The Moscow project marked the culmination of 30 years of interest by Mr. Trump in establishing a foothold in Russia and nearby Ukraine. The push involved more than 20 separate developments. Though ultimately none came to fruition, one advanced far enough to leave a giant hole, eight stories down in the ground before being abandoned. The proposed plans for the 2016 project included giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse, long-time Trump associate Felix Sater said in an interview. Mr. Cohen loved the idea, Mr. Sater said.
1998
As Russians sought a safe haven for their money abroad, Trump properties grew as a go-to brand for Russians buying in the U.S….
Florida developer Gil Dezer, who with his dad licensed the Trump name for towers in three Florida locations, says more than 300 condominium buyers in their Sunny Isles towers alone came from the former Soviet Union.
.. 2006
Mr. Trump’s children joined in the hunt.
.. Plans were drawn up to renovate and rebrand the Stalin-era Sovietsky Hotel as Ivanka Hotel, says one person who was involved in the project, which included a store that would sell Ms. Trump’s jewelry line. Ms. Trump launched her jewelry line the next year, in the fall of 2007.
.. Mr. Chigirinsky says he put feelers out to Mr. Trump for what he planned to be the biggest construction project that Moscow had seen since Joseph Stalin’s time. The developer says he envisioned a 118-floor, Norman Foster-designed tower near the Moscow River with enough office and living space to hold 30,000 people.
.. According to a person who works in a senior role at Crocus Group, Messrs. Trump and Agalarov agreed that Mr. Agalarov would build a series of 12 buildings near his Crocus properties. This new development would be called Manhattan, and at its center would be two towers—one named for Mr. Agalarov, the other for Mr. Trump.
.. 2015
Pussy Riot’s Rules for Revolution
A founding member of the punk/art protest group Pussy Riot draws on her life of activism and offers her “rules for revolution.” Oct 22, 2018
Similarities between Trump and Putin
They talk about retrieving past glory but they do not really think much about history or ideology.
They do not care about ideology.
They only care about money and power.
The would choose any political system to build and maintain their power.
‘Facts develop’: The Trump team’s new ‘alternative facts’-esque ways to explain its falsehoods
As president, Donald Trump has uttered more than 4,000 falsehoods or misleading statements. And the spokespeople and advisers tasked with squaring Trump’s version of reality with actual reality must often contort themselves accordingly.
.. On Sunday, they tried a couple of new tacks: asserting that “facts develop” and saying that the president “misspoke” — while saying something he has said dozens of times.
.. George Stephanopoulos challenged the president’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow on two past, disproven assurances that Trump hadn’t authored the initial, misleading statement about it. (That statement said the meeting was “primarily” about the adoption of Russian children.)
.. Facts might have “developed” from Sekulow’s perspective, but the actual events never changed. Either Trump didn’t tell him the truth about his role in drafting that statement, or Sekulow and Sanders offered assurances that were basically made-up. That “bad information” came from somewhere — either Trump or thin air.
.. John Bolton offered another extremely hard-to-stomach explanation for Trump’s soft stance toward Vladimir Putin on Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election, saying Trump merely “misspoke”:
.. why not stand there right alongside Putin, with the whole world watching and say, we are not going to stand for any more meddling?
BOLTON: Well, as the president said, he misspoke.
.. Trump has also said that he misspoke at the news conference with Putin — but not at this juncture. He said that when he said “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia, he meant to say wouldn’t instead.
..
As the video clip Wallace played shows, that was hardly the only moment in the joint news conference with Putin in which Trump played down the idea that Russia interfered. Bolton was responding not to Trump saying “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia but to his insistence that “President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.” Trump has never said he misspoke about that.
.. And that really gives lie to this whole thing. Trump has downplayed Putin’s interference so many times over the past 18 months that he would have had to be misspeaking almost constantly. It’s clear what he truly believes or at least wants to convey — even if aides can occasionally reel him back in slightly.
.. each and every one of them also has the side effect of undermining the credibility of the spokespeople who, in neither of these cases, must truly believe the things they are saying.
In Dissing Angela Merkel and NATO, What Was Trump Telling Putin?
Even more than with most subjects, when Trump brings up Russia he seems to be speaking of something that is defined less by reality than by what he needs it to be.
.. “We’re the schmucks paying for the whole thing.”) On Thursday, Trump proclaimed,
“I believe in nato,” then immediately undermined the sentiment by complaining that Europe was unfair to American farmers.
.. Another likely explanation for this performance is that the nato members were simply being subjected to the phenomenon of one bully showing off to another. “He’s a competitor,” Trump said of Putin. “Somebody was saying, Is he an enemy? Mmm, no, he’s not my enemy. Is he a friend? No, I don’t know him well enough.” Trump, by that measure, isn’t interested in anyone’s relationship with Putin except his—not Europe’s, not America’s. The policy contents of his demands were hardly relevant; his message to Putin was that he had yelled at nato.
.. Trump’s European tantrum was also, no doubt, intended for the home audience.
.. Russia, in this sense, becomes shorthand for all “those things”—the fakery and dodgy promises and money—that are just a part of the daily life of an American political candidate.
.. he said that May had “wrecked” Brexit, because “she didn’t listen to me.” He then proceeded to endorse, as a future Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, May’s freshly departed, self-indulgently destructive Foreign Secretary, largely on the ground that “he obviously likes me.” With that, and a swipe at immigration in Europe (“You are losing your culture”)