump Donald Trump Featured

On Video, Trump Admits to Having a Relationship with Vladimir Putin – Video

Of course the words coming out of Trump’s mouth does not matter. That is the only explanation to this video where Trump admits to having a relationship with Putin and his more recent conclusion that he does not know the Russian leader.

But this video says otherwise.

Video

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Donald Trump Donald Trump election hacking

Post Hack, Ergo Propter Hack

News that the Russians, which means Vladimir Putin, wanted Donald Trump to win the election shouldn’t surprise anyone. They’ve clearly sized him up and see him as the friend that he will turn out to be. They also are taking him seriously when he says that he will support torture and doesn’t care much for getting the United States involved in other country’s affairs. That Trump will help the Russians in Syria is merely icing on the babka. Trump hasn’t a clue as to how to conduct foreign policy and Putin knows that.

But I’m not willing to follow others who say that the Russian effort turned the election. After all, if the point was to get more people to vote for Trump, then the Russians failed miserably, as Hillary Clinton’s 2.7 million vote majority will attest. And it would be a real stretch to conclude that the Russian hackers focused on blue-collar, high-school-educated, former Obama voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania because that’s where Trump won the election. Were those voters especially susceptible to fake news? Perhaps some of them went into the last week of the election and weighed the candidate’s positions on jobs and, with the Comey letter, concluded that Hillary was not the person to solve the problem. Let’s not forget that Clinton ran a bad campaign, taking Michigan for granted in the final weeks when the lesson of Bernie Sanders’ shocking performance (or maybe not really shocking) in the primaries should have alerted her team to the potential for an upset.

The real problem with the hacking is that Donald Trump encouraged it as a candidate, and then dismissed it and the professionals who will be advising him once it threatened his fragile hold on his self-esteem. We are now going to be led for the next four years by a classic bully, one who is unsure of himself so he couches his responses in anger, dismissal, disparagement and unthinking emotional outbursts rather than reason and analysis. He’s already shown that when he’s attacked, he goes into survival mode and lives on twitter. As someone who lived through Chris Christie for eight years, I can tell you that this isn’t going to end well.

This strategy has worked to a limited degree when Trump goes after companies that make plans to build plants in Mexico, but it failed miserably with the hacking issue, and it probably won’t serve him as well as he thinks once he takes office (shudder). Eventually, Trump is going to realize that Americans want their president to act a certain way, and tweeting your fears every morning won’t substitute for policy.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Donald Trump Featured

Russia Specialist – Russia is Laughing at America – “Look at those fools”

In a recent interview on MSNBC, Russia expert Nina Khrushcheva spoke about the recent flattering letter Vladimir Putin sent to Donald Trump where Putin praised Trump causing the self-centered president-elect to conclude heartedly that Putin’s letter was “so correct.”

“I was just in Moscow and the Russians are saying ‘Look at those fools, look at their democracy.’ Absolutely,” she said. “‘How could America lecture us on any development, institutions, human rights, democracy, rhetoric when they just elected Donald Trump. He’s such a fool. He’s such a bully,” she continued. “That’s what America deserves and we’re going to take advantage of it.’ And that’s how Russians feel about it, and now it’s taking shape with letters from Vladimir Putin to Donald Trump with their exchange on potential nuclear armament and whatnot.”

Intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance weighed in on the Russian hack and their interference in our presidential election.

“I don’t think there will be any accountability with the regards of the Russian hacking against the DNC or even violating the entirety of the U.S. electoral process. He has benefited from that,” Nance said. “He’s going to shut down any investigation if it implicates him or his campaign.”

However, Nina is right. We are being played as fools by a spymaster-in-chief, a former KGB officer, Director of Russian Intelligence,” he continued. “He’s laughing at us in his letters which stroke Donald Trump. ‘His excellency!’ We haven’t had a letter like that in the United States since King George III. As long as Trump is manipulated, Russia and China will take our market share from the international markets out there, and the United States will be relegated to a third class country.”
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Donald Trump Featured

Donald Trump Challenges Vladimir Putin in Nuclear Arms Race

The Nuclear arms race with Russia begins again, thanks to Donald Trump and his childish tweets.

Donald Trump called for an expansion of the United States’ nuclear capabilities on Thursday, in a tweet that alarmed nonproliferation experts who said that a boost to the U.S. arsenal could fuel global tensions.

In his Twitter post, Trump said, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” but gave no further details.

It was not clear what prompted his comment. However, earlier on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia needed to “strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces.”

Asked about the tweet, Trump spokesman Jason Miller later said Trump was “referring to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it – particularly to and among terrorist organizations and unstable and rogue regimes.”

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Barack Obama Featured

Poll – Republicans Love for Putin Grows Since Russian Hack Was Revealed

Since the CIA revealed that Russia and Vladimir Putin hacked into our election with the sole purpose of electing Donald Trump, Republicans have found a new love and respect for Russia’s leader.

Putin, who has been accused by the CIA of personally interfering in the US election to help Donald Trump win because he holds a ‘vendetta’ against Hillary Clinton, has seen his popularity rate increase by a staggering 56 percentage points, according to Economist/YouGov poll.

The Russian leader’s net favorability rating jumped from -66 in July 2014 to -10 in the latest survey.

Thirty-two per cent of people who identified as a Republican had a ‘somewhat favorable’ view of Putin, while five per cent said they had a ‘very favorable’ view.

Remarkably, that combined figure means almost three times as many Republicans have a favorable view of Putin as they do of President Barack Obama – who was seen that way by just 17 per cent of all GOP responders.

In contrast, just 12 per cent of Democrats said they had a somewhat of very favorable view of the Russian leader. Across all political divides, 21 per cent of Americans who responded to the survey said they view him favorable.

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Donald Trump Featured

White House Investigating “10 Clear Links” of Trump’s Partnership with Russia

Huffington Post is reporting that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are reviewing the Democratic Coalition’s investigative report highlighting 10 “clear links” that the FBI failed to investigate about our President-elect’s business ties to Russia, and to the Putin regime.

It’s named “The Dworkin Report.”

“The FBI missed at least 10 key connections between President-elect Trump and Russia when they conducted their investigation and concluded that our President-elect had no links to the country,” said Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor to the Democratic Coalition and author of the report. “It is imperative that the American people be made aware of this information.”

The Dworkin Report shows that Donald Trump has incorporated almost 250 registered businesses in Russia.

This hard evidence directly contradicts Trump’s prior statements about having no business ties to Russia over the summer.

Additionally, the evidence shows that Trump has travelled to Russia dating back to 1987, before the end of the Soviet Union.

In particular, a visit in 2010 included a tour of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum led by a Russian government official of sufficient ranking, that he earned a personal photo and award from Vladimir Putin earlier this year.

The Democratic Coalition also revealed a 2013 video recorded interview with Donald Trump to MSNBC’s Thomas A. Roberts – which he has confirmed as authentic – where he claimed twice to have a relationship with Putin.

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Donald Trump Featured

Russia Said “There were Contacts” With Trump Campaign Before Election

Donald Trump said it multiple times during his campaign, “the election was rigged.” Well, considering that the FBI has blamed Russia for hacking the Democratic National Committee and exposing information favorable to Donald Trump, who’s to say Russia had nothing to do with the voting machines and the questionable results those machines returned on election day?

Well some big wigs in Russia is confirming that before the election on Tuesday, Russia had direct contact with the Trump campaign.

Per Bloomberg, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Thursday acknowledged that “there were contacts” with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, and that Russian embassy staff met with members of Trump’s campaign.

Trump’s embrace of Putin during the campaign trail has been a major source of contention in American foreign policy circles, and intelligence experts even claimed that Trump ignored their briefings informing him that Russia was behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee.

 

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Donald Trump Featured

Putin Adviser on Trump Win – “Maybe we helped a bit”

Everyone is still shocked by what they’re calling a “win” by Donald Trump. But according to the Russian government, there is no surprise there at all because they “helped” with the Trump win.

Putin has dismissed claims by U.S. authorities that Russia had interfered with the American election by hacking Clinton and the Democratic National Committee and then dumping their private emails online through WikiLeaks.

But Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, suggested some Russian involvement had helped Trump win his unlikely White House bid, reported The Guardian.

Markov said Trump’s win made a Russian-U.S. agreement on Syria, where the two powers back opposing sides, more likely, and the Putin advisor said Americans would be less likely to support “the terroristic junta in Ukraine.”

He denied allegations of Russian interference, as American officials have claimed, but admitted “maybe we helped a bit with WikiLeaks.”

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Donald Trump Politics

Donald Trump Defends Putin – “I Haven’t Seen” Proof that Putin Kills People

On a recent interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Donald Trump was asked about his new-found friend Vladimir Putin, and whether knowing that Putin is responsible for the deaths of people and some journalists means anything. In that interview, Donald Trump’s answer on Morning Joe was “that’s the way it is.”

On Sunday, Donald Trump doubled down.

The Republican front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday pushed back on the notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin has killed journalists, saying that it’s “terrible” if it’s happened but he hasn’t seen proof that it has.

“In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that. I don’t know that he has. Have you been able to prove that? Do you know the names of the reporters that he’s killed? Because I’ve been – you know, you’ve been hearing this, but I haven’t seen the names,” Trump said on ABC.

The Russian president, who some of Trump’s GOP rivals have called a “thug” and a threat, recently praised Trump as “bright and talented.”

When confronted with Mitt Romney’s tweet also alleging that Putin kills journalists and political opponents, Trump again dismissed the claims. “He’s always denied it,” Trump said of Putin. “He’s never – it’s never been proven that he’s killed anybody. So, you know, you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, at least in our country. He has not been proven that he’s killed reporters.”

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Donald Trump Politics

Donald Trump on Putin Killing People – “That’s the way it is!” – Video

Donald Trump is the same Republican presidential candidate who promised on many occasions to “go after” the family of terrorists here in America, their constitutional rights be damned. He has not specified exactly what he would do to these family members, but he hasn’t ruled out killing them simply because they are related to a terrorist. When asked what he would do with these family members, Trump has said, “I will be very very hard on them.”

With that in mind, and the fact that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin recently paid Trump a compliment, is it any surprise that Donald Trump sees nothing wrong with Putin killing political opponents and journalists who disagree with him?

In a telephone interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday, Trump was asked about Putin’s compliment and whether the fact that Putin kills people is worrisome. And, as expected, the new leader of the Republican party saw nothing wrong with that!

Brzezinski: Do you like Vladimir Putin’s comments about you?

Trump: Sure. When people call you brilliant, it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russia.

Scarborough: Well, I mean, also, it’s a person that kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously, that would be a concern, would it not?

Trump: He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.

Scarborough: Yeah. But, again, he kills journalists that don’t agree with him.

Trump: Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, you know.

Scarborough: What do you mean by that?

Trump: There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that’s the way it is. But you didn’t ask me the question. You asked me a different question. So that’s fine.

Video

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News Politics

The Republicans Idea of a Leader, Vladimir Putin, Is Pissing Off The World

Yes, the world is mounting pressure against Russia’s president Vladimir Putin since evidence suggests that Russian equipment shot down Malaysia Airline MH-17, killing 298 innocent people. But what do Republicans think of the man they call “a leader?”

Crickets…

Circumstantial evidence suggests that Russia provided the missile that Ukrainian rebels used to shoot down the Malaysian Air jetliner on July 17, killing 298 passengers and crew, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in television interviews.

“There’s a build-up of extraordinary circumstantial evidence,” Kerry said yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing.”

Putin confronts worldwide scorn just as the U.S. and its allies were trying to push him into a corner over the annexation of Crimea and his support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. and Europe tightened sanctions last week, and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron told Putin on a call yesterday that the attack was “totally unacceptable,” his office said in a statement.

“Russia risks becoming a pariah state if it does not behave properly,” U.K. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said yesterday in an interview on Sky News. “We now need to use the sense of outrage that is clear to get a further round of sanctions tightening against Russia.”

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