Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years

[Cujo]

I'm not in the least surprised, in fact when you think about it it's kind of obvious that he was a Russian asset.
Remember the private meeting in the oval office. No one knows what was said.
And his Chummy relationship with Putin is now seen for what it is, (wasn't it always)
And

‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy


The KGB ‘played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality’, Yuri Shvets, a key source for a new book, tells the Guardian


Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.


Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.


Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.


“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.


Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.


Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.


Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.


According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.


Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics.


The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.


“This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB active measures at the time.”


Soon after he returned to the US, Trump began exploring a run for the Republican nomination for president and even held a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On 1 September, he took out a full-page advert in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe headlined: “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”


The ad offered some highly unorthodox opinions in Ronald Reagan’s cold war America, accusing ally Japan of exploiting the US and expressing scepticism about US participation in Nato. It took the form of an open letter to the American people “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves”.


The bizarre intervention was cause for astonishment and jubilation in Russia. A few days later Shvets, who had returned home by now, was at the headquarters of the KGB’s first chief directorate in Yasenevo when he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful “active measure” executed by a new KGB asset.


“It was unprecedented. I am pretty well familiar with KGB active measures starting in the early 70s and 80s, and then afterwards with Russia active measures, and I haven’t heard anything like that or anything similar – until Trump became the president of this country – because it was just silly. It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the west but it did and, finally, this guy became the president.”


Trump’s election win in 2016 was again welcomed by Moscow. Special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. But the Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, found the Trump campaign and transition team had at least 272 known contacts and at least 38 known meetings with Russia-linked operatives.


Shvets, who has carried out his own investigation, said: “For me, the Mueller report was a big disappointment because people expected that it will be a thorough investigation of all ties between Trump and Moscow, when in fact what we got was an investigation of just crime-related issues. There were no counterintelligence aspects of the relationship between Trump and Moscow.”


He added: “This is what basically we decided to correct. So I did my investigation and then got together with Craig. So we believe that his book will pick up where Mueller left off.”


Unger, the author of seven books and a former contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine, said of Trump: “He was an asset. It was not this grand, ingenious plan that we’re going to develop this guy and 40 years later he’ll be president. At the time it started, which was around 1980, the Russians were trying to recruit like crazy and going after dozens and dozens of people.”


“Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways: his vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election.”

‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy | Donald Trump | The Guardian

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Nothing new,
I am Putin is laughing his head off watching the news.

[Cujo]

Look in Trumps eyes, what is he thinking? It's just dawned on him he's putins bitch (or putin will spill the beans)

[Klondyke]

Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years

With all the problems at home - the enhanced "democracy", expect more such news coming - WMD Weapons of Mass Distraction (the Putin's mansion hasn't scored too much...)

[russellsimpson]

With all the problems at home - the enhanced "democracy", expect more such news coming - WMD Weapons of Mass Distraction (the Putin's mansion hasn't scored too much...)

I agree Klondyke.

What a pile of useless shit. I can't believe that educated people could be so stupid. Do some of you guys ( and gals )actually believe this . I wonder how many years Kim has been "cultivating " Trump ?

[Backspin]

This is the biggest crock of shit yet .

Cujo is the biggest Russia bullshitter here

[harrybarracuda]

We all know the Russians have baldy orange loser by the balls. That's why he kept blocking his financial records.

And there's still the money he laundered for the Russian that bought his mansion at a hugely inflated profit in the middle of the 2008 GFC ... which probably ended up in Trump condos.

[Backspin]

You clowns are just as bad as deeks. Trump is gone. Who gives a fuck.

Strange how Cujo believes anything some soap dodging KGB throwback has to say. He's probably jist trying to sell a book.

Trump had no buildings in Moscow and it wasn't for lack of trying. It's hard to think of anyone more un Russian than trump

[Cujo]

You clowns are just as bad as deeks. Trump is gone. Who gives a fuck.

Strange how Cujo believes anything some soap dodging KGB throwback has to say. He's probably jist trying to sell a book.

Trump had no buildings in Moscow and it wasn't for lack of trying. It's hard to think of anyone more un Russian than trump

What do you mean 'un Russian' ?

[Cujo]

[Backspin]

What do you mean 'un Russian' ?

Russia is part of Europe. Everyone in Europe finds Trump repulsive.

Putin is very Russian in how he carries himself. Trump is very American in the way he carries himself

[Cujo]

Russia is part of Europe. Everyone in Europe finds Trump repulsive.

Putin is very Russian in how he carries himself. Trump is very American in the way he carries himself

What's that got to do with anything ?
Do you think that disqualifies him from being a Russian stooge ?

[baldrick]

what is amusing is putin had control of dumpf and still didn't manage to achieve anything of note

bad workman blaming his tools might have some merit

and the book is called American Compromat and is available as epub

[sabang]

Has The donald ever been invited to underage orgies in Vlad's billion dollar Black Sea pleasuredome? If not, he's a Loser.

[panama hat]

Has The donald ever been invited to underage orgies in Vlad's billion dollar Black Sea pleasuredome? If not, he's a Loser.

By Epstein . . . yes. Putin . . . who knows, but I doubt it . . . and if so there'd be no evidence left

Russia is part of Europe. Everyone in Europe finds Trump repulsive.

Do you think Europeans like Putin? Only 20+% of Russia is in eastern Europe, the rest in Asia

Putin is very Russian in how he carries himself.

. . . an you think European like that?

You are utterly clueless, as usual

Trump is gone. Who gives a fuck.

You do . . . on just this page . . . quit the faux outrage, stop being such a hypocritical moron

Trump

Trump

Trump

Trump

trump

[jabir]

^^
Now that you mention it, once they off Maxwell everyone's in the clear except those that aren't family. Easy enough when you pwn the media, social media, and all 3 houses.

And everything else is also gonna be just fine, Biden won’t restore the war in Syria, sure he won’t, except he will under a suitable pretext that the masses will lap up because he came back from the dead to save us.

Meanwhile, armchair experts are so easily fooled into looking at Russia when this century, the one most of us are living in like it or not, is the Chinese century; look hard enough and you might even spot some of those experts on TD. China is where the lines meet, and the ideological cunning and shrewdness and patience of the long game pays off, having invested all over the world from South America to Asia, building and buying up ports, agriculture, resources, politicians, the list goes on, giving China positive growth while the other major nations struggle to remain in acceptable negative, by massaging the numbers.

And when their idiotic cheerleader get drowsy the opiate dealers shelve Russia and switch for a brief change of topic to China, and what a tewible place it is, with a billion plus denied godgiven rights that everyone must enjoy because we do, while 1.5m die each year from air pollution and related diseases, so be thankful we care and don't forget to follow the covid saga from above the mask, when we let you out.

If this is wrong then tell me why we fret over Russian as the primary threat to our way of life when it ain't Russia but China we should be watching; not Russia but China that will be this century's powerhouse as western politics and economies and societies degrade, not the rouble but the yuan that enjoys 3% of trade which will by the end of this decade reach double figures in its challenge for dominance.

But never mind the shitheads that worship their impeccable info sources, it's the few at the top that really count because they make the decisions. And ours are the dumbest, most incompetent, arrogant, egotistic, corrupt low-life narcissistic freaks only your worst enemy would choose to put in charge of a country.

Rant over, piss off squirrel.

[baldrick]

after reading the first chapter of american compromat , it made me wonder if the chins are really smart enough to release a virus to ensure drumpf was not re elected