February 5, 2019: Trump Set to Give State of the Union Address - State of the Is Russians!

 

2/5/19: Trump is scheduled to give his third State of the Union address. Possible topics to cover: 

o   Trump will declare a national emergency so he can send the U.S. military down to the Mexican border and start building his pet wall. 

o   Trump will declare Nancy Pelosi a witch and ask Evangelicals to support him in bringing her to justice, up to and including burning at the stake. 

o   Trump will announce that the U.S. capital is being moved to Mar-a-Lago. 

o   The Department of the Interior will blast the face of George Washington off Mt. Rushmore, and spend $500 million to replace it with the granite visage, complete with granite jowls, of Mr. Trump.

 

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Are the beaches nice? 

Time magazine releases a scathing report on President Trump and his “willful ignorance” when it comes to intelligence matters. Breaking two years of silence, 

“The officials, who include analysts who prepare Trump’s briefs and the briefers themselves, describe futile attempts to keep his attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences, and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible.” 

What is most troubling, say these officials and others in government and on Capitol Hill who have been briefed on the episodes, are Trump’s angry reactions when he is given information that contradicts positions he has taken or beliefs he holds. Two intelligence officers even reported that they have been warned to avoid giving the President intelligence assessments that contradict stances he has taken in public.

 

As for the president’s focus, and grasp of details, sources reveal two sad examples to put a point to the story. During one briefing, discussion turned to a key U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean. Trump asked two questions: Are the people nice, and are the beaches good?” As for a growing threat from the Chinese in the region…well, no matter. During another briefing, when the president was shown a map of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that area, he told briefers he knew Nepal was part of India. They had to tell him gently he was wrong. Well, at least Bhutan was part of India, Trump tried next. And he was wrong again. 

More to the point of the dangers of the man’s ignorance, when North Korea blew up facilities on one of its giant nuclear arms production sites, Trump insisted that Kim Jong-un was really destroying his nuclear facilities. Intelligence experts built a large model of the facility to show the president how much of the site remained untouched, even adding a model “Statue of Liberty” to give Trump a sense of scale. 

Still, he insists on going out in public and bragging about how great it is that he and Kim are “friends.”

 

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“Kremlin connection.” 

ONCE AGAIN, WE FIND MONEY at the heart of the story of Trump, his grifter crew, and the Russians who love them. 

Federal investigators have questions they hope to put to heads of three D.C. lobbying firms. All three powerhouse firms, including two that are run by individuals with strong ties to Democrats, were originally recruited by Paul Manafort for the job in question. This lucrative work – of questionable morality – involved burnishing the dark image of the Ukrainian government, which was pro-Russian and essentially anti-Ukrainian people at the time. 

Since thousands of Ukrainians were dying in the fighting with Russia, and since this public relations work was sketchy, and since the three firms didn’t want their efforts to be known, court records indicate they lied about how much money they were paid. They back-dated payments to try to obscure their significance, and hide the fact a mysterious $150,000 check from a Ukrainian oligarch ended up in the hands of the Trump charitable foundation. 

There have been hints, so far unsubstantiated, that this money was used to pay off Karen McDougal, the Playboy Bunny, who eventually got a check for…$150,000. 

(That may well be internet bullsh*t; but I include it here because the possibilities are amusing.)

 

In other, “I’ll do anything for cash” news, we learn that Republican fund-raiser Paul Erickson was indicted on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. I’m going to assume you don’t recognize his name, since one recent poll found 12% of adults don’t know who Mike Pence is.

The indictment charges Erickson with bilking investors, beginning in 1998, and continuing through 2016. Erickson claimed he was building assisted living facilities across the U.S.A. Actually, it appears he was pocketing investors’ money and building a first-class Ponzi “facility.”

 

Now, let’s bring Russians into the story! Evidence suggests that $30,000 in laundered cash, courtesy of Mr. Erickson, was used to pay Ms. Maria Butina’s college tuition. Butina is a hot little Russian redhead who pled guilty recently to acting as an agent of the Russian Federation during the 2016 campaign. And Butina was shacking up with Erickson at the time. 

(Erickson is not exactly your idea of a stud; so, there’s that.) 

We know that in May 2016, Erickson sent an email with the subject line, “Kremlin connection,” to Trump campaign adviser Rick Dearborn. According to an article in The New York Times, based on email evidence, Erickson wrote that Russia was “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” An attempt would be made to use the N.R.A.’s annual convention to make “‘first contact.’” 

 

Trump’s answer could be worth tens of billions. 

By some freak of chance (or plotting) Butina had appeared at the N.R.A. convention the previous year. There she managed to be picked to ask Trump, who was speaking at the gathering, a question. If elected, would he continue with the economic sanctions aimed at Russia by President Obama, following the invasion and annexation of Crimea? His answer could be worth tens of billions to Russian oligarchs whose funds had been frozen overseas as a result. 

“I wouldn’t think you’d need the sanctions,” Trump replied, not when he was in charge and the United States was “respected” again. 

In Moscow, they had to love that answer.

$$$

BLOGGER’S NOTE: Ms. Butina eventually pleads guilty to conspiring, from 2015 to 2017, “to establish unofficial lines of communication” between top Republicans, and advance the interests of the Russian government. One main avenue was through her connections with the National Rifle Association. Having posed as a gun-rights critic of Vladimir Putin during her time in the U.S., she returned to Russia in 2019, having served fifteen months in a federal prison.

 

You figure, as a Putin critic, she’s going to get tossed off the high balcony of the apartment where she lives. Or someone will smear a fatal poison on her front doorknob.

 

Or she gets arrested, at least.

 

In fact, she later runs for a seat in the Russian parliament and wins. She’s also famous for “ambushing” Aleksei A. Navalny, a leading critic of Vladimir Putin, during a visit to the Siberian penal colony where he’s serving nine years. She compares the fine conditions, under which she claims Navalny is being held, with the horrors she faced in U.S. prisons.

 

Her interview with Navalny then runs on state-owned television. Nobody mentions the fact that Navalny almost died, after someone managed to get his luggage taken off a plane, and then smeared the seems of his underwear with a deadly nerve agent.

 

Her boyfriend, Erickson, is eventually sentenced to seven years in prison, but on January 19, 2021, he snags a pardon from President Trump, on Donald’s last full day in the White House. Not only does Erickson avoid jail time, the pardon means he can avoid repayment of $3 million he owed in restitution to victims of his fraudulent business schemes.

 

At the time of his pardon, NPR explains,

The Trump administration issued a statement…and said it was supported by former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. The statement described Erickson as a victim of broader allegations that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia.

“Mr. Erickson’s conviction was based off the Russian collusion hoax,” the statement said. “After finding no grounds to charge him with any crimes with respect to connections with Russia, he was charged with a minor financial crime.

As in $3 million. Victims of Erickson’s schemes were out anywhere from $10,000 to $500,000.

 

As for Butina’s first Russian patron, Aleksander P. Torshin, in April 2018, along with a list of other oligarchs, he was placed under sanction by the U.S. Treasury Department.