Majorityrights News > Category: The American right

Expendable money: Dmitry Rybolovlev, bought and sold Da Vinci for record price. Bought Florida mansion from Trump for $95 million only to tear it down after seeing it for the first time because it was moldy.

NPR, “Journalist Investigating Trump And Russia Says ‘Full Picture Is One Of Collusion”, 21 Nov 2017:

“The constellation of Russian connections circling around Planet Trump is quite extraordinary,” says Guardian reporter Luke Harding. His new book is Collusion.

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. The new book “Collusion” is about what the author, my guest Luke Harding, says appears to be an emerging pattern of collusion between Russia, Trump and his campaign. Harding also writes about how Russia appears to have started cultivating Trump back in 1987. The book is based on original reporting as well as on the Trump-Russia dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Harding met with Steele twice, once before and once after the dossier became public. Harding had a lot of good contacts to draw on for this book because he spent four years as Moscow bureau chief for the The Guardian. During that time, the Kremlin didn’t like some of the stories Harding was investigating, and in 2011, he was expelled. In Moscow, he learned a lot about Russian espionage partly through his own experience of being spied on and harassed.

Harding is now a foreign correspondent for The Guardian. He’s also the author of books about WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden and Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who fled to England, passed information to British intelligence about links between the Kremlin and the Russian mafia and then was assassinated with polonium-spiked tea.

Luke Harding, welcome back to FRESH AIR. So the dossier said that the Russian regime had been cultivating, supporting and assisting Donald Trump for at least five years with the goal of encouraging splits and divisions in the Western alliance. You write that the Russians had their eyes on Donald Trump as early as the 1970s when he married Ivana Trump, who is from Czechoslovakia. Why were they keeping an eye on him in the ‘70s? What were they looking for?

LUKE HARDING: Well, the KGB really forever has been interested in cultivating people, actually, who might be useful contacts for them, identifying targets for possible recruitments possibly to be agents. That’s not saying that Donald Trump is an agent, but the point is that he would have been on their radar certainly by 1977 when he married Ivana, who came from Czechoslovakia, a kind of communist Eastern bloc country. And we know from Czechoslovak spy records de-classified last year that the spy agencies were in contact with Ivana’s father, that they kept an eye on the Trumps in Manhattan throughout the 1980s. And we also know, from defectors and other sources, that whatever Prague learned, communist Prague, would have been funneled to the big guys in Moscow, to the KGB. So there would have been a file on Donald Trump.

But I think what’s kind of interesting about this story, if you understand the kind of Russian espionage background, is Trump’s first visit to Soviet Moscow in 1987. He went with Ivana. He writes about it in “The Art Of The Deal,” his best-selling memoir. He talks about getting an invitation from the Soviet government to go over there. And he makes it seem kind of rather casual. But what I discovered from my research is that there was actually a concerted effort by the Soviet government via the ambassador at the time, who was newly arrived, a guy called Yuri Dubinin, to kind of charm Trump, to flatter him, to woo him almost. And Dubinin’s daughter, sort of who was part of this process, said that the ambassador rushed up to the top of Trump Tower, basically kind of breezed into Trump’s office and he melted. That’s the verb she used. He melted.

GROSS: That Trump melted when he was flattered.

HARDING: Yeah. That Trump melted with this kind of flattery. And several months later, he gets an invitation to go on an all-expenses-paid trip behind the Iron Curtain to Soviet Moscow. Now, a couple of things which were important here. One of them is that his trip was arranged by Intourist, which is the Soviet travel agency. Now, I’ve talked to defectors and others who say - this is actually fairly well-known - that Intourist is basically the KGB. It was the organization which monitored foreigners going into the Soviet Union and kept an eye on them when they were there. So kind of he went with KGB travel. Now, according to “The Art Of The Deal,” he met various Soviet officials there. Who they were, we don’t know. But what we can say with certainty is that his hotel, just off Red Square, the National Hotel, would have been bugged, that there was already a kind of dossier on Trump. And this would have been supplemented with whatever was picked up from encounters with him, from intercept, from his hotel room.

You know, we can’t say that Trump was recruited in 1987. But what we can say with absolute certainty is there was a very determined effort by the Soviets to bring him over, and that moreover, his personality was the kind of thing they were looking for. They were looking for narcissists. They were looking for people who were kind of - dare I say it - corruptible, interested in money, people who were not necessarily faithful in their marriages and also sort of opportunists who were not very strong analysts or principle people. And if you work your way down the list through these sort of - the KGB’s personality questionnaire, Donald Trump ticks every single box.

If that’s not collusion, what is collusion?

GROSS: So during this period when Trump is talking with Dubinin, the Soviet ambassador to the U.S., Dubinin suggested joint venture to do a Trump Hotel in Moscow. So that hotel never happens, but why of all the developers in the U.S. would they ask Trump?

HARDING: There was no randomness about this. I mean, we know from Dubinin’s daughters that they picked on Trump. And there’s a kind of curious coda to this, which is, two months after his trip - actually, less than two months, he comes back from Moscow and, having previously shown very little interest in foreign policy, he takes out these full-page advertisements in The Washington Post and a couple of other U.S. newspapers basically criticizing Ronald Reagan and criticizing Reagan’s foreign policy. Now, Trump is many things, but he is not an expert on international affairs, and this is curious. I mean, it may not be conspiratorial, but nonetheless there he is criticizing Reagan, who was very much an enemy of the Soviet Union. They regarded him as a hawk and a hardliner and a bitter adversary. And guess what? He also says that he’s thinking about politics, not as a senator or as a mayor, but he actually goes to New Hampshire and he actively floats the idea of running for president. It doesn’t happen then. But it’s in his head. This is a strategic thought he has after his Moscow trip.

GROSS: So the Russian cultivation of Donald Trump, you say, resumes in 2008 when Trump is a birther. What is this resumption of cultivation? What did that look like?

HARDING: If you believe the dossier by Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer, which I do broadly with some caveats, then at this point someone inside the Kremlin decided that Trump could be of use. And what began was a sort of transactional relationship where Trump was feeding to Moscow, according to Steele, details of Russian oligarchs living in the U.S. who have property or assets or business ventures in the United States, and in return he was getting kind of politically useful stuff. Now, just to explain, the thing is about Putin is that he is deeply paranoid. He’s conspiratorial. He doesn’t really trust anybody - maybe his family, his dog, a few people. But basically he’s intensely suspicious. And so any Russian who travels regularly to the United States or builds property there or invests in Silicon Valley, he wants to know what’s going on and so do his spy services. So this, at least according to Steele, is what Trump’s people may have been supplying.

Now, of course they deny all this, but it’s interesting when sort of Donald Trump says, when he tweeted out famously, I’ve got no loans with Russia, no deals, nothing. Well, that’s kind of formally true. Actually, Trump’s multiple attempts to do business in Russia failed. I mean, they kind of blew away with the wind. But what one can say with certainty is that over a long period of time, there’s been plenty of Russian money going from Moscow into Trump properties, some of them in Trump Tower. There were Mafia guys staying there in the 1980s, for example, who were subsequently convicted and went to federal jail. And also into sort of Trump-branded resorts later on in Florida and elsewhere. And there’s a pattern.

GROSS: In 2013, Trump holds the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, where it’s sponsored by the oligarch Agalarov. By this time you say the Kremlin was actively cultivating Trump. Is the Miss Universe pageant being held in Moscow part of the cultivation, do you think?

HARDING: That’s a really interesting question. As always in Russia, quite often it’s about politics and it’s about money. And the money is often even more important than the politics. But clearly Aras Agalarov was keen to promote himself. But I’ve met him. He’s rather a charming guy. I interviewed him. But also he has a sort of pop star son called Emin. And by bringing the Miss Universe contest to Moscow, several happy things happened. First of all, Trump came over, which I think, if you believe the Christopher Steele dossier, which I broadly do, was good for the Kremlin that there was Trump in Moscow, plenty of opportunities to interact with him. Also good for Emin’s pop career because he was singing before a global audience. He’s a nice guy, but, I think, a somewhat kind of mediocre singer, but there was massive TV exposure. And most of all, of course, this trip was of interest to the FSB, the Russian spy agency.

Now, the dossier says that Trump was recorded in the suite at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, a suite that Obama had stayed in and he watched this kind of famous, exotic show, if you can quote it like that. Now, I don’t know if that’s correct. Trump denies it. But what I can say with absolute certainty is that the Trump suite would have been bugged. It wouldn’t have been bugged for everybody, but obviously they were interested in him, and there will be a tape. It may just show Trump going to bed early reading a novel. I don’t know. Or it may show something else. But that there will have been technical surveillance of Trump is absolutely guaranteed.

I mean, the other interesting thing is that Aras Agalarov, who hosted him, is - he’s the sort of perfect companion. He’s smart, he speaks English brilliantly, he’s quite charming. He drove me around, one day, this estate that he built on the outskirts of Moscow for the super rich where houses cost $25 million. And we were trundling along in his kind of blue, English Jeep with the bodyguards respectfully rolling behind us in a Mercedes about 200 meters away. And he sort of told me his vision. He told me that he was inspired by America, by some of the developments he’s seen there, but that ultimately he was a Russian patriot and he couldn’t live in America even though his daughter was there studying and his wife was there quite a lot. He felt his home was in Russia. And I think that’s all kind of quite revealing. So he has all these billions. He’s a developer like Trump, but he also knows, as an oligarch, that if the state calls on him to do something then he has to do it, and he has to do it well.

Rob Goldstone

GROSS: Well, there’s people connected to Agalarov who figure into the campaign story, and here’s an example. Agalarov’s publicist, Rob Goldstone, who’s British, enters into a key part of the campaign story involving the Trump campaign links to Russia. He sends a now-famous email to Don Junior explaining that there’s an offer to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary, and Don Junior responds that he’s on the road, he can’t meet right away but, quote, “if what you say is true, I love it. Could we do a call first thing next week?” So connect the dots for us between Goldstone being Agalarov’s publicist and Goldstone being the person who conveys this information about Russia having incriminating information about Hillary.

Rob Goldstone relaxing, chatting with Trump

HARDING: Yeah. I mean, I think the whole Goldstone story is fascinating. It’s also faintly embarrassing. Now, I speak as a sort of fellow Brit (laughter). This kind of joking British press, and he clowns around all the time, seems to be in the middle of this story. But what you have to understand, again, is that Putin is not going to do things in a kind of linear way. There are going to be kind of intermediaries, and Goldstone’s the perfect intermediary. He and Emin know Trump. They’ve been to Trump Tower. There are lots of Instagram photos of them all together having dinner, relaxed, chatting and so on. And at some point, he gets a message from the Agalarovs that the prosecutor general of Russia - and this is how the email goes - has got some incriminating material on the Hillary which they would like to share as part of the Russian government’s support for Donald Trump and his campaign. It’s absolutely explicit.

And so Goldstone gets in touch with Trump Junior, sends these emails which we’ve now seen, and the meeting happens. Now, the fact is that actually, the lawyer who flies from Moscow to Trump Tower in the summer of 2016, now-famous Natalia Veselnitskaya, she doesn’t bring the emails that perhaps the Trump campaign might have hoped for. She brings something else. But nonetheless, this is a story about intent. Trump Junior took the meeting. He could have rung the FBI and said, look, I’m being approached by these kind of dodgy Russians. What do you advise? But he took the meeting, and then he concealed it afterwards for almost a year. If that’s not collusion, what is collusion?

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Donald Trump gives a thumbs up as his son Donald Trump, Jr. speaks at a campaign rally at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia February 29, 2016 Reuters.

NPR, “Donald Trump Jr. Had Direct Contact With WikiLeaks During Campaign”, 14 Nov 2017:

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump Jr. was in direct contact with WikiLeaks at the same time the muckraking website was publishing hacked emails from Democratic officials that proved damaging to the Clinton campaign, according to several major publications.

Following the reports, Trump Jr. acknowledged the contact in a tweet detailing one exchange with the radical transparency organization.

The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, in articles published late Monday, said that then-candidate Donald Trump’s eldest son used the messaging feature on Twitter to communicate with WikiLeaks, which in turn alerted the campaign to the impending release of the hacked emails.

The publications report that the messages between Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks were among thousands of documents turned over to Congress as part of its ongoing investigation into claims that Russia interfered in the November election — a finding backed unanimously by U.S. intelligence agencies, which have said that the Kremlin aimed to aid Donald Trump’s campaign.

Newsweek, “Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion Already Exists, Watergate Prosecutors Say”, 14 Nov 2017:

There is definitive proof of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election — and it exists in the email inboxes of Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Hope Hicks and others.

That’s what several former Watergate prosecutors believe, telling Newsweek that evidence of collaboration between the Kremlin and the president’s top campaign aides could literally be at Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s fingertips. It just has to be uncovered.

“The key difference between this and Watergate is … at the time, you certainly didn’t have computers,” said Nick Ackerman, one of the prosecutors who probed the 1972 break-in at the Democratic party’s Watergate offices. “Rather than use burglars to break into the Democratic National headquarters, they used Russian hackers. ... The question is whether that was coordinated in any way with the Trump campaign. Their emails will answer that question, once the special counsel gets its hands on them.”

Kushner has reportedly turned over documents related to his campaign contacts with Russians to Mueller earlier this month, a voluntary move of cooperation between the White House senior adviser and the federal probe. Still, it remains unclear whether those documents include emails, as well as whether Kushner provided the entirety of his communications with Russians to the investigators. If he didn’t provide investigators the full details about his correspondences, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time the president’s son-in-law failed to disclose his Russian contacts (or his business interests, for that matter), having been forced to revise his government security clearance forms with at least 100 foreign contacts previously left off the list.

Even if he’s cooperating, Kushner may be lying about the campaign’s interactions with the Russians, and doing a terrible job of covering it up, according to Jill Wine-Banks, another former Watergate prosecutor. At issue is his response to the discovery of a June meeting in Trump Tower attended by Kushner, other Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives. The meeting was set up by Donald Trump Jr.; Kushner said he didn’t know what was going to be discussed and left early after being bored by the conversation.

“The data ... will make Kushner’s defense fall entirely apart,” Wine-Banks told Newsweek. “We know that statement was a total fabrication since the [Trump] campaign was looking for dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians … I have faith the grand jury will get down to the bottom of what really happened in that meeting.”

Also at issue is the Trump campaign’s involvement with Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data mining operation with apparent ties to Russia, which Kushner boasted was “brought in” to steer the campaign to victory.

“As far as Russian collision, right now there are two aspects: one is, did they micro target Hillary Clinton voters to suppress the vote?” Ackerman said. “We know that there was a data mining process that was done by Kushner out of Texas and we know that the Russians were doing targeting with Facebook and Twitter. The question is trying to compare the data sets to see if there was coordination between those two things.

“Email evidence already shows that the purpose of the meeting on June 9 was to bring incriminating evidence, supposedly emails about Clinton, to the campaign, but we don’t know exactly what they did with that evidence after that meeting,” Ackerman continued.

John Ziegler on possible evidence of collusion:

Why is Donald Trump reacting to Vlaimir Putin the way he has?

Because, if this was all bull crap, and there was nothing the Putin had on Trump; he was not compromised by Russia or by Putin at all; if only for political purposes, and Trump’s not an imbecile, he’s not brilliant but he’s not an imbecile and he clearly is a political person - he likes to be liked… he would be attacking Vladimir Putin at every opportunity.

..especially on the issue of their meddling in the election. That would be just the natural inclination. 

Now, not only is he not doing that, he’s done the opposite of that.

He has been complimentary of Putin at every opportunity. And there is no evidence that he has punished Putin at all, for Russia’s meddling, regardless of whether or not the Trump team colluded in that meddling.

And today, something even more startling than Trump’s prior ass-kissing of Putin and his unwillingness to address this issue directly, of meddling having occurred.

Trump is on his foreign trip, he met with Putin, and then he told the press, that Putin told him, that Russia had nothing to do with the meddling; that it was the democrats doing, supposedly Trump quoting Putin.

And then Trump went our of his way to bash, by name - by name - the former heads of several of our intelligence agencies - including James Comey, calling them hacks and liars!

And completely buying into the idea, that the persons telling him the truth are not the people working for our own intelligence agencies, including, by the way, people that are still working for our intelligence agencies, including every major member of Congress, anybody with any credibility on this issue, or our side, has said, it’s not even a question. Russia attempted to meddle in our elections.

8:03: It’s not even a question. Russia attempted to meddle in our elections. And Trump is publicly saying, “no, I don’t believe any of that because Vladimir Putin told me so.”  Seriously?

If Barack Obama had ever had a meeting with Vladimir Putin after winning re-election ..remember that election he won where he got caught telling .the Russian official tell Vladimir “I’ll have more flexibility after the election?” Remember that whole thing which the media buried, and should have been a massive scandal, the conservative media went ape crap over that little thing, frankly only little in comparison, that was a bid deal to me at the time ...

Sean Hannity

Can you imagine if after winning the 2012 election, Obama had met with Putin, and all of our intelligence agencies were saying that yeah, Putin helped Obama win; and Obama then came out and bashed those intelligence agencies of The United States of America and said, “I believe Putin because he seems very sincere in what he’s telling me”    ...can you imagine the reaction of the Republicans in Congress, can you imagine the so-called conservatives in media?    ...Sean Hannity would be live 24/7 outside of the White house.

Instead from the conservative media there is silence. In fact, if anything, they’ll support Putin and Russia because Trump told us to. They’ll be the one’s we’re supposed to believe over our own intelligence agencies. By the way, not a couple of them, all of them - with unanimity and certitude.

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Flynn’s lawyer denies reports of quid pro quo with Turkey

The Hill, “Mueller investigating Flynn over alleged plan to turn cleric over to Turkey”, 10 Nov 2017:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into an alleged plot involving former national security adviser Michael Flynn to return a Muslim cleric living in the U.S. to Turkey, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

FBI agents have asked at least four people about a mid-December meeting in New York, in which Flynn and his son, Michael G. Flynn, allegedly spoke with representatives of the Turkish government about removing cleric Fethullah Gulen from the U.S. in exchange for as much as $15 million.

Turkey has issued a fatwa against Gulen

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Gulen of orchestrating a failed 2016 coup and has urged the U.S. to extradite the cleric.

The December meeting was attended by former CIA Director James Woolsey, who has described the proposal to The Wall Street Journal as “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away.” Woolsey has said he attended at the request of an associate of Flynn and that he sought to notify then-Vice President Joe Biden through a mutual friend.

It’s not clear how extensive Mueller’s investigation into the alleged plan is. But that the special counsel is looking into the allegations adds to the breadth of the probe into Flynn, who has already come under scrutiny for work benefitting the Turkish government.

Mueller is conducting the criminal investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election, in particular whether members of President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian representatives or operatives during the race.

But that probe has also expanded to include potential criminal activity not involving the campaign. Last week, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was charged with money laundering and tax evasion stretching back years.

The individuals that described the alleged plan to remove Gulen to The Wall Street Journal did not attend the meeting in which the topic was purportedly discussed and were not directly told of the plot by Flynn or his associates.

Flynn has become a central figure in Mueller’s investigation. He was forced to resign from his White House job in February — just 24 days into his tenure — after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in the months before Trump took office.

Since then, however, he has faced scrutiny for his lobbying work on behalf of Turkish interests and for not disclosing financial ties to Turkey and Russia.

“Aspen Institute”: (((Panel discusses))) Active Measures

The Alt-Right is discussed in minute 14:45:

Evelyn Farkas: Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia: 14:45: It drives me crazy when Former Director Comey says that the Russians are coming back. To your point, they never left. I mean they’re still here, they have all that information, they’re in our cyber- and in our information-sphere.

Ned Price: And its broader than just Wikileaks and the overt or semi overt organs of the Russian government. I think one thing we noticed even after the election; you take the sort of trending story in Alt-Right or so-called Alt-Right circles: [example] hashtag #Syriahoax started in Russia and somehow make their way to the United States and started trending in some of the same circles that are collectively known as the Alt-Right. And I think the linkage between the two is not something we fully understand; how something jumps across he Atlantic like that and tends to land with the same group of people after originating in pro-Russia circles.

Now we need a non-Jewish panel discussing Israeli and Jewish influence over the American electorate - lol.

..in fact, there are some questions toward the end that bear upon that -

Charlie D. from Duke Law: 52:00: Would it help if we broadened the discussion about all foreign nations who are trying to influence our campaigns?

Panel averts the question -

Ned Price: 52:19: I would start with the proposition that it’s natural for governments to have policy preferences. Clearly I would suspect lots of the NATO member countries were made uncomfortable listening to Donald Trump during the campaign speak of NATO being obsolete. I think that the issue is that in today’s environment there has been attempt at criminalization on policy preferences on the part of foreign capitals. But I think we have to remember is a far cry from a NATO country, you know, privately rooting for Hillary Clinton and a strategic adversary getting involved in our election with Active Measures, covert influence, social media, you name it.

Julia Ioffe: They weren’t probing and scanning our election infrastructure, yeah.

Audience Member: Have any of you considered the business role of the president and Russia; because he has, right now, no one will lend him money in New York City, no one will do business with him in New York City. He owes a great deal of money. Where does he get the money? There are a lot of rumors that he gets it from Russia. Have any of your explored any of that?

Julia Ioffe: 53:48: Both of his sons said that he (Trump) gets most of his money from them (Russia) ...and its not a crazy proposition either that if he’s doing real estate in New York and Florida ...and guess where (((Russians))) who want to park their money outside of Russia, guess where they want to buy real estate? - (((New York and Florida))).

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President Donald Trump and Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed bin Salman meet at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2017. Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

CNBC, “Trump may have pushed Saudi Arabia and Iran closer to war”, 7 Nov 2017:

- Saudi Arabia’s moves over the past few days are bringing it closer to direct war with Iran.

- But this process seems to have been kick started by the new Saudi crown prince’s meeting with President Trump in March.

- It’s crucial to keep this conflict contained to the Middle East.

Crucial news keeps flying out of Saudi Arabia at a frantic pace, but here’s the bottom line: The Saudis are marching ever closer towards a wider regional war. And the U.S. may have helped send them down that path.

Just to recap, in the last several days the new crown prince of Saudi Arabia has initiated a massive purge of dozens of his fellow princes, ministers, and others in the kingdom in what’s been labeled as an “anti-corruption” sweep. Most of the headlines so far are understandably focusing on the one celebrity arrested, Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire investor seen and heard frequently for years on financial news channels like CNBC.

But that was just the first wave of news from Riyadh. Since the crackdown began on Saturday, the Saudis have considerably ramped up their accusatory rhetoric towards their neighbors. First, the kingdom squarely blamed Iran for a missile attack on Riyadh from Yemen that was thwarted by the U.S.-made Patriot anti-missile system. The Saudis called that attack “direct military aggression by the Iranian regime and may be considered an act of war.”

Second, the Saudis accused Lebanon of — figuratively at least — declaring “war” against it because of aggression from Hezbollah. That statement spurred even Saudi ally and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to publicly urge for calm.

al-Sisi may be too late. Because the common denominator in all these Saudi moves is a more focused preparation for a wider and more direct war with Iran for control of the region. As I noted when he was first put in his top position by his father King Salman in June, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was already known as a hardcore hawk against Iran. Just a month before he was made crown prince, bin Salman declared that peace dialogue with Iran was impossible.

“More aggressive anti-Iranian hawks like bin Salman may have seen Donald Trump’s election as an excuse to win the day over more dovish princes and ministers. And the White House seemingly gave Saudi Arabia a green light.”

But the direct line to these more bellicose moves begins earlier than that and goes directly to the White House. While still deputy crown prince, bin Salman visited with President Trump in March of this year. During that meeting, they publicly declared Iran as the key regional security threat in the Middle East. That was step one.

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Pardon the liberal sources, but in the case of Democracy Now, for example, it was among the first sources to interview the author of the investigation and the coverage sticks pretty much to what he has to say. Democracy Now is literally an anti-White news program and Jewish as well - beginning with Amy Goodman, of course. Hence they are not going to amplify the wrong doings of Jews per se. Please take that under consideration. Critiques as such and suggestions of alternative sources on the story are welcome.

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Although Schumer remains as self righteous a bracket about immigration as ever, in point of fact, he was part of a group of eight which proposed a bill in 2013 to end the Visa Lottery Program. True, he was perhaps opposed to the Visa Lottery for the same reason that the Republican dominated Capital Hill shot down the bill to end the lottery - because it provided a loop hole in which some Whites, who might not otherwise be able, could actually immigrate to the Unites States despite the anti-White measures of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act.

Either way - “lottery” or sheer “merit” - Trump’s proposing a “merit based immigration system” to replace the Visa Lottery is just proposition-nation rigmarole; and in fact, disingenuous: Though he’s promised to adopt a system that gives preference to skilled immigrants, in fact he’s doing the exact opposite.

NBC News, “Trump: Suspect Entered U.S. in ‘Diversity Visa Lottery,’ Blames Schumer”, 1 Nov 2017:

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the Uzbek immigrant suspected of killing eight people in New York City with a rental truck entered the U.S. through the “Diversity Visa Lottery Program,” and the president accused Sen. Chuck Schumer and other Democrats of having loosened the nation’s borders.

Trump did not provide any supporting evidence for the claim about the visa program, which was being discussed on the morning TV program “Fox and Friends” that the president indicated in his tweets he was watching.

“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based,” Trump tweeted.

At a Cabinet meeting later, Trump said he would work with Congress to end the visa program.

“I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. I am going to ask Congress to immediately…get rid of this program,” said the president, who called the suspect an “animal.” “Diversity lottery — sounds nice, it’s not nice. It’s not good. It hasn’t been good.”

Trump continued, “We want people that are going to help our country, we want people that are going to keep our country safe. We don’t want lotteries where the wrong people are in the lotteries and guess what? Who are the suckers that get those people? We want a merit-based system.”

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security later confirmed the suspect in the attack, a 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant named Sayfullo Saipov, had been admitted to the U.S. “upon presentation of a passport with a valid diversity immigrant visa to U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2010.”

After Trump’s attacks on him, Schumer shot back on Twitter: “I guess it’s not too soon to politicize a tragedy.”

In a statement, the New York senator slammed Trump for “dividing America” and called on the president not to follow through on proposed cuts to “vital anti-terrorism funding.”

“I have always believed and continue to believe that immigration is good for America,” Schumer said. “President Trump, instead of politicizing and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be focusing on the real solution — anti-terrorism funding — which he proposed cutting in his most recent budget.”

Schumer also took on Trump in a passionate speech from the Senate floor, asking, “President Trump, where is your leadership?”

The New York lawmaker drew a comparison between Trump’s conduct after Tuesday’s attack and the way former President George W. Bush responded to 9/11.

Bush “understood the meaning of his high office” in the midst of a national tragedy, Schumer said. “The contrast between President Bush’s actions after 9/11 and President Trump’s actions this morning couldn’t be starker.”

The Trump-Schumer back and forth came less than 24 hours after eight people were killed and more than a dozen injured when a motorist in a rented pickup truck deliberately drove down a bike path in lower Manhattan and mowed down several people before crashing into a school bus in what officials said was a terror attack.

Police found a note inside the truck indicating the suspect claimed to have carried out the attack to show his support for ISIS.

In a planned attack which he declared on behalf of ISIL, Sayfullo Saipov rented a pickup truck and mowed down pedestrians and cyclists along a busy bike path near the World Trade Center memorial 31 Oct 2017, killing eight.

According to The New York Times, he had obtained a green card, giving him permanent legal resident status in the U.S.

Trump, in his tweets Wednesday, was apparently referring to the Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery, which was established by the Immigration Act of 1990. That bill was passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by then-President George H.W. Bush.

The program allows the State Department to offer 50,000 visas annually to immigrants from countries with low immigration rates.

Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans alike hit back against Trump.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on “Morning Joe” that “it was kind of absurd (for Trump)...to be using it as a fulcrum for…this kind of a debate.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, at a press conference later Wednesday, said Trump’s tweets “were not factual” and “were not helpful.”

“You play into the hands of the terrorists,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said when asked for his thoughts on the tweets. “The tone now should be the exact opposite on all levels.”

Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who have both become vocal Trump critics since announcing they would not run for reelection next year, also took on the president.

“I don’t think that brings out the best in our country,” Corker told NBC News, while Flake called Trump’s response “premature.”

“He should express solidarity with those trying to fix this (visa) program,” Flake said.

Another Republican defended the diversity visa lottery.

“To be honest with you, I’ve known a number of people in New York who come in under the lottery system — they’ve made outstanding contributions, they’ve become citizens,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., a former House Homeland Security Committee chairman, told the Fox Business Network. “So that really is separate from the idea of the vetting.”

According to the State Department, diversity visa lottery applicants must meet certain education and work experience requirements, including having obtained “at least a high school education or its equivalent” or “two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation that requires at least two years of training or experience to perform.”

The State Department determines those accepted under the program through a randomized computer drawing, its website states.

In 2013, a bipartisan group of senators, including Schumer, known as the “Gang of Eight” proposed a compromise immigration reform bill that would have eliminated the diversity lottery. The bill did not make it through Congress.