So, our federal government limps along, thanks to last-minute shenanigans and temper tantrums by Congress. At least for the next 45 days. Yet U.S. aid to embattled Ukraine is held hostage by the Russophile House Republicans. Why?
Trump’s enormous financial debt to Putin for installing him in power in 2016 is finally revealing its historical roots. Trump was and remains Moscow’s candidate, funded surreptitiously by Russian oligarchs and criminals, along with American cultists and suckers. He continues to command the news cycle in a world of disinformation, fake news and more lies.
In the late 1990s, American banks cut the debt-ridden and untrustworthy Queens realtor off from any future loans, so Trump turned to Putin and his Leningrad KGB friends. The U.S. banks put him on a monthly allowance. He failed to build his Trump Tower in Moscow, but he succeeded in funding his campaign for U.S. president and much more with the help of Russian money and loans.
No one really knows how many billions the ex-president owes the Russian dictator. But Putin remains Trump’s banker and expects payment.
To everyone’s surprise, Trump and his racketeering family won the election, thanks to the electoral college which trumped the popular vote (for Hilary Clinton) once more. A Eurasian crime syndicate took up positions in Washington. The Muscovite Candidate and his family took over the White House.
The GOP’s current theater of the absurd trying to impeach Biden and invent financial ties to his errant son Hunter and Ukrainian corporations again aligns with Putin’s interests. The theater continues the blackmail phone call that Trump made to attack the Bidens through Ukraine. Not surprisingly, Putin says he supports Trump in 2024.
The endless lies about the Bidens are all part of Trump’s Big Lie that he allegedly won the 2020 election (he lost). Any loss for the devastated and embattled Ukraine is a win for Russia, unimpressive as Moscow may be on the battlefield. Putin may have lost after 2005 when Paul Manafort and other Putin consultants tried and failed to impose Russia-friendly candidates on politics in Kiev.
The Republican Party is now the Party of Trump, and therefore of Putin. The money keeps on flowing to the clowns and sycophants on the right who remain busy suppressing voting, Gerrymandering districts, inventing conspiracies, and kowtowing to Republican legislatures wherever they exist. The politicians may appear crazy, but they are still getting money from Moscow funneled through Trump’s Byzantine (and now indicted) business enterprises and gullible Republicans.
Way back in 2018, before the Mueller Report, I published my book “Useful Assets.” The Trump Family, the Russians and Eurasian organized crime, arguing that Trump’s ties to the Russian mafia go back to 1977 (when he married a Czech wife), to the KGB a decade later when Trump visited Russia, and to the Russian oligarchs who began funding him in the 1990s. Trump’s many business operations and money laundering schemes all are linked to Eurasian criminals and their ill gotten gains after the collapse of the old Soviet Union.
Trump properties in Miami, Las Vegas, New Jersey, and New York then and now are safe havens for Eurasian mobsters facing arrest or sanctions. Trump himself may have been an FBI informant, thus safe from prosecution. But his net worth is probably negative. Now he is on trial for fraud inflating (or deflating) his property values.
So, we narrowly avoided a government shutdown and can go back to watching the bloody Ukraine news reports on TV every evening. And hear more Trump, who needs only to say something else hateful or absurd to get free campaign coverage of his indictments.
Perhaps some future historian will explain how and why American democracy fell victim to a malignant narcissist’s scheme to seize, exploit, and control the government of the U.S., financed by a Russian war-criminal dictator and acting as a twice-to-be-impeached and criminally indicted U.S. ex-president. Trump wants to seize the government, ignore the Constitution, and fire or execute those who disagree with him. At least one Republican presidential candidate now dares call it treason.Robert C. Williams is a retired Russian historian who resides in Topsham.
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