On Oct. 6, 1980, in an hour-long interview, Hollywood correspondent Rona Barrett asked then 34 year-old Donald Trump rather pointedly, “If you lost your fortune today, what would you do tomorrow?”
Trump replied with a rather nervous grin, “Maybe, I’d run for president.”
No, seriously.
Barrett persisted, “Would you like to be the president of the United States?”
“I really don’t believe I would, Rona,” Trump countered, suggesting that he might not be taken seriously as someone who has strong views, which may be right but not necessarily popular, as opposed to someone with “no great brain but a big smile.”
WATCH.
Trump’s curious yet profoundly candid response is insightful and relevant, insofar as it may inadvertently satisfy relentless speculation that his primary motive in running for president was financial gain, perhaps to provide a “parachute” for impending financial free-fall.
At 70, Trump has no perceivable track record of real service to America that didn’t involve making a buck for himself. In fact, his road to the White House is littered with well-documented testimonies and at least 60 law suits from ordinary citizens and business acquaintances alleging that he swindled and defrauded them in ways — including serial bankruptcy filings — that reveal him as a spurious hustler and con man.
“Lost contracts, bankruptcies, defaults, deceptions and indifference to investors — Trump’s business career is a long, long list of such troubles, according to regulatory, corporate and court records, as well as sworn testimony and government investigative reports,” proclaimed Newsweek in a blistering cover story exposé. “Call it the art of the bad deal, one created by the arrogance and recklessness of a businessman whose main talent is self-promotion.”
Many, including billionaire business mogul Mark Cuban and television journalist Lawrence O’Donnell, have publicly denounced Trump for wildly exaggerating his wealth. Others warn that Trump’s Russian connections are far more extensive than he has indicated — Russian investors who funded his business ventures after U.S. banks stopped doing so following his various bankruptcies.
In fact, while it appears to be true that Trump has yet to land a business venture inside Russia, the timeline for Trump’s known association and connections with Russia dates back 30 years! In 2008, Donald Trump Jr., told investors in Moscow that the Trump Organization had trademarked the Donald Trump name in Russia and planned to build housing and hotels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi, and sell licenses to other developers.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump Jr. told the Russian daily Kommersant at the time. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
Therefore, when this shrewd, calculating businessman continues to deny knowledge of, and publicly defends Russia’s interference in our elections, clearly established in intent to install him as president; when he continues to adopt a noticeably reckless, weaker, political and economic stance with a country — whose president, Vladimir Putin, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) unambiguously calls “a thug, and a murderer, and a killer and a KGB agent” — his actions could well be construed as treasonous.
When Trump adamantly refuses to release his tax returns to clarify the extent of his global dealings with countries like Russia, or to place his business holdings in a proper blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest between his global business interests and the business of the United States, it is inevitable — and deserved — that there will be derogatory conjecture regarding his motives, and claims that his financial options are linked to legitimizing and renegotiating our relationships with Russia.
The dubious intent of key people within Trump’s inner circle only fuels such claims. The consistent, common thread among Trump’s presidential advisers and his transition team has been their close — often clandestine — ties to Russia. All of which begs the question, why does Putin solicit the kind of support that has caused Trump to be dubbed the “most ostentatiously pro-Russian candidate in history”?
Indeed, are Trump’s motivations in running for president about his own financial salvation and greed, a darker fascist agenda, or does Russia, according to intelligence reports, have a proverbial “gun” cocked at his head for blackmail?
Russian roulette is a rigged and deadly game, in which the odds are never in your favor. Played long enough, nobody wins a game of Russian roulette. Neither will Donald Trump at America’s expense!
Indeed, the first casualty of the Trump administration with ties to Russia has already fallen. Retired intelligence officer Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, now the shortest-serving national security advisor in history, resigned Monday after being caught in a lie about the level of contact he had with Russian officials during the course of Trump’s presidential campaign.
Flynn is the third Trump aide to step down because of surreptitious ties to Russia. His departure follows those of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman and Carter Page, an early foreign policy adviser.
Flynn’s motives for the extensive contact and any level of collusion that could be considered treasonous are yet unknown. However, Flynn admitted that before Trump’s inauguration, he discussed with Russian officials the lifting of American sanctions against Russia, in direct violation of the Logan Act — a federal law that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in dispute with the United States.
This “development” — that Trump’s aides had discussions with Russian intelligence — cannot be surprising to anyone, least of all Trump. Flynn’s Putin-apologetics and long-standing dealings with Russian officials have been public knowledge. Flynn was seated at Putin’s table — along with Jill Stein — at a Dec. 2015 anniversary dinner in Moscow for Russia’s English-language satellite television network, RT.
That doesn’t just happen.
Moreover, upon Trump’s election victory, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov confirmed such contacts.
“We are doing this and have been doing this during the election campaign,” Ryabkov said at the time. “I don’t say that all of them, but a whole array of them supported contacts with Russian representatives.” Such contacts would continue, Ryabkov added, saying that the Russian government knew and had been in touch with many of Trump’s closest allies.
While Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova subsequently rushed to describe such interactions as “normal practice,” Hillary Clinton’s campaign resolutely denied that standard diplomacy called for “contact with the leaders in the campaign.”
Therefore, when Trump consistently disparages American intelligence findings as “politically driven,” when he defends Putin’s lack of involvement in his presidential win, when he asserts that nobody from his campaign had contact with Russian officials before the election, when he insists that “Russia is a ruse” and that he’s had nothing to do with the Russian government and his own statements repeatedly betray him, his veracity is questionable at best.
Furthermore, “a whole array” does not translate from Russian to just one person.
What should raise red flags also is that, on Jan. 28, Trump had his first official, hour-long call with Putin, yet there was reportedly no discussion about the conspicuous “elephant in the room” — U.S. sanctions, imposed against Russia by the Obama administration “for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, or for stealing the assets of the Ukrainian people.” Just December, Obama imposed further sanctions for interfering in our elections, ordering 35 Russian diplomats to leave the country and two Russian compounds closed.
Yet, there was no discussion about such sanctions?
The official readout of the call, released by the White House was a perfunctory one-paragraph statement to say discussions “ranged in topics from mutual cooperation in defeating ISIS to efforts in working together to achieve more peace throughout the world including Syria.” The only other record of the call is a 10-paragraph summary from the Kremlin.
There is debate whether such calls are still recorded. However, there are glaring questions that should follow from that lack of discussion of U.S. sanctions between Trump and Putin.
For example, was the need for such a discussion between them irrelevant because those discussions had already taken place via Flynn? Who authorized Flynn to speak with Russian officials about the lifting of sanctions? Was anything else “negotiated” and promised to Russia prior to the elections? Moreover, are we expected to believe that V.P. Mike Pence lives in a vacuum within the White House like an estranged wife who's the last to know?
It is highly unlikely that Flynn acted on his own volition without Trump’s knowledge or, at the very least, that of his chief strategist Steve Bannon. His alt-right movement long “embraced Putin as their path to power” after finding their values were more in line with his.
The Viktor Leonov - The Russian warship off the coast of Connecticut shown here entering the bay in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Interestingly, upon Flynn’s ouster — when, effectively, there is no sitting national security advisor, when offers of the job to those like Ret. Vice Adm. Bob Harward are politely declined, and when Trump’s administration is struggling to fill strategic positions at the State Department and the Pentagon — come reports of increased, provocative aggression by Russia’s air and naval forces.
On Tuesday, Russia stealthily deployed a new cruise missile in violation of a key arms control treaty. On Thursday, Connecticut residents awoke to reports of a Russian spy ship patrolling 30 miles offshore from the Groton SUBASE, underscoring the threats posed by a resurgent Russia and Trump’s flirtation with Putin.
“This unacceptable, aggressive action combined with the buzzing of US Navy ships in the Black Sea yesterday are clearly testing the resolve of a new administration,” said Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn) — a member of the House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee. “While I have total confidence in our Navy’s vigilant, responsible readiness, the White House needs to move past their seeming infatuation with Putin and treat him like the serious threat to global peace and security that he has been for the last five years."
The ship has not entered U.S. territorial waters, which extend 12 miles out to sea. And while Trump suggested that Americans want him to “shoot that ship,” we should focus on what these combined tactics are likely about: DISTRACTION — to shift attention from Flynn’s ouster, likely just the tip of the iceberg.
“Distraction” is one the 4 “D’s” of fascist strategy, which dictators use to maintain the status quo of fear in which they thrive. Indeed, Russia, may just be stirring the pot to help their seeming White House protégé, under the siege of truth and consequences for the kind of victory he has won.
“This. Is. Not. Normal.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tweeted to Trump on Tuesday. “@DonaldTrump owes Americans a full account of his Admin’s dealings with Russia, both before & after the election.”
Indeed.
The barrel of Russia’s gun in this game of roulette is spinning. The signs of impending tyranny are portentous — the clear and present danger imminent.