.times of Israel
In his new book, “House of Trump, House of Putin,” which was published last week, Unger sets out to show how, through the decades, first the Russian mafia, and then the Russian oligarchs, built a network of relationships with Trump and with Trump’s business empire, which centrally included buying hundreds upon hundreds of luxury apartments in Trump’s dozens of residential towers. That vast income for Trump — Russian money which, Unger claims, was essentially laundered via Trump companies using the loopholes of America’s “virtually unregulated” real estate industry — played a vital role in the resurgence of his ailing and failing businesses, helping Trump rise from the financial ashes to begin the journey that ultimately took him all the way to the White House.
En route, Unger charges with incendiary detail in the book, Trump became nothing less than “a Russian asset”: The Russians saved him from financial ruin; Russian mafia bosses made their homes in Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in Manhattan; and an international real estate firm called Bayrock, “staffed, owned and financed by émigrés from Russia and the former Soviet Union, operated out of the building.”
“I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA,” Trump tweeted in January 2017. “NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING.” In fact, Unger shows, Trump became entangled with dozens of individuals tied to the Russians — some of them notorious criminals, some of them alleged criminals, some of them neither.
But Unger’s revelations directly impact Israel as well. About half of those 59 named “Russia Connections” are Jewish, and about a dozen of the 59 are Israeli citizens and/or have deep connections to Israel. (Several of those he names, such as Lev Leviev, Alexander Mashkevich and Mikhail Chernoy, are very wealthy and prominent businessmen with direct access to the highest levels of Israel’s elected leadership.)
Those numbers necessarily raise questions about whether Israel too is being compromised by Putin’s Russia — about whether unsavory characters are exploiting Israel’s Law of Return to gain Israeli citizenship and by extension access to the West; about whether Israel, with its own lax financial regulations and inadequate law enforcement, is serving as a conduit for money laundering by Moscow-linked individuals and companies; and about whether Moscow is building strategic relationships with Israeli politicians — as Unger charges it has done to such phenomenal effect with the president of the United States — in order to influence and if necessary subvert Israeli policies in its interest.
And nobody from any other country bought Trump real estate? Really. Chinese also bought Trump real estate. Wealthy people across the globe interacted with Donald Trump. This was his training to serve in elected office. He said as much during the eletion campaign, or words to that effect.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I like a kooky, juicy conspiracy theory as much as the next guy. And the more data points thrown in, the better it gets. The only thing missing from the sandwich is meat. C'mon. If there was a even a sliver of a smoking gun here, the President would be out of office yesterday.
This is Why I Want Trump in the White House
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/28/politics/trump-evangelicals-midterms/index.html
Because I don't want blood in the streets. The President and I seem to be in agreement: Democrats in office will spell open season on anyone perceived as not supporting the liberal, leftist, multiculturalist, feministic, LGBT drenched agenda.
In the above linked report, I don't think anyone can find the President uttering a lie.
Are you nuts? There is no threat of violence; Trump made it up.
ReplyDeleteYehoshua, you have an open invitation to join me at an Antifa rally. We'll carry that fascist symbol on a pole -- you know, an American flag.
ReplyDeleteJust make sure to write your will before you leave home.
Your ad hominem, and, if I may add, tiresomely repetitive attacks, indicate you can only make assertions, and hope no one pays attention to contradictory info because you've labeled the bearers of facts crazy.
Umm, nope. First, why in the world would I go to an Antifa rally with you? Second, Antifa is a very very minor player on the left. I cannot promise there will not be a riot anywhere by anyone, but what Trump is doing is fear-mongering, plain and simple.
ReplyDeleteTrump is not being altogether truthful when he says, I have nothing to do with Russia. No deals, no LOANS- nothing.
ReplyDeleteThis contradicts what Eric and his older brother, Donald Trump Jr., said in the years before the word “Russian” became radioactive for them.
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Jr. said in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
President Donald Trump is the biggest Oheiv Yisroel in the Oval Office in a very long time.
ReplyDeleteI guess that settles it then! Thanks!!
ReplyDeleteIt bears repeating. Donald Trump has been known to be very friendly to religious Jews long before he entered politics. As was his father Fred.
ReplyDeleteand therfor?
ReplyDeleteAnd therefore we should ignore his profound ignorance, his immoral behavior, his warmongering, his graft, his cruel policies, his viciousness, his cheapening of the public discourse, and his lies. Obviously.
ReplyDeleteAll of which you can attribute to Bill Clinton as well. But with Slick Willie you also get Oslo and left-wing pressure on Israel in addition to the U.S.
ReplyDeleteNope. Clinton definitely had failings in his personal life, and was not the most honest of politicians. But no one could accuse him of ignorance; the sleaze and illegal activity of the current President and in the current administration is orders of magnitude worse than under Clinton, and Clinton did not have the infantalism or cruelty of Trump.
ReplyDeleteYour assumptions about his trade positions being better for America are mere theorizing. While certain industries may benefit from a modified NAFTA deal, that doesn't mean that it is better for Americans in general. And you have no idea what will happen with China or Europe.
Lastly, your assumptions about what is better for Israel are also opinion based, not fact based.
If you think Oslo was better for Israel, there's not much to talk about.
ReplyDeleteClinton was on manymmany magnitudes far worse than Trump.
I think that deciding whether or not Oslo was better for Israel is an impossible question to answer. I do believe that it was an attempt to address a huge mess that needed addressing. And if you recall, Rabin was assassinated. How things would have turned out had he, not Peres, been the leader of Labor in the 90's is unknowable.
ReplyDeleteAnd comments like "Clinton had no redeeming factors, something Trump has many of" are plain stupidity. You are basically taking your idiosyncratic assumptions about what "redeeming factors" are, and then turning that into a tautological assertion. Why not just come out and say "I think that by definition Democrats are horrible and Republicans are great" (though Trump is not a Republican in any traditional sense of the term)?
Incorrect. Any reasonable person will agree Slick Willie was worse on a far greater magnitude than anything you are judging Trump by.
ReplyDeleteI am not a straight-line Republican. But it is very rare to find a better Democrat than Republican for a given elected office.
Once again, you are taking your personal opinions and confusing them with facts. You can have whatever opinion you want, but don't just assume that "any reasonable person" will agree with you. Then again, your definition of a "reasonable person" is probably "a person who sees things the same way I do," and around and around the circle we go.
ReplyDeleteHere, I can do it too: Any reasonable person will agree Trump is worse on a far greater magnitude than anything you are judging Clinton by.
I am not a straight-line Democrat. But it is very rare to find a better Republican than Democrat for a given elected office.
Surely you'd also argue not to mix personal opinion with facts in claiming that all reasonable people would agree Stalin was bad. That's only a "personal opinion", surely, not to be confused with "facts". And if Stalin is a bit much for your, surely you'd say the same about Jimmy Carter.
ReplyDeleteTrue about Stalin, not about Carter. But neither are relevant to Clinton, and the fact that you would compare either of them to Stalin gives an indication that we are certainly not using the same definition of "reasonable." See the link, which lists presidents rankings by historians. Clinton ranges from 8th best to 24th best. In other words, all historians surveyed rank him somewhere between very good and the upper range of average. Are none of them "reasonable people"?
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States
Are you kidding? So-called self-declared "historians," like Arthur Schlesinger, who are full-fledged liberal Democrats.
ReplyDeleteDid you bother to look at the chart? Among post-WW II presidents, they have Reagan and Eisenhower rated far higher than Clinton, and G.H.W. Bush around the same. There is no Democratic slant there.
ReplyDelete“Bestselling US author: ‘Russian asset’ Trump doesn’t truly care for Israel, Jews”
ReplyDeleteNo.
“About half of those 59 named “Russia Connections” are Jewish, and about a dozen of the 59 are Israeli citizens and/or have deep connections to Israel. (Several of those he names, such as Lev Leviev, Alexander Mashkevich and Mikhail Chernoy, are very wealthy and prominent businessmen with direct access to the highest levels of Israel’s elected leadership.) Those numbers necessarily raise questions about whether Israel too is being compromised by Putin’s Russia — about whether unsavory characters are exploiting Israel’s Law of Return to gain Israeli citizenship and by extension access to the West; about whether Israel, with its own lax financial regulations and inadequate law enforcement, is serving as a conduit for money laundering by Moscow-linked individuals and companies; and about whether Moscow is building strategic relationships with Israeli politicians — as Unger charges it has done to such phenomenal effect with the president of the United States — in order to influence and if necessary subvert Israeli policies in its interest.”
Trump is not so bad. My my --- he did business deals with Lev Leviev etc.
Clinton also wasn’t so bad. See https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-impeached-president-1535725662?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2
Clinton was not so bad. My my --- did Slick Willie have sex with Monica Lewinsky or not? The charge is perjury, lying… Starr couldn’t prove anything. Today Starr regrets going into the Monica Lewinsky stuff. “And I deeply regret that I took on the Lewinsky phase of the investigation”
What will be the end of the Mueller witch hunt?
“Yet ultimately, much of the nation readily forgave Bill Clinton and instead blamed the prosecutor: me.”
“Meanwhile, the barrage of charges aimed at me was unremitting. A common theme was: Starr found nothing in all his years poking around Arkansas, looking for something, anything, to pin on the Clintons. Now, in desperation, he is probing into the most private of human relationships. Someone should rein in this prosecutor gone rogue.”
Someone should reign in Mueller gone rogue.