“Fredo, well, he’s got a good heart. But he’s weak, and he’s stupid, and this is life and death.” - Francis Ford Coppola’s Michael Corleone in ‘The Godfather Part II.’ Wikileaks was a much better delivery mechanism for anti-Clinton intel than the Trump campaign itself, especially initial go-between Donald Trump, Jr., known derisively in Trump circles as “Fredo.” Pictured are President Vladimir Putin, who it turns out is a great fan of ‘The Godfather’ films, and Premier Dmitry Medvedev.
"Most people would have taken that meeting."
President Donald Trump on last year's Trump Tower meeting between his son, son-in-law, and campaign chairman and a Russian government representative apparently brandishing anti-Clinton intelligence.
Yes, most people would have taken that meeting. Most people, that is, who want to be manipulated by the KGB. (The famed KGB intelligence service has been renamed, but, and I say this with respect, the KGB essentially runs the Russian Federation.)
So, what do we know a few days after revelations that the American president's namesake son, prized do-it-all son-in-law, and national campaign chairman were very happy to meet with a representative of the Russian government bearing sensitive intelligence about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton?
First, of course ... Trump has survived what is a political nuclear blast. His longtime claims of no contact with the Russians, repeatedly rocked by a series of revelations, have been definitively blasted to smithereens this week.
But by the end of the week, there's no sign of change in Trump's job approval rating, which is historically low but holding with his big, hidebound minority base of reactionary voters.
Though even the right-wing media machine paused at first, and Republican pols are mostly loathe to talk about it, the hiccup ended quickly and the pro-Trump clown show is back to full-time distraction and disruption.
To wit (or witless): The Obama administration let the Russian lawyer/lobbyist in the country; Hillary's campaign talked to Ukrainians about Trump chairman Paul Manafort's massively muckraking pro-Russia work there; the Russian government stuff is just opposition research as usual ... And so on.
And the man himself, from whom such dissembling flows like water from Niagara Falls, after ever so briefly looking like he might toss Fredo, er, Donald Jr., under the boss, was off to a big distracting trip to France for the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entry into World War I. Sure, Paris sucked when he was running. But now it rocks, man! Even though Trump's far right favorite Marine Le Pen was trounced by Emmanuel Macron. For Macron looks friendly enough right now. For his own long game purposes, of course. Trump might even do something on climate change. Or maybe not. Hey, look over there at THAT!
For many, it's like the scene in 'Independence Day’ when the survivors of the alien attack strike back by nuking one of the huge invader space ships only to find, after the massive blast finally clears, that the damn thing is still there.
No surprise here, as longtime readers know, as my default position on the impending demise of Trump is ... Nah. Or, in this case, nyet.
But, as I've said before about the Trump-Russia affair, nyet is also short for not yet.
Because the e-mail exchange, put together with the chain of events, is very revealing. In fact, it shows why ultimately all this will be so radioactive that Trump cannot survive. (Well, unless the Democrats and media are even more dysfunctional than they have been, which is always possible.) Even though Trump has a vast reactionary base that is more into faith than fact, driven by those who believe in Creationism rather than the science of evolution.
It was no coincidence that the thoroughly irreligious but reliably authoritarian and reactionary Trump had evangelical Christian pastors in the Oval Office this week to lay their hands on him as they prayed over him. And even though Trump has a Republican Party structure that I warned early on would be all too happy to embrace his decidedly know-nothing, neo-fascist tendencies. Just as long as Trump pushed against regulation and for big tax cuts for the rich and big corporations, the only real "principles" of the current "Grand Old Party."
Why will this cozy dystopia in the making be upset? Because the e-mails reveal that the Trump crew, at its very pinnacle, was all too eager to work with the Russian government to bring down Hillary Clinton.
It took less than 20 minutes for Donald Jr. to tell his publicist friend go-between that he would be happy to meet with the Russian government rep as soon as possible, and to bring Jared Kushner (aka Mr. Ivanka Trump) and Paul Manafort into the meeting one floor below his dad's Trump Tower lair.
Ivanka Trump scouted locations for Trump Tower Moscow in February 2014 with Emin Agalarov, the intermediary between the Russian government and Donald Trump, Jr.
He certainly took no offense at the characterization that this was just part of Russian government backing of the Trump for President campaign. Nor was there any pushback reported from Kushner or Manafort, the latter of which is a very experienced figure in American presidential politics and world politics, albeit of the lavishly paid, mercenary pro-dictator ilk.
In fact, the exchange strongly suggests a ready pipeline to Il Duce Donald himself, with Russian oligarch publicist Rob Goldstone saying he might just go ahead and send information directly to the presidential candidate via his well-known confidential secretary/gatekeeper "Rhona," i.e., Rhona Graff.
Everyone involved says, for now at least, that Trump himself never knew about any of this. But that is very doubtful, for Trump boasted shortly after the e-mail exchange and setting of the meeting with the Russian government representative about having new dirt on the Clintons.
“I am going to give a major speech on … probably Monday [June 13th] of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.”
But he did not give that speech.
Why not?
Well, everyone involved in the June 9th meeting is saying, so far, that the Russian rep didn't deliver the intel. Instead, she supposedly said something vague then launched into the Russian ban on American adoption of Russian children, a Putin move in retaliation for U.S. sanctions against Russian human rights violations.
Was there really a failure to deliver on the Russian side?
Maybe yes, maybe no. Obviously, given the pattern of pathological lying, especially when it comes to Russia, we can't take anything from the Trump camp at face value.
Yet it would make sense for the Russians to have pulled back.
After all, what is a better way to deliver anti-Clinton intel? Through the low-credibility, dysfunctional Trump campaign itself? Or through the at least arguably (then) dispassionate Wikileaks information laundry?
In addition, and I have no intention of getting anyone in the vicinity of trouble, it is my strong personal guess that there was ongoing debate on the Russian side about the true aim of the operation.
At least initially, as I wrote last July when I explained the lengthy and very longstanding litany of reasons for Russian enmity toward the Clintons, the intention was to delegitimize the Clintons in the U.S. and around the world. To soften the meat, as it were, rendering a Hillary presidency a worthy but ineffectual foil for a heroic Putin on the world political stage. Much of the anti-Russian agenda that Hillary proposed would actually have been close to impossible to carry out.
At some point, of course, hurting the Clintons becomes synonymous with helping elect Trump. But The Donald was clearly an erratic, alarmingly uninformed figure.
At which point does a hapless, erratic American presidency become less a plus for Moscow than it is a threat to global stability? I'm not sure that ever got properly sorted out.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The e-mail exchange, in addition to opening Il Duce Donald's own personal contacts and communications to prosecutorial investigation -- see references to "going through Rhona" -- also reveals what an easy and open relationship in reality did exist between the Trumps and key Russian oligarchs with frequent access to the highest level of Russian officialdom.
The proffered intel came from the Agalarovs, Aras and Emin, a billionaire real estate and entertainment family from Moscow via Azerbaijan aligned with the Putin government.
It was the father, Aras, who was offered the intel by his good friend, Russia's prosecutor general, who has also done a good job protecting Putin and his fellow siloviki and persecuting Putin's opponents even as the prosecutor general's sons became billionaires themselves.
I see the media is making light of the Russian oligarch's son, middling pop star Emin Agalarov, by focusing on the shambolic music publicist, a guy who has hung around New York, who set the ball in motion by e-mailing Donald Jr. But that's a mistake, for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it misses some much bigger connections.
For it was Emin who really hit it off with Trump Sr. Emin was born in Baku, capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan, before his parents moved to Moscow as part of the Azeri diaspora from the former Soviet republic. But he went to high school and college in and around New York, where he soaked up the oddly glitzy yet tawdrily macho, and more than a bit Russian, celebrity of Trump.
Then Emin became the son-in-law of the president of Azerbaijan. Whoops. Which certainly didn't hurt the big Trump Tower Baku project which the Trumps pursued as they pushed for Trump Tower Moscow, in partnership with the Agalarovs, in the wake of the Miss Universe 2013 pageant in Moscow in which they partnered with the Agalarovs.
Indeed, it was Emin whom the lead Trump operative on both Trump Tower projects, Ivanka Trump, visited in Moscow in early 2014 to scout locations for Trump Tower Moscow just before she went on to Baku to check renovation of the in-the-works Trump Tower there.
Ivanka Trump at the Trump Tower Baku site. The Trump bid to do major business in the oil-rich former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan was aided by Emin Agalarov being the son-in-law of the President of Azerbaijan.
Unfortunately for the Trumps, the Agalarovs, who are capable folks, themselves were not part of the actual Trump Tower in their native Azerbaijan. Which turned into an unmitigated, and reportedly Iranian-linked, disaster.
The point, of course, is how very comfortable and familiar the Trump crew is with all this stuff. The political support from the Russian government, which means Russian intelligence. The easy access to and facility with their Russian oligarch business partners.
Trump claims of no involvement with Russia? A complete joke.
Obviously, there is more to come.
Such as this morning's revelation that a former Soviet counter-intelligence officer accompanied the Russian lobbyist to Trump Tower. Just another thing the Trumps left out of the first four or five versions of their story.
The reactionary base may or may not end up swallowing these sorts of monstrous lies. Very few others will.
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