Donald Trump Jr. and Senior. Like father like son.
As a veteran Washington politician is said to have once told a newbie, “if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” That may describe the position Trump is in, as a story in the Washington Post reports.The full story is well worth reading to get a sense of what is happening inside the high command of the enemy. According to the Post, Trump cannot trust his own inner circle. “Even Vice President Pence sought to distance himself from the controversy, with his
Like rats leaving a sinking ship, it appears that Trump’s inner circle may be abandoning him.
spokesman noting that Trump Jr.’s meeting occurred before Pence joined the ticket,” the Post writes. With each one hoping to save their own skin, the Post reports that different members of the Trump administration are leaking news to the press. It appears that Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, may be on the chopping block and clearly Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer is out of favor as he is nowhere to be seen nowadays. A good guess, though, is that Trump is afraid to fire them – and others – because once fired they might openly turn on him.
Meanwhile, Trump himself has been in hiding for the last three days.
Donald, jr.
Donald Trump with Bayrock partners Tefvik Arif (center) and Felix Sater at the Soho launch party in 2007. Sater is a convicted financial swindler.
Trump now claims he barely knew Sater and wouldn’t even recognize him in a room.
The source of this great unravelling, of course, is the revelation that Donald Trump jr. had a secret meeting with a Russian lawyer who was apparently an emissary of the Putin regime, and that Junior met with her in order to get information that the Russians had obtained on then-election rival Hillary Clinton. Here, at last, is a bit of evidence that the Trump election campaign colluded with US capitalism’s imperialist rival, Russian capitalism, just like the capitalist media has been hinting at all along.
First some details of the chain of connections and of events: A close associate of Trump in Russia is Aras Agalarov, who co-hosted along with Trump the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in Russia in 2013. Enter Rob Goldstone, an
Part of the problem that US capitalists have with Trump is his sheer incompetence. As Joe Garofoli, Democratic columnist for the SF Chronicle wrote: “For starters, Trump Jr. shouldn’t have been the one meeting with the person offering the information. The meeting should have been with a low-level staffer — and held far away from campaign headquarters, not one floor below the office of the presidential candidate. Perhaps worse, campaign manager Paul Manafort, was also at the meeting along with Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner.”
“obscure British publicist and music promoter” (Wall St. Journal), who had been representing Aras’s son, Emin Agalarov. (Emin has aspirations as a rock star.) In June of last year, Goldstone contacted Trump Jr., seeking to set up a meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer considered to have close links with Putin. He said she had damaging information on Trump Sr.’s rival, Hillary Clinton. According to the Washington Post, ‘The emails read like something out of a cheap spy thriller — or perhaps even a falsified document designed to lure and entrap a willing but unsuspecting victim….The president’s son was offered “official documents” that would “incriminate Hillary” and that would be “very useful to your father.” Trump Jr. was also informed in the emails that the information being offered was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”‘
Trump jr. responded: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” A few days later Trump Jr. did, in fact, meet with Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York. They were joined by then-campaign manager for Trump, Paul Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.
$64,000 Question
The $64,000 question, though, the one that up until now they don’t dare ask is: “What would the Putin regime stand to gain from a Trump presidency?” Is it really that Clinton is a war monger and Trump is not? Really? No, the answer lies in Trump’s longstanding role as a money launderer for the Russian oligarchs/mafiosa. That is embarrassing enough, but there’s more. Money laundering for drug cartels and similar elements is rampant in the real estate industry. So if they
The Trump administration is coming unravelled like a piece of knitting.
start to reveal Trump’s role, the whole thing will start to come unravelled like a piece of knitting. And it seems that they now may be forced to open up this can of worms. “He (Trump) knows that Mueller will be looking into his finances,” said Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame, on CNN.
Political Crisis
Where might this lead?
A major issue in practically every major and many not-so-major cities in the US is the issue of gentrification. And who is driving that? Who is financing it? Why, none other than the real estate industry – the very same ones whose role as money launderers threatens to be brought before the public eye. But who is financing the local politicians of both parties? In Oakland, at least, it is clear that it is these same forces – the real estate industry. So, the revelation of their role as money launderers for drug cartels threatens the entire city power structure exactly as these cities are undergoing a huge demographic change, one that is causing all sorts of political fallout.
All the more reason why socialists should prepare to run independent, working class candidates for office at the local level.
Donald Trump jr. and senior. Like father like son.
Categories: politics, Trump, Uncategorized, United States
Really like the quality of writing and presentation of this website – well done!
So where does this leave UBC General President, Doug McCarron – obsequious-sycophant that he is? He and the rest of the Building Trades leadership want to provide the labor necessary to build these money making/money laundering machines. And we can see that he has made a deal with the devil that he will supply a stable labor force while at the same time suppressing labor costs, i.e., wages and benefits. He also probably has enhanced the art of mediocre representation, producing half baked resolutions to member grievances against employers, including industrial insurance outcomes. So,has he been stupid enough to put his snout in this troth? What all does McCarron own? How much real estate? Has he fallen to the temptation of money laundering himself?
Also, I found the last sentence of your article close to a non-sequiter. A socialist in office has a chance to oppose and to expose the real estate industry for laundering ill-begotten gains of major criminals, but this is a minor motivation for a socialist to run for office. I believe the primary purpose for a socialist to engage in a political run is to educate and therefore agitate the electorate to build the social solidarity of workers, to give them concrete reason to stop supporting the Republican-Democratic Party. Your insight into Trump as a major money launderer provides “the fuel for this fire.” Winning office has to be secondary to education/agitation. Running an effective, educational campaign is in itself winning. Winning office is “icing on the cake,” but is easily pyrrhic, filled with pitfalls.
By the way today’s Democracy Now (July 20) has opened up this conversation.
Thank you for your comments, Patrick Burns. Regarding your comments on socialists running for office:
Yes, the purpose should be to “educate and agitate” as well as to organize – in this case meaning to help build a working class mass political party. There’s a lot more that could have been written about that last sentence, but the main point that we were driving at was that there could be a huge opening at the local level for such truly independent, socialist, working class candidates. No, it wouldn’t be simply to get elected (although if that were done on the proper basis so much the better); but such an opening would help such a campaign attract that much more attention, meaning make it that much more effective.