Elena Buturlim18:27, 02/20/24
I drew attention to the recent comments of the former US President.
Former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said that Donald Trump’s recent comments about Russia indicate that Vladimir Putin has some financial influence on the leader of the Republican primaries, writes Newsweek .
“Are you asking yourself what Putin has on Donald Trump that he should always owe to him, his friend… in a mean way?.. I don’t know what he has with him, but I think it’s probably finances “I think it’s probably finances, or something financial that he has on him, or something that he expects to receive,” Pelosi said.
Former White House press secretary in the Biden administration and MSNBC host Jen Psaki told Pelosi she was shocked that Trump took three days to comment on the death of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Moreover, Trump did not condemn the Russian leader.
Pelosi also added that Trump’s statement was “beneath human dignity” and should “disqualify him from running for any office, much less the presidency of the United States.”
It is worth noting that, according to Trump, Navalny’s death in a penal colony “made me more and more aware of what is happening in our country.”
“This is a slow, steady progression, with crooked, radical left-wing politicians, prosecutors and judges leading us down the path to destruction,” he added.
Trump has also repeatedly criticized NATO. His comments on Feb. 10 raised concerns about the U.S. role in the alliance if a Republican retakes the White House.
Trump’s dangerous statements
Donald Trump has said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever it wants” with NATO members, which he believes are not spending enough on their defense.
European officials are discussing the possibility of creating a continent-wide NATO unit in case Donald Trump is able to be re-elected in the US presidential elections.
European NATO member countries fear that if Donald Trump comes to power, the United States will stop investing in the alliance’s defense industry.
(C)UNIAN 2024
Pelosi is too well mannered to mention the sex videos shot secretly in a Moscow hotel.
😎
Wow Gray, are you really still pushing that old Trump Russian collusion hoax from eight years ago? Apparently haven’t kept up with facts like the whole thing was created and promoted by the Clinton campaign! Let me guess MSNBC is your main source of information as you consider it middle of the road? You really need to broaden your sources of information to include a few “extreme right wing sources” such as the Wall Street Journal.
You know Nancy “Hubby and I got rich off of inside information available to Congress”, the Clintons (of course the Clinton Foundation is not a pay to play and gain influence with President to be Hillary), and Hunter Biden/the Biden Family (we aren’t corrpt we just sell the “brand” of the Biden name for tens of millions to multiple entities) are all people whose word and opinion I would always totally trust. This is especially true when making totally unsupported allegations of corruption by any Republicans. After all everyone knows Nancy P is totally a nonpartisan objective individual.
What have you been smoking?
^bert
“Donald Trump, Unprompted, Tells GOP Donors He Doesn’t Like Having Women Pee on Him”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/donald-trump-golden-showers-denial
Remember, Mr. Fed up; Trump never tells the truth. That’s just one reason why he enjoys the company of other liars, like Putler.
He must have tried it, if he doesn’t like it. The question is, where did he try it?
Wherever it was, Putler has got vids of it.
Wow “Fed Up”, are you really still denying that Russia helped trumpkov get elected? Apparently you haven’t kept up with facts like the fact that it was confirmed by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee.
Although few Americans paid much attention at the time, the events of February 18, 2014, in Ukraine would turn out to be a linchpin in how the United States ended up where it is a decade later.
On that day ten years ago, after months of what started as peaceful protests, Ukrainians occupied government buildings and marched on parliament to remove Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych from office. After the escalating violence resulted in many civilian casualties, Yanukovych fled to Russia, and the Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, returned power to Ukraine’s constitution.
The ouster of Yanukovych meant that American political consultant Paul Manafort was out of a job.
Manafort had worked with Yanukovych since 2004. In that year, the Russian-backed politician appeared to have won the presidency of Ukraine. But Yanukovych was rumored to have ties to organized crime, and the election was full of fraud, including the poisoning of a key rival who wanted to break ties with Russia and align Ukraine with Europe. The U.S. government and other international observers did not recognize the election results, while Russia’s president Vladimir Putin congratulated Yanukovych even before the results were officially announced.
The Ukrainian government voided the election and called for a do-over.
To rehabilitate his reputation, Yanukovych turned to Manafort, who was already working for a young Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska worried that Ukraine would break free of Russian influence and was eager to prove useful to Vladimir Putin. At the time, Putin was trying to consolidate power in Russia, where oligarchs were monopolizing formerly publicly held industries and replacing the region’s communist leaders. In 2004, American journalist Paul Klebnikov, the chief editor of Forbes in Russia, was murdered as he tried to call attention to what the oligarchs were doing.
With Manafort’s help, Yanukovych finally won the presidency in 2010 and began to turn Ukraine toward Russia. In November 2013, Yanukovych suddenly reversed Ukraine’s course toward cooperation with the European Union, refusing to sign a trade agreement and instead taking a $3 billion loan from Russia. Ukrainian students protested the decision, and the anger spread quickly. In 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power and he fled to Russia.
Manafort, who had borrowed money from Deripaska and still owed him about $17 million, had lost his main source of income.
Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and annexed it, prompting the United States and the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Russia itself and also on specific Russian businesses and oligarchs, prohibiting them from doing business in U.S. territories. These sanctions were intended to weaken Russia and froze the assets of key Russian oligarchs.
By 2016, Manafort’s longtime friend and business partner Roger Stone—they had both worked on Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign—was advising Trump’s floundering presidential campaign, and Manafort was happy to step in to help remake it. He did not take a salary but reached out to Deripaska through one of his Ukrainian business partners, Konstantin Kilimnik, immediately after landing the job, asking him, “How do we use to get whole? Has OVD [Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska] operation seen?”
Manafort began as an advisor to the Trump campaign in March 2016 and became the chairman in late June.
Thanks to journalist Jim Rutenberg, who pulled together testimony given both to the Mueller investigation and the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, transcripts from the impeachment hearings, and recent memoirs, we now know that in 2016, Russian operatives presented Manafort a plan “for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded, and -directed ‘separatists’ were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead.”
In exchange for weakening NATO, undermining the U.S. stance in favor of Ukraine in its attempt to throw off the Russians who had invaded in 2014, and removing U.S. sanctions from Russian entities, Russian operatives were willing to help Trump win the White House. The Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 established that Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Kilimnik, whom it described as a “Russian intelligence officer,” acted as a liaison between Manafort and Deripaska while Manafort ran Trump’s campaign.
Now, ten years later, Putin has invaded Ukraine in an effort that when it began looked much like the one his operatives suggested to Manafort in 2016, Trump has said he would “encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies that don’t commit 2% of their gross domestic product to their militaries, and Trump MAGA Republicans are refusing to pass a measure to support Ukraine in its effort to throw off Russia’s invasion.
The day after the violence of February 18, 2014, in Ukraine, then–vice president Joe Biden called Yanukovych to “express grave concern regarding the crisis on the streets” and to urge him “to pull back government forces and to exercise maximum restraint.”
Ten years later, Russia has been at open war with Ukraine for nearly two years and has just regained control of the key town of Avdiivka because Ukrainian troops lack ammunition. President Joe Biden is warning MAGA Republicans that “[t]he failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.”
“History is watching,” he said.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-17-2024
(Supporting links can be found at the above link.)
Did any of you actually read the Mueller Report? Obviously not, as you just keep repeating Democratic talking points discredited years ago. Crazy conspiracy theories are still crazy conspiracy theories whether spread by the left or the far right.
Regardless Ukraine needs continuing and increasin US support. politics makes for strange bed fellows 🙂
“Did any of you actually read the Mueller Report?”
Of course. The report itself, not just Barr’s dishonest summation of it.
The Mueller report found abundant evidence that the campaign sought Russian help, benefited from that help and obstructed the F.B.I. investigation into Russian actions. His investigation resulted in felony convictions for Trump’s former campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, personal lawyer, first national security adviser, and longtime political adviser, among others.
Independent reviews have found that investigators opened the Russia inquiry without political bias. The investigation uncovered an elaborate Russian campaign to sabotage the 2016 campaign, the former president’s repeated efforts to thwart the inquiry and the Trump campaign’s expectation that it would benefit from the Kremlin operations.
Durham agreed under oath in response to questions by Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) that the facts of the Mueller report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report were correct: Russia interfered in the 2016 election for the benefit of Trump, Trump’s campaign welcomed the help and shared information and secret meetings with Russian operatives, and the FBI was justified in investigating that interference.