I recently ordered your book, Dirty Rubbles. I'm waiting for it. My go to reply is, a glass eye in a duck's ass can see this. King Shitpants is destabilizing the country for Putin. It's mind blowing that's he's not even hiding it anymore.
What are the white Christian Nationalists billionaires connections with Russia? Or are they using Shitpants in the way the Russians are. I mean, everything is transactional for the fuckwad. Is there an underbelly of corruption led by Russian assets installed in the House and Senate?
And we all know this waste, fraud, and DEI (DEI is the n-word for Republicans) is a guise to look for vulnerabilities in our systems to enrich themselves and sell to other autocratic countries. We're in fucking trouble.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck etc, the glass eye in the duck's ass will be able to see if it shits like a duck... ;)
Yes, the Christian Nationalists have been in bed with Russian Orthodox Church for years now. All of a piece: fascistic, racist, anti-woman, anti-LGBT.
And yes, Trump is hardly the only politician the Russians control. Look at the infiltration of the NRA, Rand Paul's years of comments, Tulsi, Ron Johnson & other Fourth of July Traitors (one of whom is now Senate majority leader), Rubio of course...ironically I don't think Mitch is.
Thanks for ordering the book. I went through it two days ago. Not perfect by any means, but it holds up pretty well. Most of what I got wrong was along the lines of "the good guys are going to win." Sigh.
As I understand if, Greg, the Russians targeted Trump because of his attraction to constant flattery. The KGB was much smarter than we were to use him. He owes Putin a shitload!
As a child of the Cold War Era, HTF did we let him become president...twice? If this were the mid 20th century, he'd have been permanently removed long ago.
Great question...and it implies that he had a lot of help in accomplishing that...it takes money, political power and complicity within the states.
Have the US GOP Senate and House members even considered immediate impeachment (Democrats have)...so, how many of those GOPers are implicated. I'm sure a rudimentary list is possible and is in order at this point. Action needs to be taken now, while it is still possible.
I subscribed just now, specifically to ask a related question. Where was the media before the election? So much of this dirt was known and documented then, even going back to 2016 and before.
Imagine Nixon being tied up with the Russians. Woodward and Bernstein would have been on the front page, above the fold, every day till the election. People were OK voting for a convicted felon, but I feel like voting for someone who was shown to be on Putin's payroll would have been a bridge too far and probably would have changed enough votes to cost Trump the election.
I understand that some of the mainstream media has been captured by the oligarchs. But all of it? This would have been the story of the century for whatever reporter broke the news. Where were they all?
There was a short published report that virtually all the CEOs of the Boards of Directors for all the broadcast networks and a lot of newspapers were all trumpers. The WaPo was owned by Bezos, very front and center with trump now. TwitterX was in Elon Musk's hands. The control came from the effective ownership. So, the story didn't get out much...and most importantly, not repeated endlessly like the GOP lies, with the serious targets being the swing states. Notice Kamala Harris did not do much with TV or newspapers due to the adversarial situation. In any invasive strategy controlling the flow of information is a key component. Many of the smaller weekly or bi-weekly papers did not emphasize national politics, their key interests were local.
You are right to think they should have made a difference...it's really an untold story in the details.
I don't really know. It was not as if his prior history was unknown...the Village Voice's Wayne Barrett started in on Trump in '79 and wound up writing two books about him. However, trump core cult didn't seem to get the gist of the story...or flat didn't care. And somehow came up with millions to support him, which I always found suspicious.
There were a few moments when we all thought, "This is it." And it was never "it." At the end of the day, I think the truth was just too head-shaking for people to believe. Even today, it is cast as "conspiracy theory," which it is not.
Sat 'thank you' to the John Birch Society, established 1957, supported by the Kochs.
They promoted a basic oligarchical society, run by big money who then chose the politicians and sat above the state governments. Sometimes via KKK, like Louisiana for a long time, patterned after the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission that existed from 1956 to 1973, both run by the governors of their states using state money to set up White Citizen Councils and the like, actual white supremacy in action. They were formed in the wake of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. That was 51 years ago.
DEI is an antidote to white supremacy and its biases. Trump and Musk openly opted for white supremacy with that action. Beat that drum in the coming two Florida representative elections. Get to the Cubans...tell them that Trump choosing Putin also means he is choosing Cuba and Castro-style dictatorship...they may get to go home soon. Nothing is permanent now. And Trump certainly doesn't respect Puerto Rico, except for cheap workers at Mar-a-Lago. That's where the administration's actions are leading. Find a strong voice to repeat and repeat and repeat the political message.
I knew the #2 person in the Louisiana Sovereignty Commission...it was very real, not a fiction. That person saw the error of their ways. Publicity got to them in the end. Trump and Musk are engaged in very dark matters...light kills it.
Good idea re Cubans. The fact that a member of that community is now Secretary of State, openly working for fascists and betraying the country, may activate them too. I know I get more mad when it's Italians from NJ like Leonard Leo.
Plenty of investigative journalists were, are, and will continue to do great work. I wrote a book about all of this in 2018, and it's not like I had sources of my own back then. I knew what I knew because of media reporting.
One of the issues is that the Trump/Russia story is complex, so its components would pop up in various sections of the newspaper: national security, politics, foreign news, even the gossip columns (Don Jr getting divorced). There was no mechanism for tying it all together (which is what prompted me to write DIRTY RUBLES and start doing that myself).
Another is that the legacy media were mostly all cool with Trump. Les Moonves: "trump is bad for the country but great for CBS." I know for a fact that certain things got quashed...you could never ever HINT that he was on drugs, for example. Corporate lawyers put down the gauntlet.
Another is a lot of these big name journos want access and book deals, bc that's where the money is, and the glory.
And look at Watergate. For that to work, we had to have 1) two really great investagtive journalists with those exact sources; 2) an editor who believed in them and gave them time to work the story; 3) an editor in chief who sided with them even when it looked like they were wrong and Nixon was pushing back hard; 4) a publisher who let the editorial dept. do its thing without interference. Any one of those isn't there, Watergate never breaks. That was a perfect storm, not a template of how things used to be.
Lots of journalists wrote about Trump/Russia. Unger, Corn, Bertrand, even the lousy WH people at NYT did good work sometimes. And there is a ton in the archives of the Village Voice etc. My friend Stephanie Koff knew all about Trump's mob ties and CI status. Why? It was written about.
All of that is much harder now. Legacy media is being consolidated, oligarchs own almost everything, and little guys are going to get shut down eventually.
That stupid reality show created a false image of him, the media trustwashed him, Fox promoted him, he controlled rogue elements in the FBI that leaked the HRC laptop bullshit, and Comey sucks. Lots of little things.
But mostly, as I wrote somewhere many years ago, Americans lacked the imagination to see what was happening.
Thanks again Greg for summarizing Trump’s obvious ties to Russia! We discussed the issue of Trump being a confidential informant in his early years! Avoiding, being charged with the money laundering schemes he ran with crime syndicates on both coasts. The possibility of him being a double agent isn’t very likely, considering his low IQ,, yet has been tossed around! What say you? Exceptionally crafted piece as always Greg… what will it take for the rest of this country to recognize who Trump truly is??
I mean, what is a double agent? He's a Confidential Informant, which is I suppose a kind of double agent. Really it's a rat. He's a fucking rat, and always has been.
A study for sociologists? How do reasonably smart people continue to elect morons for leadership. History is full of such. Sure, there are voting morons but for the worst of the worst to rise to power, it seems that there is some strategy. Does it boil down to money, or brutality, or a Rupert Murdoch?
"Death Of A Dissident" by Alexander Litvinenko describes in detail Putin's playback. Dipshit 4547 fits it perfectly. Why willingly become a Russian asset, actually puppet is a more apt description? Maybe too simple an explanation but dipshit could never achieve his dream of vast riches on his own, Vlad made getting wealthy easy, the lazy asshole simply got on the bandwagon. Along the way he got to fulfill his second objective, getting even with those he feels scorned him. This a big list, he being so thin skinned. Lastly, he was allowed to put his racism on full display, he could never be a closeted racist.
This lazy son of a bitch so easily sold himself to the devil, why? So he could feel self important while not working to achieve riches and fame, if indeed infamy.
"...why? So he could feel self important while not working to achieve riches and fame, if indeed infamy."
Yes, I think it's as simple as that. As you correctly pointed out, Trump is a lazy SOB, and having Putin's/Russia's/the USSR's help in achieving his overblown sense of self-importance cost him nothing except the historical infamy that comes from being an obvious traitor to his country. But, by the time history gets around to being written, he'll be dead. Benedict Arnold doesn't care what people say about him, and neither will Trump.
He was something like $300 million in debt to Deutsche Bank -- the only bank that would deal with him, and named for the wrong country -- when he took office in 2016. I have always thought debt management explains all of it. But that's just my theory.
Nixon opened China, and I choose to blame him for all of this. It's become increasingly clear that the United States is under the curse of the Chinese proverb, "May you live in interesting times."
Thanks, Lisbeth. I got a lot of stuff wrong -- mostly stuff about how the good guys were going to win -- and there are parts I'd love to rewrite, but it holds up pretty well.
Thank you for your exhaustive research Greg. (I love Lisa59's (below), "a glass eye in a duck's ass can see this.") Further corroboration for one point you make, John Kiriakou, former CIA Operative and Analyst, confirmed that the moment that list of new hires was sent to the White House, their chance for a career as a CIA operative was over. This all continues to be beyond comprehension, especially for one like me, born while FDR was in office. But here it is. Can it be stopped?
Thanks, Gary. There is no other explanation for the CIA email thing other than it's a gift to his whoremasters. "Glass eye in a duck's ass" is chef's kiss.
"Peter Krasnov, served as a lieutenant general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and later led anti-Bolshevik (Royalist) forces during the Russian Civil War [executing many]." He was a last-minute include, in a repatriation of Russians fighting for the Nazis directly against the Bolsheviks
"The broken British promise to not hand Krasnov over to Soviet authorities was engineered by undetected [double-agent] and Soviet spy at MI6, Kim Philby [Director of Counter-intelligence], who knew about Krasnov's broken promise to the Soviet government back in late 1917 that he would not take up arms against the new regime in return for being released from prison."
Ancient history by the late 1980's, when Comrade Trump was asseted by the KGB. They must have been laughing their asses off at whoever came up with this code-name.
Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey: where are you now that we need you again? “The President is a KGB Asset” is a story right up your alley. I couldn’t make this shit up if you paid me a Hollywood paycheck.
We’ve suspected, or over time finally figured the now very obvious; Trump is a Russian asset and probably has been for quite a while now. The question is, how long are we going to allow his perfidy to continue? He’s an obvious danger, not only to us but to the rest of the world.
We have had, a bunch of different ways to remove him legally: first election, first impeachment, second election (which worked), second impeachment, 14A argument, SCOTUS ruling, JAck Smith cases, third election. I fear it's too late now for any of that. We're stuck with him until he goes to the great Mar-a-Largo in the sky...which hopefully will happen soon.
Exactly that. Exactly.
I recently ordered your book, Dirty Rubbles. I'm waiting for it. My go to reply is, a glass eye in a duck's ass can see this. King Shitpants is destabilizing the country for Putin. It's mind blowing that's he's not even hiding it anymore.
What are the white Christian Nationalists billionaires connections with Russia? Or are they using Shitpants in the way the Russians are. I mean, everything is transactional for the fuckwad. Is there an underbelly of corruption led by Russian assets installed in the House and Senate?
And we all know this waste, fraud, and DEI (DEI is the n-word for Republicans) is a guise to look for vulnerabilities in our systems to enrich themselves and sell to other autocratic countries. We're in fucking trouble.
We are worse than in trouble. We are the trouble for the rest of the world…
Well put, JD. And very true.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck etc, the glass eye in the duck's ass will be able to see if it shits like a duck... ;)
Yes, the Christian Nationalists have been in bed with Russian Orthodox Church for years now. All of a piece: fascistic, racist, anti-woman, anti-LGBT.
And yes, Trump is hardly the only politician the Russians control. Look at the infiltration of the NRA, Rand Paul's years of comments, Tulsi, Ron Johnson & other Fourth of July Traitors (one of whom is now Senate majority leader), Rubio of course...ironically I don't think Mitch is.
Thanks for ordering the book. I went through it two days ago. Not perfect by any means, but it holds up pretty well. Most of what I got wrong was along the lines of "the good guys are going to win." Sigh.
As I understand if, Greg, the Russians targeted Trump because of his attraction to constant flattery. The KGB was much smarter than we were to use him. He owes Putin a shitload!
As a child of the Cold War Era, HTF did we let him become president...twice? If this were the mid 20th century, he'd have been permanently removed long ago.
Great question...and it implies that he had a lot of help in accomplishing that...it takes money, political power and complicity within the states.
Have the US GOP Senate and House members even considered immediate impeachment (Democrats have)...so, how many of those GOPers are implicated. I'm sure a rudimentary list is possible and is in order at this point. Action needs to be taken now, while it is still possible.
The pot is boiling, the time is now.
The austerity budget passed the House. We may be fucked now, Billy.
It's going to take a politician who is being compromised to share WHY and stand his ground. Will that happen? When elephants fly.
I subscribed just now, specifically to ask a related question. Where was the media before the election? So much of this dirt was known and documented then, even going back to 2016 and before.
Imagine Nixon being tied up with the Russians. Woodward and Bernstein would have been on the front page, above the fold, every day till the election. People were OK voting for a convicted felon, but I feel like voting for someone who was shown to be on Putin's payroll would have been a bridge too far and probably would have changed enough votes to cost Trump the election.
I understand that some of the mainstream media has been captured by the oligarchs. But all of it? This would have been the story of the century for whatever reporter broke the news. Where were they all?
There was a short published report that virtually all the CEOs of the Boards of Directors for all the broadcast networks and a lot of newspapers were all trumpers. The WaPo was owned by Bezos, very front and center with trump now. TwitterX was in Elon Musk's hands. The control came from the effective ownership. So, the story didn't get out much...and most importantly, not repeated endlessly like the GOP lies, with the serious targets being the swing states. Notice Kamala Harris did not do much with TV or newspapers due to the adversarial situation. In any invasive strategy controlling the flow of information is a key component. Many of the smaller weekly or bi-weekly papers did not emphasize national politics, their key interests were local.
You are right to think they should have made a difference...it's really an untold story in the details.
Agreed. But no one was willing to break the story? Mother Jones? Politico? The Guardian? Closer to mainstream, The Atlantic?
I understand the WaPo and the rest of the mainstream. But is the alternative press also captured?
I don't really know. It was not as if his prior history was unknown...the Village Voice's Wayne Barrett started in on Trump in '79 and wound up writing two books about him. However, trump core cult didn't seem to get the gist of the story...or flat didn't care. And somehow came up with millions to support him, which I always found suspicious.
See my long comment above.
There were a few moments when we all thought, "This is it." And it was never "it." At the end of the day, I think the truth was just too head-shaking for people to believe. Even today, it is cast as "conspiracy theory," which it is not.
Many of the smaller weekly or bi-weekly papers did not emphasize national politics, their key interests were local.
Because they no longer exist, and what does exist are arms of big publishing companies - owned by Trumpers.
Yes, Billy, great point. Also the local TV stations were gobbled up by Trinity.
Yes, all of it!
50 years of Republican propaganda about "duh terryble libs."
Sat 'thank you' to the John Birch Society, established 1957, supported by the Kochs.
They promoted a basic oligarchical society, run by big money who then chose the politicians and sat above the state governments. Sometimes via KKK, like Louisiana for a long time, patterned after the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission that existed from 1956 to 1973, both run by the governors of their states using state money to set up White Citizen Councils and the like, actual white supremacy in action. They were formed in the wake of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. That was 51 years ago.
DEI is an antidote to white supremacy and its biases. Trump and Musk openly opted for white supremacy with that action. Beat that drum in the coming two Florida representative elections. Get to the Cubans...tell them that Trump choosing Putin also means he is choosing Cuba and Castro-style dictatorship...they may get to go home soon. Nothing is permanent now. And Trump certainly doesn't respect Puerto Rico, except for cheap workers at Mar-a-Lago. That's where the administration's actions are leading. Find a strong voice to repeat and repeat and repeat the political message.
I knew the #2 person in the Louisiana Sovereignty Commission...it was very real, not a fiction. That person saw the error of their ways. Publicity got to them in the end. Trump and Musk are engaged in very dark matters...light kills it.
Did Birch become the tea party later, they morphed, but always kept their focus - self-righteous hate
Good idea re Cubans. The fact that a member of that community is now Secretary of State, openly working for fascists and betraying the country, may activate them too. I know I get more mad when it's Italians from NJ like Leonard Leo.
Ah, but they own the libs now. Just like they own everybody else...
I also wondered where were Bernstein and Woodward. Better question where was Ben Bradley and Katharine Graham. Bezos is a greedy turd.
Exactly. See my comment above...Watergate was a perfect storm. Bradlee doesn't exist anymore.
Thanks for subscribing.
Plenty of investigative journalists were, are, and will continue to do great work. I wrote a book about all of this in 2018, and it's not like I had sources of my own back then. I knew what I knew because of media reporting.
One of the issues is that the Trump/Russia story is complex, so its components would pop up in various sections of the newspaper: national security, politics, foreign news, even the gossip columns (Don Jr getting divorced). There was no mechanism for tying it all together (which is what prompted me to write DIRTY RUBLES and start doing that myself).
Another is that the legacy media were mostly all cool with Trump. Les Moonves: "trump is bad for the country but great for CBS." I know for a fact that certain things got quashed...you could never ever HINT that he was on drugs, for example. Corporate lawyers put down the gauntlet.
Another is a lot of these big name journos want access and book deals, bc that's where the money is, and the glory.
And look at Watergate. For that to work, we had to have 1) two really great investagtive journalists with those exact sources; 2) an editor who believed in them and gave them time to work the story; 3) an editor in chief who sided with them even when it looked like they were wrong and Nixon was pushing back hard; 4) a publisher who let the editorial dept. do its thing without interference. Any one of those isn't there, Watergate never breaks. That was a perfect storm, not a template of how things used to be.
Lots of journalists wrote about Trump/Russia. Unger, Corn, Bertrand, even the lousy WH people at NYT did good work sometimes. And there is a ton in the archives of the Village Voice etc. My friend Stephanie Koff knew all about Trump's mob ties and CI status. Why? It was written about.
All of that is much harder now. Legacy media is being consolidated, oligarchs own almost everything, and little guys are going to get shut down eventually.
I hope this answers your question!
We have lots of great journalists still.
That stupid reality show created a false image of him, the media trustwashed him, Fox promoted him, he controlled rogue elements in the FBI that leaked the HRC laptop bullshit, and Comey sucks. Lots of little things.
But mostly, as I wrote somewhere many years ago, Americans lacked the imagination to see what was happening.
Thanks again Greg for summarizing Trump’s obvious ties to Russia! We discussed the issue of Trump being a confidential informant in his early years! Avoiding, being charged with the money laundering schemes he ran with crime syndicates on both coasts. The possibility of him being a double agent isn’t very likely, considering his low IQ,, yet has been tossed around! What say you? Exceptionally crafted piece as always Greg… what will it take for the rest of this country to recognize who Trump truly is??
Thanks, Patrick.
I mean, what is a double agent? He's a Confidential Informant, which is I suppose a kind of double agent. Really it's a rat. He's a fucking rat, and always has been.
A study for sociologists? How do reasonably smart people continue to elect morons for leadership. History is full of such. Sure, there are voting morons but for the worst of the worst to rise to power, it seems that there is some strategy. Does it boil down to money, or brutality, or a Rupert Murdoch?
Posted to LinkedIn
Thank you.
"Death Of A Dissident" by Alexander Litvinenko describes in detail Putin's playback. Dipshit 4547 fits it perfectly. Why willingly become a Russian asset, actually puppet is a more apt description? Maybe too simple an explanation but dipshit could never achieve his dream of vast riches on his own, Vlad made getting wealthy easy, the lazy asshole simply got on the bandwagon. Along the way he got to fulfill his second objective, getting even with those he feels scorned him. This a big list, he being so thin skinned. Lastly, he was allowed to put his racism on full display, he could never be a closeted racist.
This lazy son of a bitch so easily sold himself to the devil, why? So he could feel self important while not working to achieve riches and fame, if indeed infamy.
"...why? So he could feel self important while not working to achieve riches and fame, if indeed infamy."
Yes, I think it's as simple as that. As you correctly pointed out, Trump is a lazy SOB, and having Putin's/Russia's/the USSR's help in achieving his overblown sense of self-importance cost him nothing except the historical infamy that comes from being an obvious traitor to his country. But, by the time history gets around to being written, he'll be dead. Benedict Arnold doesn't care what people say about him, and neither will Trump.
Simple is generally the best explanation, thanks for your reply
Arnold was a pompous, narcissistic, money-grubbing asshole, too. He was not, however, married to a British whore.
You nailed him
He was something like $300 million in debt to Deutsche Bank -- the only bank that would deal with him, and named for the wrong country -- when he took office in 2016. I have always thought debt management explains all of it. But that's just my theory.
Nixon opened China, and I choose to blame him for all of this. It's become increasingly clear that the United States is under the curse of the Chinese proverb, "May you live in interesting times."
Read "The 100 Year Marathon " by Michael Pillsbury.
The plsn for Hegemony
Thanks, Cal.
That's actually not an "ancient chinese proverb." It's something made up around 25 years ago, right here.
That figures! Good gods, Wikipedia has an entry! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times
I did not know that!
I'm good with blaming Nixon.
It’s TUESDAY🎉🎉🎉 EVERYONE should read your book, Dirty Rubles.
Thanks, Lisbeth. I got a lot of stuff wrong -- mostly stuff about how the good guys were going to win -- and there are parts I'd love to rewrite, but it holds up pretty well.
Thank you for your exhaustive research Greg. (I love Lisa59's (below), "a glass eye in a duck's ass can see this.") Further corroboration for one point you make, John Kiriakou, former CIA Operative and Analyst, confirmed that the moment that list of new hires was sent to the White House, their chance for a career as a CIA operative was over. This all continues to be beyond comprehension, especially for one like me, born while FDR was in office. But here it is. Can it be stopped?
Thanks, Gary. There is no other explanation for the CIA email thing other than it's a gift to his whoremasters. "Glass eye in a duck's ass" is chef's kiss.
Anyone who still needs *more* evidence that Trump is a Russian asset is incapable of hearing that evidence.
"Eyes wide shut"
But without Cruise and Kidman.
Well put.
About Trump's KGB code-name Krasnov:
From Wiki:
"Peter Krasnov, served as a lieutenant general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and later led anti-Bolshevik (Royalist) forces during the Russian Civil War [executing many]." He was a last-minute include, in a repatriation of Russians fighting for the Nazis directly against the Bolsheviks
"The broken British promise to not hand Krasnov over to Soviet authorities was engineered by undetected [double-agent] and Soviet spy at MI6, Kim Philby [Director of Counter-intelligence], who knew about Krasnov's broken promise to the Soviet government back in late 1917 that he would not take up arms against the new regime in return for being released from prison."
Ancient history by the late 1980's, when Comrade Trump was asseted by the KGB. They must have been laughing their asses off at whoever came up with this code-name.
Why Krasnov? Trump is
a) A Russian Imperialist
b) Nazi Sympathizer
c) Delusional.
Thanks, SIlverwolf. Interesting stuff indeed!
Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey: where are you now that we need you again? “The President is a KGB Asset” is a story right up your alley. I couldn’t make this shit up if you paid me a Hollywood paycheck.
They all would have rejected it as too ridiculous and un-believable. Sigh.
Trump is just the symptom.
Bill Browder has some solutions. People like Walter Isaacson should be called out for their gaslighting.
https://youtu.be/96tHJgHExCk
Oh, that guy and his bullshit biographies. Ugh.
We’ve suspected, or over time finally figured the now very obvious; Trump is a Russian asset and probably has been for quite a while now. The question is, how long are we going to allow his perfidy to continue? He’s an obvious danger, not only to us but to the rest of the world.
We have had, a bunch of different ways to remove him legally: first election, first impeachment, second election (which worked), second impeachment, 14A argument, SCOTUS ruling, JAck Smith cases, third election. I fear it's too late now for any of that. We're stuck with him until he goes to the great Mar-a-Largo in the sky...which hopefully will happen soon.
He has made us a danger to the rest of the world.