Photo illustration by Lisa Larson- Walker. Photos by Spencer Platt/Getty Images News. Photo illustration by Lisa Larson- Walker. Photos by Spencer Platt/Getty Images News,Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images.
Vladimir Putin has a plan for destroying the West—and that plan looks a lot like Donald Trump. Over the past decade, Russia has boosted right- wing populists across Europe. It loaned money to Marine Le Pen in France,well- documented transfusions of cash to keep her presidential campaign alive. Such largesse also wended its way to the former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, who profited“personally and handsomely” from Russian energy deals, as an American ambassador to Rome once put it. He’s been a patron of Golden Dawn in Greece, Ataka in Bulgaria, and Jobbik in Hungary. Joe Biden warned about this effort last year in a speech at the Brookings Institution: “President Putin sees such political forces as useful tools to be manipulated, to create cracks in the European body politic which he can then exploit.” Ruptures that will likely multiply after Brexit—a campaign Russia’s many propaganda organs bombastically promoted.
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The destruction of Europe is a grandiose objective; so is the weakening of the United States. Until recently, Putin has only focused glancing attention on American elections. Then along came the presumptive Republican nominee. Donald Trump is like the Kremlin’s favored candidates, only more so. He celebrated the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU. He denounces NATO with feeling.
He is also a great admirer of Vladimir Putin. Trump’s devotion to the Russian president has been portrayed as buffoonish enthusiasm for a fellow macho strongman. But Trump’s statements of praise amount to something closer to slavish devotion. In 2. 00. 7, he praised Putin for “rebuilding Russia.” A year later he added, “He does his work well.
Much better than our Bush.” When Putin ripped American exceptionalism in a New York Times op- ed in 2. Trump called it “a masterpiece.” Despite ample evidence, Trump denies that Putin has assassinated his opponents, “In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.” In the event that such killings have transpired, they can be forgiven: “At least he’s a leader.” And not just any old head of state: “I will tell you that, in terms of leadership, he’s getting an A.”Donald Trump is like the Kremlin’s favored candidates, only more so. That’s a highly abridged sampling of Trump’s odes to Putin. Why wouldn’t the Russians offer him the same furtive assistance they’ve lavished on Le Pen, Berlusconi, and the rest?
Indeed, according to Politico’s Michael Crowley, Russian propagandahas gone full throttle for Trump, using its Russia Today apparatus to thrash Hillary Clinton and hail the courage of Trump’s foreign policy. They also wormed their way into the computers of the Clinton Foundation, a breach reported by Bloomberg. And though it may be a mere coincidence, Trump’s inner circle is populated with advisers and operatives who have long careers advancing the interests of the Kremlin. We shouldn’t overstate Putin’s efforts, which will hardly determine the outcome of the election. Still, we should think of the Trump campaign as the moral equivalent of Henry Wallace’s communist- infiltrated campaign for president in 1.
A foreign power that wishes ill upon the United States has attached itself to a major presidential campaign.* * *Donald Trump’s interest in Russia dates back to Soviet times. In fact, there’s extraordinary footage of him shaking hands with Mikhail Gorbachev. It comes from 1. 98. Gorbachev’s efforts to charm the American public. On his legendary trip to Washington and New York, the Soviet in chief left the confines of his limousine and security cordon to glad- hand with the American people. Donald Trump suggested to reporters that the Soviet leader would be making his way to Trump Tower, a crucial station on his journey to capitalism. This was, in fact, a self- aggrandizing fabrication that Trump himself planted in the tabloids, but it was a convincing lie.
A year earlier, Trump had traveled to Russia at the invitation of the Soviets. They wanted Trump to develop luxury hotels in Moscow and Leningrad to feed the regime’s new appetite for Western business. But surely even he never expected his fake story to become reality.
He must have been gobsmacked when he received word that Gorbachev wanted to pay a spontaneous visit to Trump Tower. The skyscraper’s namesake rushed down from his penthouse office to pay obeisance.
From the video, we can see the blotched head of Gorbachev emerge from his car. Trump and his retinue push through the crowd. As it turns out, this Gorbachev wasn’t really the Soviet leader but an impersonator called Ronald Knapp. Trump was lavishing praise on the winner of a look- alike contest.“The Russian market is attracted to me.”Donald Trump. It was merely the first instance of Trump carelessly sucking up to Russian power in the hopes of securing business.
Those Soviet hotel projects never went anywhere. But over the years, Trump has returned to the idea of building in Russia again and again. Effective real estate developers are genuine seers; they can conjure mental images of glorious structures and vibrant neighborhoods where other mortals see mere blight. Trump had the brashness to imagine developing hotels in Moscow when that was a fatal enterprise. In 1. 99. 6, a Kalashnikov sprayed the American hotelier Paul Tatum, who had the temerity to complain about the Chechen mafia and the less- than- scrupulous business culture he endured. Yet it wasn’t hard to see the appeal of Russia, to both the bottom line and the ego.
An article in the Moscow Times described Trump as the city’s first grand builder since Stalin. Indeed, he later planned a development on the site where Stalin once hoped to construct the Palace of Soviet Congresses. Five separate times Trump attempted Russian projects, hotels, apartments, and retail on the grandest scale.
In one iteration, he promised an ice rink, a “members club,” and a spa, for “the finest residences in Moscow.” Another project he described as “the largest hotel in the world.” His gaudy style appealed to Russian nouveau riche, and he knew it. He registered his name as a trademark in Moscow and even licensed it to a liquor company, which sold Trump Super Premium Vodka.
Government officials claimed that they wanted to do business with Trump because they also considered him super premium. In the mid- ’9. 0s, the general- turned- politician Alexander Lebed told him, “If Trump goes to Moscow, I think America will follow.”Trump never could quite simultaneously align all the elements—investment, approval—to actually break ground. Yet his foray into Russia should be considered a smashing success; Trump set himself up for triumph even as he failed.
With each doomed real estate project, he lavished praise on the key constituency that blesses deals, namely Russian politicians. Each time he traveled to Moscow for a high profile visit, he attracted press attention and his stature increased. Russians helped finance his projects in Toronto and So. Ho; they snapped up units in his buildings around the world—so much so that he came to target them, hosting cocktail parties in Moscow to recruit buyers. As one campaign finance expert told the New York Times, “Historically, candidates would separate themselves from their business interests when running for office. Trump has done the opposite by promoting his businesses while running for office.” Such mercantilist motives likely undergird Trump’s ornate praise of Putin, too.
Having a friend in the Kremlin would help Trump fulfill his longtime dream of planting his name in the Moscow skyline—a dream that he pursued even as he organized his presidential campaign. Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images, Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images. One of the important facts about Trump is his lack of creditworthiness. Stream Objetivo: Los Reyes Magos online with english subtitles in 1440p. After his 2. 00. 4 bankruptcy and his long streak of lawsuits, the big banks decided he wasn’t worth the effort. They’d rather not touch the self- proclaimed “king of debt.” This sent him chasing less conventional sources of cash.
Buzz. Feedhas shown, for instance, his efforts to woo Muammar Qaddafi as an investor. Libyan money never did materialize.
It was Russian capital that fueled many of his signature projects—that helped him preserve his image as a great builder as he recovered from bankruptcy. The money didn’t come directly. Hunting for partners with cash, he turned to a small upstart called the Bayrock Group, which would pull together massive real estate deals using the Trump name. Its chairman was a former Soviet official named Tevfik Arif, who made a small fortune running luxe hotels in Turkey. To run Bayrock’s operation, Arif hired Felix Satter, a Soviet- born, Brighton Beach–bred college dropout. Satter changed his name to Sater, likely to distance himself from the criminal activity that a name- check would easily turn up. As a young man, Sater served time for slashing a man’s face with a broken margarita glass in a barroom brawl.
The Feds also busted him for a working in a stock brokerage tied to four different Mafia families, which made $4. One lawsuit would later describe “Satter’s proven history of using mob- like tactics to achieve his goals.” Another would note that he threatened a Trump investor with the prospect of the electrocution of his testicles, the amputation of his leg, and his corpse residing in the trunk of Sater’s car.“Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment,” Trump said. It’s a question he has tried to banish by downplaying his ties to Bayrock and minimizing Sater’s sins. Sater worked in Trump Tower; his business card described him as a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump.” Bayrock put together deals for mammoth Trump- named, Trump- managed projects—two in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a resort in Phoenix, the Trump So.
Ho in New York. Several of those projects broke ground, but they were a mere prelude.
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