Scary Russian Influence in the Trump Administration
The London Sunday Times published a story “Vladimir Putin’s sway over the US is even worse than you think”. Written by Dominic Lawson, who writes columns for The Sunday Times and the Daily Mail. I.e. he is not a noisy Radio talk-show host spreading populist conspiracy theories, mis-information and dis-information.
I think his article needs wider readership. I have extracted some elements from the article here, with some edits for brevity, (the extracts are printed in itallics). The full article can be found here:
About Tulsi Gabbard
Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard posted in the aftermath of the Oval Office fracas between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in February. She Posted: “Zelensky has been trying to drag the United States into a nuclear war with Russia/WW3 for years now”.
When Trump nominated her as director of intelligence, Rossiya-1, the main state TV channel, claimed her as a “comrade”.
But who put the idea in Trump’s mind that she was the woman for the top intelligence job? The name mentioned is George O’Neill Jr. He had promoted Gabbard for many years.
O’Neill had a personal Russian connection. This was Maria Butina, now a member of Putin’s party in the Duma, who lived in Washington until she was convicted in 2018 of being an unregistered agent of the Kremlin. One of her close contacts … was revealed by The Wall Street Journal to be O’Neill, described by the paper as “an outspoken advocate of closer ties with Russia”.
About Darren Beattie
… the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy, Darren Beattie (who married a Russian woman in 2021). Beattie has been intimately involved in the shutting-down of the State Department’s counter foreign information manipulation and interference hub, known as R/Fimi. Russian disinformation was at the heart of R/Fimi’s work, but Beattie told staff that the operation was “severely misaligned” with the Trump administration’s policies. Which is certainly true.
Beattie set up a news operation of his own which was determinedly pro-Kremlin. Two months before Putin launched his “SMO”, Beattie wrote: “Imagine the whining from the Globalist American Empire if Putin ‘invades’ Ukraine … I love it when our national security bureaucrats fail!”
Donald Trump
Where the parts on Tulsi Gabbard and Darren Beattie are largely factual, when it comes to Donald Trump, Lawson is much more interpretative.
Trump, though, is much more motivated by personal greed and perceived slights. He has never forgiven Zelensky for refusing to assist him against Hunter Biden. And Trump has wanted his family’s hotel business to have a foothold in Moscow. Moreover, Russian money kept the Trump Organisation solvent when US and European banks were no longer prepared to lend.