Thanks Douglas. I hadn't seen that piece but that covers it nicely as well. It just seems screamingly obvious that Trump's businesses are basically a front for money-laundering. Unger has this chilling line that "it's as if the entire country was in denial" about what's fairly clearly going on.
I think that part of the current political cataclysm is the result of turning from direct and inevitable facts of our life, whether shocking or consoling, in favor of the wall-to-wall commercial entertainments, clichés and the muffled manipulations they relentlessly convey.
Hence, I've written and Punctum Books has just published WINTER LIGHT, a series of my essays about cascading losses, irresolvable uncertainties, and unforeseen discovery in our old age. If you're curious, here's a link to the announcement and a link to the free PDF. (https://punctumbooks.com/titles/winter-light/)
This, to me, is not without political dimensions in a time when the active use of lying and fraud produces such evident ecstatic delirium.
Hi Chen, There's this spooky line from a CIA officer whom Unger quotes that "The Cold War never really ended." The KGB was in many ways unaffected by the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and I am persuaded by the argument that Putin represents a younger, "new look" KGB that came back into power. That cohort very much stayed in a Cold War mentality throughout the years of ostensible peace, and Trump's ascension seems a remarkably direct extension of those policies.
Hi Sam, I fully agree that it never ended and is actually as alive as ever. The Cold War. And yes Putin is a typical gebist of course, new probably only in being more mafioso type, and much less elaborate language/propaganda. Otherwise-typical CheKa.
Wow, I'm having a sense of Deja Vu. Did HIllary's money fund this demo-op hit piece? It's a fact that she paid for the last big slander against Trump. (Did you forget that, Sam?) But you are right about one thing though, Trump doesn't seem to want nuclear war with Russia... maybe that's the tell. I mean, Biden, or whoever was running the country for the last four years, was itching to start the Big One over in Europe. But, yeah you might be right, Sam. You and Joy Reid and the proverbial broken clock could be right. And since you've figured it all out, and Trump is obviously Hitler, then I guess Musk is obviously Rasputin. And in this country of 350 million people, there are literally dozens, dozens, of people who are taking to the streets because of the influence of clever people like yourself. Maybe, Sam, maybe you and Douglas and Chen could join them in torching Tesla dealerships. Light one up for the cause, fellas.
Ideological snark and sarcasm isn’t a reasoned counterargument. Whether Trump is or isn’t in fact a mole in the technical sense, he sure AF is acting like one.
And here I am thinking I'm just joking about the guy stressing out public opinion in his country to the max, to the point of pushing most of these people to the left... After reading your text, Sam, a lot of things start to make sense. It seems that his project is not to socialize the EU (the joke in my text), but to break the institutional structure of that country in such a way that control of the State migrates from the war magnates to the information magnates. This new world would be peaceful, but only for the elected and the sensible (excluding internal and external protesters of any nation). In any case, I'll stick to my point: no one can surf on chaos.
Lots of Nazi links to Trump and other American plutocrats too.
Trump is a mole of the plutocracy - in guise of fake and right-wing populism. Every American president has been that type of mole in one form or another since FDR.
Trump is also, obviously, a plutocrat overlord, like Putin, natural allies, natural rivals. Mainly in it for themselves. Mole and overlord - such contradictions don't matter to the true-believer and opportunist Trumpists and Bidenists and so on.
Trump is a carnival barker of supremacist plutocracy. He makes bigoted tyranny fun - to some. Deadly to others.
Trump is an inflamed cancerous mole of the plutocracy, malignant and metastasizing. That diagnosis has long since been clear.
Once upon a time, the Nazis and the Russians were in a death struggle that the Russians won. Trump seems to have learned from that experience. Don't make an enemy of the one potential ally who can kill you.
It was mainly the Russians who beat Hitler, not the Americans. Trump doesn't want to wind up like his apparent idol Adolf.
So of course he is going to go for peace with the Russians. Trump knows this history like the back of his hand, and he uses it his own advantage - the people be damned.
Interesting story. Thank you. Don’t agree with Homeland as ‘deeply silly’. It’s based on an Israeli series called Prisoners of War that tackles real investigations of Israeli soldiers released from captivity after many years.
I haven't seen Prisoners of War! I did kind of enjoy Homeland when it was airing, but the more I've thought about it the more it seems like the propaganda of the times - a bit like 24 was right after 9/11. It was a pretty deranged fantasy of infiltration of the US by Al Qaeda.
This is an excellent summary of the arguments in favour, and I'm certainly edging towards this view. Your last paragraph is chilling - but, I fear, true. God help us all.
Well, the difference between the National Enquirer and a respectable publication isn't the type of the story, it's how well-sourced it is. I think that at this stage there are two reputable direct sources speaking to this allegation - Shvets and Mussayev, both of whom would have been in a position to know. And then there is reams of circumstantial evidence pointing in this direction - above all, the long history of business dealings between Trump and KGB or Putin-connected Russian businessmen, as documented by Catherine Belton, Luke Harding, and many, many other reputable journalists.
Well, at this stage too much hangs on the testimony of Yuri Shvets to really clinch the case, but Mussayev's coming forward ticks all of this further into the realm of probability. I do think it's hard to look at Trump's 1987 full-page ads and to not see them as reflective of KGB talking points of the time. And Trump's decades-worth of deals with Russian oligarchs, many of whose money comes from the mob or Putin-connected enterprises, is beyond question.
The KGB was known for its ruthless efficiency in protecting the identity of human sources. The quote about Shvets suggests he is a fabricator: “Shvets wasn’t involved in the recruitment of Trump but recalls seeing a department circular bragging about the operation.” Ya, sure he did.
Well, why not? Shvets' claim, by the way, is that Trump wasn't considered a particularly significant asset at the time. In its circular, the KGB directorate that Shvets was a part of was bragging about a successful propaganda operation.
Shvets might be a fabricator. That's certainly possible. But he was a real KGB agent involved in similar operations at the time and his analysis of Trump, from a perspective of tradecraft, deserves to be taken seriously.
Yes, bonafide KGB defector. But also quite possibly suffering from Defector Syndrome. Like Igor Gouzenko spinning nonsense about Roger Hollis being a GRU asset … not every utterance is true.
Even when I disagree with you, I’ve always respected you as a writer. I rolled my eyes at the headline, given how much of a hysterical nothingburger Russiagate turned out to be, propped up by all kinds of money/oppo research laundering from Clinton and her allies in media and government.
That said, this piece strikes me as worth taking seriously (to a point). “Asset” has a specific meaning in an intelligence context that has been completely misused by the media for the past decade. Often an asset is someone who is simply a sincere fellow traveler in some respect, requiring little or no prompting to advance the goals of the KGB, CIA, or similar organizations.
It’s entirely possible that Trump honestly made the assessments that 1) Europe has been free-riding on America’s defense budget for decades, and providing little to nothing in return 2) Europe has been extracting rents from American tech companies, justifying it with EU regulations that undermine both the US economy and the First and Fourth Amendments and 3) detente with Russia is in America’s geostrategic interest in respect to China.
I think the Obama administration tacitly acknowledged all 3 points and had a foreign policy that was quietly working to address them. Trump is doing the same thing in the loudest, crassest way possible. If Trump is a Russian asset, it’s likely he’s completely unaware of it.
That's a very good point Meth Bear, thanks. I'm slightly eliding over this. The Unger book, based on Shvets' testimony, is very good about being careful with terminology in assessing the different types of Soviet assets. "Trusted contact" seems like a reasonable assessment of what Trump might have been. It's not that he was expected to spy on the West or anything. It was more a meeting of minds. Trump for some reason had gotten interested in nuclear disarmament in the mid-'80s and that aligned with a set of Soviet talking points. The emphasis in Japan in Trump's full-page ads is, in Shvets' view, a clear tell that he had been fed a major Soviet talking point of the time. That ideological synergy was accompanied by a financial synergy and, as the Soviet Union fell and the relationship between Trump and his contacts evolved, it may well have, for a long time, been strictly a business deal.
To believe that Trump is NOT in an alliance with the Russians you’d have to believe that someone could offer him money and power and he’d… turn it down? Because… patriotism? Doesn’t fit. He has never even pretended to be a GOOD man. He adores Putin, openly. He pushes projects that undermine US power. He divides, which as Aesop taught us is the prerequisite to conquering.
You are wrong. As Americans, we do not have to prove that we are innocent. The State has to prove that we or Trump is guilty. You say that the Russians offered Trump money. Prove it. And if that were so, why did it not come out in the endless parade of slanders and baseless charges and, most importantly, in the official investigations into Trump. The fact is that the Russians and the Ukrainians, and the Chinese gave the Biden crime family millions. All the Bidens got their treason money from Russia, Ukraine, and China. Why did Biden (or his puppet masters, cause we KNOW he was not running the country) give all his family members pardons going back years? Because they're all corrupt.
Fascinating. Many would feel embarrassed about (i) such obvious inconsistency in just a few sentences and (ii) revealing that they believed all of the 2024 Newsmax propaganda. But not you. You just put it all out there.
Out of interest, how would you go about convicting Trump of a crime?
Mueller said he obstructed justice but wouldn’t charge him because of DoJ protocols.
McConnell said he should pay for insurrection, but preferred to leave this to criminal cases rather than conviction in the Senate. (Earlier, McConnell also chose not to hold a real trial to determine whether he extorted Zelenskyy, which of course he did).
Several judges and the Supreme Court slow walked his criminal cases, and now he has openly appointed officials who have shut down the cases, despite the fact that he’s clearly guilty.
Don't tell me about Mueller. If there had been evidence, and there was none, that Trump obstructed justice, Trump would have been charged and convicted. And Mueller was just a few steps behind your brain dead president Biden. Mueller was picked for that job because he was already showing signs of dementia. So he was a useful tool of the democrat deep state. Don't tell me about McConnell. You think that because I voted for Trump, I embrace all republicans as you obviously embrace your democrat party. You're wrong. There are hacks and senile people and scammers and thieves and traitors in both parties. And that's the reason they are all going tooth and nail for Trump because he is the first outsider to get in the White House and expose all the criminality. Don't tell me about any more of these slimy pols and how they, out of the goodness of their hears, refused to press charges against Trump. We've had about 12 years of slander and attacks on Trump, and two, probably more, assassination attempts. I'm so sick of democrat ass-kissers and their forever war on Trump and normal Americans. We had an election. Trump won. Get over it.
Look, you want to debate. I'm tired of all the liberals with their shitty slanders against Trump and the people who voted for him. I think you ought to go to Bluesky and marinate in the Trump-hate shit there. One other thing, you and a lot of liberals seem to have amnesia. You forget about the last four years as if they never happened. But they did. And now people are starting to wake up. Go away.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/
Thanks Douglas. I hadn't seen that piece but that covers it nicely as well. It just seems screamingly obvious that Trump's businesses are basically a front for money-laundering. Unger has this chilling line that "it's as if the entire country was in denial" about what's fairly clearly going on.
I think that part of the current political cataclysm is the result of turning from direct and inevitable facts of our life, whether shocking or consoling, in favor of the wall-to-wall commercial entertainments, clichés and the muffled manipulations they relentlessly convey.
Hence, I've written and Punctum Books has just published WINTER LIGHT, a series of my essays about cascading losses, irresolvable uncertainties, and unforeseen discovery in our old age. If you're curious, here's a link to the announcement and a link to the free PDF. (https://punctumbooks.com/titles/winter-light/)
This, to me, is not without political dimensions in a time when the active use of lying and fraud produces such evident ecstatic delirium.
It's in plain sight:
of course KGB if not won then winning.
I see it everywhere here, more and more -granted i might be paranoidal. but I might be not too
Hi Chen, There's this spooky line from a CIA officer whom Unger quotes that "The Cold War never really ended." The KGB was in many ways unaffected by the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and I am persuaded by the argument that Putin represents a younger, "new look" KGB that came back into power. That cohort very much stayed in a Cold War mentality throughout the years of ostensible peace, and Trump's ascension seems a remarkably direct extension of those policies.
Hi Sam, I fully agree that it never ended and is actually as alive as ever. The Cold War. And yes Putin is a typical gebist of course, new probably only in being more mafioso type, and much less elaborate language/propaganda. Otherwise-typical CheKa.
Wow, I'm having a sense of Deja Vu. Did HIllary's money fund this demo-op hit piece? It's a fact that she paid for the last big slander against Trump. (Did you forget that, Sam?) But you are right about one thing though, Trump doesn't seem to want nuclear war with Russia... maybe that's the tell. I mean, Biden, or whoever was running the country for the last four years, was itching to start the Big One over in Europe. But, yeah you might be right, Sam. You and Joy Reid and the proverbial broken clock could be right. And since you've figured it all out, and Trump is obviously Hitler, then I guess Musk is obviously Rasputin. And in this country of 350 million people, there are literally dozens, dozens, of people who are taking to the streets because of the influence of clever people like yourself. Maybe, Sam, maybe you and Douglas and Chen could join them in torching Tesla dealerships. Light one up for the cause, fellas.
Ideological snark and sarcasm isn’t a reasoned counterargument. Whether Trump is or isn’t in fact a mole in the technical sense, he sure AF is acting like one.
Sorry, “asset” is the correct term.
Well, I'm being pretty specific and detailed in my argument. Would appreciate the same in any replies!
Excellent and believable. A humble contribution:
https://arquivomello.blogspot.com/2025/02/viva-la-revolucion-de-trump.html
Thank you Oswaldo!
And here I am thinking I'm just joking about the guy stressing out public opinion in his country to the max, to the point of pushing most of these people to the left... After reading your text, Sam, a lot of things start to make sense. It seems that his project is not to socialize the EU (the joke in my text), but to break the institutional structure of that country in such a way that control of the State migrates from the war magnates to the information magnates. This new world would be peaceful, but only for the elected and the sensible (excluding internal and external protesters of any nation). In any case, I'll stick to my point: no one can surf on chaos.
Lots of Nazi links to Trump and other American plutocrats too.
Trump is a mole of the plutocracy - in guise of fake and right-wing populism. Every American president has been that type of mole in one form or another since FDR.
Trump is also, obviously, a plutocrat overlord, like Putin, natural allies, natural rivals. Mainly in it for themselves. Mole and overlord - such contradictions don't matter to the true-believer and opportunist Trumpists and Bidenists and so on.
Trump is a carnival barker of supremacist plutocracy. He makes bigoted tyranny fun - to some. Deadly to others.
Trump is an inflamed cancerous mole of the plutocracy, malignant and metastasizing. That diagnosis has long since been clear.
Once upon a time, the Nazis and the Russians were in a death struggle that the Russians won. Trump seems to have learned from that experience. Don't make an enemy of the one potential ally who can kill you.
It was mainly the Russians who beat Hitler, not the Americans. Trump doesn't want to wind up like his apparent idol Adolf.
So of course he is going to go for peace with the Russians. Trump knows this history like the back of his hand, and he uses it his own advantage - the people be damned.
Interesting story. Thank you. Don’t agree with Homeland as ‘deeply silly’. It’s based on an Israeli series called Prisoners of War that tackles real investigations of Israeli soldiers released from captivity after many years.
You're ignoring my argument. Let it be.
I haven't seen Prisoners of War! I did kind of enjoy Homeland when it was airing, but the more I've thought about it the more it seems like the propaganda of the times - a bit like 24 was right after 9/11. It was a pretty deranged fantasy of infiltration of the US by Al Qaeda.
This should sound like demented ravings but it doesn’t.
High praise. Thanks Michelle!
This is an excellent summary of the arguments in favour, and I'm certainly edging towards this view. Your last paragraph is chilling - but, I fear, true. God help us all.
Thank you Christina! God help us all.
Asset, I think, and willing servant to a Suzerain.
Yeah, "asset" is a good word.
This is long form National Enquirer nonsense. Stop it.
Well, the difference between the National Enquirer and a respectable publication isn't the type of the story, it's how well-sourced it is. I think that at this stage there are two reputable direct sources speaking to this allegation - Shvets and Mussayev, both of whom would have been in a position to know. And then there is reams of circumstantial evidence pointing in this direction - above all, the long history of business dealings between Trump and KGB or Putin-connected Russian businessmen, as documented by Catherine Belton, Luke Harding, and many, many other reputable journalists.
I loathe Trump and yet I’m not convinced.
Well, at this stage too much hangs on the testimony of Yuri Shvets to really clinch the case, but Mussayev's coming forward ticks all of this further into the realm of probability. I do think it's hard to look at Trump's 1987 full-page ads and to not see them as reflective of KGB talking points of the time. And Trump's decades-worth of deals with Russian oligarchs, many of whose money comes from the mob or Putin-connected enterprises, is beyond question.
The KGB was known for its ruthless efficiency in protecting the identity of human sources. The quote about Shvets suggests he is a fabricator: “Shvets wasn’t involved in the recruitment of Trump but recalls seeing a department circular bragging about the operation.” Ya, sure he did.
Well, why not? Shvets' claim, by the way, is that Trump wasn't considered a particularly significant asset at the time. In its circular, the KGB directorate that Shvets was a part of was bragging about a successful propaganda operation.
Shvets might be a fabricator. That's certainly possible. But he was a real KGB agent involved in similar operations at the time and his analysis of Trump, from a perspective of tradecraft, deserves to be taken seriously.
Yes, bonafide KGB defector. But also quite possibly suffering from Defector Syndrome. Like Igor Gouzenko spinning nonsense about Roger Hollis being a GRU asset … not every utterance is true.
Even when I disagree with you, I’ve always respected you as a writer. I rolled my eyes at the headline, given how much of a hysterical nothingburger Russiagate turned out to be, propped up by all kinds of money/oppo research laundering from Clinton and her allies in media and government.
That said, this piece strikes me as worth taking seriously (to a point). “Asset” has a specific meaning in an intelligence context that has been completely misused by the media for the past decade. Often an asset is someone who is simply a sincere fellow traveler in some respect, requiring little or no prompting to advance the goals of the KGB, CIA, or similar organizations.
It’s entirely possible that Trump honestly made the assessments that 1) Europe has been free-riding on America’s defense budget for decades, and providing little to nothing in return 2) Europe has been extracting rents from American tech companies, justifying it with EU regulations that undermine both the US economy and the First and Fourth Amendments and 3) detente with Russia is in America’s geostrategic interest in respect to China.
I think the Obama administration tacitly acknowledged all 3 points and had a foreign policy that was quietly working to address them. Trump is doing the same thing in the loudest, crassest way possible. If Trump is a Russian asset, it’s likely he’s completely unaware of it.
That's a very good point Meth Bear, thanks. I'm slightly eliding over this. The Unger book, based on Shvets' testimony, is very good about being careful with terminology in assessing the different types of Soviet assets. "Trusted contact" seems like a reasonable assessment of what Trump might have been. It's not that he was expected to spy on the West or anything. It was more a meeting of minds. Trump for some reason had gotten interested in nuclear disarmament in the mid-'80s and that aligned with a set of Soviet talking points. The emphasis in Japan in Trump's full-page ads is, in Shvets' view, a clear tell that he had been fed a major Soviet talking point of the time. That ideological synergy was accompanied by a financial synergy and, as the Soviet Union fell and the relationship between Trump and his contacts evolved, it may well have, for a long time, been strictly a business deal.
To believe that Trump is NOT in an alliance with the Russians you’d have to believe that someone could offer him money and power and he’d… turn it down? Because… patriotism? Doesn’t fit. He has never even pretended to be a GOOD man. He adores Putin, openly. He pushes projects that undermine US power. He divides, which as Aesop taught us is the prerequisite to conquering.
You are wrong. As Americans, we do not have to prove that we are innocent. The State has to prove that we or Trump is guilty. You say that the Russians offered Trump money. Prove it. And if that were so, why did it not come out in the endless parade of slanders and baseless charges and, most importantly, in the official investigations into Trump. The fact is that the Russians and the Ukrainians, and the Chinese gave the Biden crime family millions. All the Bidens got their treason money from Russia, Ukraine, and China. Why did Biden (or his puppet masters, cause we KNOW he was not running the country) give all his family members pardons going back years? Because they're all corrupt.
Fascinating. Many would feel embarrassed about (i) such obvious inconsistency in just a few sentences and (ii) revealing that they believed all of the 2024 Newsmax propaganda. But not you. You just put it all out there.
Out of interest, how would you go about convicting Trump of a crime?
Mueller said he obstructed justice but wouldn’t charge him because of DoJ protocols.
McConnell said he should pay for insurrection, but preferred to leave this to criminal cases rather than conviction in the Senate. (Earlier, McConnell also chose not to hold a real trial to determine whether he extorted Zelenskyy, which of course he did).
Several judges and the Supreme Court slow walked his criminal cases, and now he has openly appointed officials who have shut down the cases, despite the fact that he’s clearly guilty.
Don't tell me about Mueller. If there had been evidence, and there was none, that Trump obstructed justice, Trump would have been charged and convicted. And Mueller was just a few steps behind your brain dead president Biden. Mueller was picked for that job because he was already showing signs of dementia. So he was a useful tool of the democrat deep state. Don't tell me about McConnell. You think that because I voted for Trump, I embrace all republicans as you obviously embrace your democrat party. You're wrong. There are hacks and senile people and scammers and thieves and traitors in both parties. And that's the reason they are all going tooth and nail for Trump because he is the first outsider to get in the White House and expose all the criminality. Don't tell me about any more of these slimy pols and how they, out of the goodness of their hears, refused to press charges against Trump. We've had about 12 years of slander and attacks on Trump, and two, probably more, assassination attempts. I'm so sick of democrat ass-kissers and their forever war on Trump and normal Americans. We had an election. Trump won. Get over it.
You didn’t answer my question.
How would you go about securing a conviction against Trump?
Look, you want to debate. I'm tired of all the liberals with their shitty slanders against Trump and the people who voted for him. I think you ought to go to Bluesky and marinate in the Trump-hate shit there. One other thing, you and a lot of liberals seem to have amnesia. You forget about the last four years as if they never happened. But they did. And now people are starting to wake up. Go away.
So, to recap;
- it’s not ok to suggest that Trump might be doing something bad with Russia because he’s not been convicted of a crime (at least not those ones)
- you can’t explain how one would pursue a conviction under Trump’s regime
- the series of charges brought by the Justice Department, since dropped for no good reason, were just ‘slanders’
- it’s totally OK to smear Biden and his family. No convictions required for Joe.
- the conviction of Hunter Biden (under the Biden administration!) was not a slander - that one was a serious crime
- everyone else has amnesia, but not you.
I agree with you about one thing: people are starting to wake up. A decade too late, but what can you do?
Oh lord help us all.
Amen, GD, amen.