Is Trump a Russian puppet?

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The Washington Post reports: "The White House and a Russian state-owned bank have very different explanations for why the bank's chief executive and Jared Kushner held a secret meeting during the presidential transition in December." Vnesheconombank (VEB) says the meeting was "with Kushner in his role as the head of his family's real estate business." The White House says it was a diplomatic outreach, which makes his failure to disclose it on his security clearance application very problematic. Either way, it looks bad. ("A business meeting between an international development bank and a real estate executive, coming as Kushner's company had been seeking financing for its troubled $1.8 billion purchase of an office building on Fifth Avenue in New York, could raise questions about whether Kushner's personal financial interests were colliding with his impending role as a public official."

The more details emerge, the harder it is to maintain that these are isolated, innocuous events. It is even harder to justify allowing Kushner to remain in office without a full accounting of his meetings with Russians and subsequent failure to report them. In any normal administration, Kushner would have been fired for, at the very least, atrocious judgment. He, however, is the president's son-in-law, which should spur passage of more stringent rules against nepotism. With the intelligence committees of both houses sending out batches of subpoenas and new revelations each day, Republicans are soon to be confronted with a dilemma: At what point do they defend American national security and turn against the president and the princeling?

The Trump administration is moving toward handing back to Russia two diplomatic compounds, near New York City and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, that its officials were ejected from in late December as punishment for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Just because the other thread got locked doesn't mean there isn't something to talk about.

Giving the properties back to the ambassadors when it is clear that they did interfere with the election is an odd move on Trump's part, I think.

...they want people to assume Russia effected the vote totals when their alleged interference is so convoluted and straight up unprovable....

The murder spawned several right-wing conspiracy theories about the crime, including the groundless claim that Rich had been involved with the leaked DNC emails in 2016, which runs contrary to U.S. intelligence that concluded the leaked DNC emails were part of 2016 U.S. elections interference.[5][6][7] The same sources that fomented the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory publicized the murder conspiracy theories,[8][9] and each shared similar features.[10][11] These theories were debunked by law enforcement,[5][6] as well as by fact-checking websites like PolitiFact.com,[6][12] Snopes.com,[13] and FactCheck.org.[5] The fabrications were described as fake news and falsehoods by The New York Times,[14] Los Angeles Times,[8] and The Washington Post.[15]

Huajian’s facility is one of 15 factories that make products for the brand founded by the daughter of US President Donald Trump that China Labor Watch said it has been investigating in the past year. In a letter sent to Ivanka Trump in April, the group alleged a number of labour violations at two unnamed factories that supply the Ivanka Trump brand, including that employees were forced to work at least 12 1/2 hours a day for wages below China’s legal minimum — a monthly salary equivalent to about a dollar an hour.

They weren't debunked, Seth Rich's killer or killers have not been brought to justice and it has been strongly suggested by Wikileaks itself that he was a source which he would of had access to all this information. Seems really unlikely it was a robbery don't you think?

Still same tired paranoid accusations with zero proof whatsoever, did you really need a new thread for this to be told to you again? It's not like there is any new information.

Вы работаете в субботу? Как погода в Москве?

Вы работаете в субботу? Как погода в Москве?

Even Fox Noise has back-pedaled on the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Only Russian trolls would continue to be promoting it at this point.

Sean Illing
A lot of commentators here believe the most generous interpretation of Trump’s fawning orientation to Putin and Russia is that he’s hopelessly naïve. Do you buy that?

Mikhail Fishman
That's a good question. Why does he like Putin so much? I think Trump sees Putin as a kind of soulmate. Let's be honest: Trump is not a reflective person. He's quite simple in his thinking, and he's sort of attracted to Putin's brutal forcefulness. If anything, this is what Trump and Putin have in common.

Sean Illing
Has Putin made a puppet of Trump?

Mikhail Fishman
Of course. This is certainly what the Kremlin believes, and they’re acting accordingly. They're quite obviously playing Trump. They consider him a stupid, unstrategic politician. Putin is confident that he can manipulate Trump to his advantage, and he should be.

Sean Illing
In other words, they see in Trump a useful idiot.

Mikhail Fishman
Exactly. The Kremlin is limited in their knowledge about what's going on in Washington, but they see the chaos and the confusion in Trump's administration. They see the clumsiness, the inexperience. Naturally, they're working to exploit that.

On Lavrov meeting, Trump admits to being Putin's puppet, not just looking like one

Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak wasn’t just “unprecedented,” it was truly “unpresidented.” No president with a functional State Department would have allowed a foreign minister and an ambassador—the one who’s already tripped up two administration officials (Mike Flynn and Jeff Sessions)—to hobnob with him in the Oval Office. It’s totally demeaning to the office. And now we find out from the Lester Holt interview that Trump did it as the unwitting puppet of Vladimir Putin, because Trump admitted it, of course.

“When I spoke with Putin, he asked me whether or not I would see Lavrov. Now what do I—should I say ‘No, I’m not gonna see him?’ I said, ‘I will see him.’”

Yes, Donald, anyone with a lick of sense given this current political moment would have said, “No. Lavrov can meet with Tillerson.” Instead, we have Trump, gripping and grinning Lavrov and Kislyak like they’re his two new besties.

Now, look, this meeting was deeply problematic on so many levels: the White House locked out U.S. press while allowing a Russian news agency in; it posed a total security risk by agents of the very government that just hacked our democracy; and the White House readout of the Lavrov meeting didn’t even include the fact that Kislyak was there (i.e. without Russian media photos, U.S. press wouldn’t have even known the meddling ambassador was in attendance.)

But consider something else, part of the reason that meeting ever took place is because Trump doesn’t, in fact, have a functional State Department to put the kibosh on such an ill-advised meeting (seriously, every foreign leader around the world now thinks/knows that Trump is Putin’s puppet).

Remember, Trump and Tillerson—who likely has more Russian contacts than any other Trump Cabinet member—have drained the State Department dry of institutional knowledge. There’s been not one, but two major purges at State, resulting in a major brain drain there....

This is like a parody of quintessential paranoia.