Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / But SERIOUSLY : #ManafortCash

But SERIOUSLY : #ManafortCash

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I’m writing this in the small hours, intend to schedule it to post at mid-morning, by which time it may already be out of date. For the record, though… Note the person tweeting this:

… Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Manafort’s involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign — from Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev…

“He understood what was happening in Ukraine,” said Vitaliy Kasko, a former senior official with the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev. “It would have to be clear to any reasonable person that the Yanukovych clan, when it came to power, was engaged in corruption.”

Mr. Kasko added, “It’s impossible to imagine a person would look at this and think, ‘Everything is all right.’”…


Pushback, of course…

Inside-the-Beltway career speculation…

Some people say that Trump’s kids pushed Lewandowski out, in favor of Manafort. Where are the kids, while this Russian-ties news is breaking?…

If you tried to submit this story as a script for House of Cards — or Person of Interest — it would be rejected as too broadly unrealistic for verisimilitude.

Reader Interactions

160Comments

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    Seen on the Intertubes: We’re living inside a Coen Brothers remake of The Manchurian Candidate.

    If it gets any more farcical, I might argue for upgrading to the Marx Brothers version. Harpo would make a great Trump.

  4. 4.

    MattF

    Lewandowski says his post was meant to illustrate media bias. I do wonder just how Manafort’s resume got him hired:
    1) Constant, practiced, professional liar,
    2) Friend of a friend of a friend of Vladimir Putin.

    Anyhow, Weinstein’s NYT article sounds like it’s going to be interesting.

  7. 7.

    coin operated

    @srv: The foundation’s finances are public and available to all. Can’t say the same for Trump and his crew.

    Edited for spelling…caffeine deficiency.

  10. 10.

    trollhattan

    “Ukraine is the most beautiful, classiest part of Russia. Believe me, I’ve been there and it’s the greatest. I can’t wait to go back as president and see my Russian friends again. I can get us a great deal, believe me.”

    If I lived in Ukraine I’d be yoogely nervous right now.

  11. 11.

    dmsilev

    @catclub: But Harpo could, if the situation called for it, act like an asshole. So, in this reading, Trump is actually playing a role with the goal of undermining a bigger asshole. Not happening here in the real world, but still.

    And, if nothing else, replacing all of Trump’s verbiage with various honking noises and the occasional harp solo would have to be considered an upgrade.

  13. 13.

    boatboy_srq

    So, tRump had to choose between the misogynist journalist-abuser and the bought-and-paid-for oligarch enabler, and supposedly his kids pushed for the oligarch enabler before scooting off to holiday with Putin’s besties. And meanwhile empty-headed spokesbots are still going on the talk shows spewing nonsense for him.

    Is there ANYONE honest and decent working on the tRump campaign?

  14. 14.

    Jeffro

    Several thoughts from the Tweet-storm above:
    1) Can’t wait to see that Adam Weinstein story later this week!
    2) Looking forward to hearing from all the fine folks who will soon be spilling the beans over who, exactly, insisted on adding that novel Ukraine plank into the GOP platform…
    3) And per Tom Nichols’ comment – he’s absolutely correct: not only would “Democratic rules” require a summary execution, “Clinton rules” would require drawing & quartering the corpse, with the cremated remains scattered to the winds.

    This is just crazy, crazy stuff.

    I don’t even know how to ‘flip’ this as an example to show RW folks how off-base they are for continuing to support Trump…”If Huma Abedin had tweeted a story that slammed John Podesta for his ties to China, and China had been hacking the RNC, and there was evidence that Clinton owed a lot of money to Chinese interests (not to mention was a serial, blatant liar) while Podesta was being paid from a Chinese slush fund, and if Clinton was already demonstrably behind in the Electoral College, with major newspapers calling for her to step off the ticket and major pundits openly deriding her sanity…”

    Truly, the mind boggles.

  15. 15.

    dmsilev

    @catclub: I wonder whether Erick son of Erick of the House of Erick will ever reach that point. Maybe. He surely hates Hillary, but I get the sense he hates Trump even more.

  16. 16.

    catclub

    @MattF:

    Lewandowski says his post was meant to illustrate media bias.

    And Trump taking the bait on this subject to tweet is perfect. A sensible politician might leave it alone.

  19. 19.

    boatboy_srq

    @MattF: Friend of a client of a friend of Putin, more like. Or client of a friend of a friend. There were rubles involved in at least one link in that chain.

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    @boatboy_srq:

    Is there ANYONE honest and decent working on the tRump campaign?

    Never before was there a question which so obviously answered itself.

  21. 21.

    nonynony

    @boatboy_srq:

    before scooting off to holiday with Putin’s besties

    Putin’s girlfriend.

    Who used to be Rupert Murdoch’s wife.

    Yes. That Rupert Murdoch.

    When Anne says that this would be rejected as a script for a political TV show she ain’t kidding – viewers would shut this stuff off for shredding their suspension of disbelief.

  23. 23.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Jeffro:

    Looking forward to hearing from all the fine folks who will soon be spilling the beans over who, exactly, insisted on adding that novel Ukraine plank into the GOP platform

    Old news. Multiple sources from the Platform Committee have already said, on numerous occasions, that it was the work of Trump’s people.

  24. 24.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    Can we start casting for the 2016 election movie. I say Randy Quaid as Trump, Tim Hutton as Manafort,Jimmy Fallon as Reince, Nathan Lane as Ted Cruz, Helen Mirren as Hilz,Scott Baio as Scott Baio…

  25. 25.

    dmsilev

    @catclub:

    And Trump taking the bait on this subject to tweet is perfect. A sensible politician might leave it alone.

    a) “Sensible”: I think I see your problem right there.
    b) “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

  26. 26.

    shomi

    The sad part about this is that it will not make a dent in Trumps already low and falling numbers. It’s already baked in. His mouth breather supports won’t care because he is their guy no matter what so their numbers won’t budge. I seriously doubt there is anyone left who is still on the fence with Trump after all the shit that has already gone down before this.

  27. 27.

    dmsilev

    @nonynony: Don’t forget, that’s Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife, who once had an affair with Tony Blair.

    This is like a cross between a James Bond film and a telenovela.

  28. 28.

    Punchy

    @catclub: JRubes going Full Frontal Hitlery? This is….uh…..”welcome” news? Must we claim such odious fuckdummery on Team Dem?

  29. 29.

    catclub

    @nonynony:

    Who used to be Rupert Murdoch’s wife.

    Yes. That’s Rupert Murdoch.

    Which nation is Rupert Murdoch presently claiming to be a citizen of?
    Rupert does fear finding he has Jewish roots. Otherwise calling him a rootless cosmopolitan might be a slur.
    His only loyalty is to his own money.

  33. 33.

    boatboy_srq

    @Gin & Tonic: The only thing keeping most European citizens (at least the ones I know) from panic is the assumption that tRump can’t win. I keep reminding them that the US has a history of actually being that stupid. It’s not pretty.

  34. 34.

    Ben Cisco

    If you tried to submit this story as a script for House of Cards — or Person of Interest — it would be rejected as too broadly unrealistic for verisimilitude.

    Yeah, but as a Twilight Zone episode…mmmmmwhah!

  35. 35.

    Lyrebird

    @catclub: On the flip side, G..gle ads decided to serve up a Trump commercial right on top of this article, funny!

    I hope their campaign spends LOTS of money to show me and others like me ads for their hateful candidate. Gotta go count up how many pennies I can send to the key senate campaigns, maybe even do the $2ea to the DKOS-endorsed house candidates.

    First I gotta stop making popcorn and get back to work!

  36. 36.

    J

    I didn’t realize that Bill and Hillary Clinton were co-Prime Ministers of Canada at the time, I could have sworn that it was Stephen Harper. I guess The Clinton Foundation runs the Canadian Conservative Party. Who knew?

  38. 38.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @catclub:
    Establishment Republicans not in elected positions have strong motivation to repudiate Trump. Their nightmare scenario the entire American public accepting that the Republican Party is motivated by idiot bigotry. If that happens, not only is their power greatly reduced, they might have to face that they, themselves, are motivated by idiot bigotry.

  39. 39.

    Gin & Tonic

    @catclub: I’ll bet the farm it wasn’t Manafort himself in the room. He’s spent enough time around ruthless dictators to know how to do these things so it’s abundantly clear to the people who need to know, that the campaign wanted those deletions, yet not leave his fingerprints on the action.

  40. 40.

    nonynony

    @shomi:

    I seriously doubt there is anyone left who is still on the fence with Trump after all the shit that has already gone down.

    There are still a ton of “undecided” voters out there. Or at least people claiming to be undecided when talking to pollsters.

    Political junkies need to understand that a large chunk of people don’t even start thinking about elections until after Labor Day. All of this stuff happening right now is Silly Season stuff – normally what happens in August doesn’t impact the election much (in fact, in many previous election cycles the conventions weren’t held until the end of August/beginning of September precisely because nobody cares). This year may be an exception because everything about Trump is an exception.

    Having said that – I’d love to see a poll of people voting where they don’t ask them the usual “if the election were held today which of the following candidates would you vote for” and instead ask them point blank “if the election were held today would you vote for Donald Trump”. I strongly suspect that the number of “undecided voters” would plummet like a rock and we’d have a real idea of where Trump’s support could actually reach. I suspect that many undecided voters are undecided about whether they’re going to bother voting at all this year – or which protest candidate they’re going to write in on their ballots – rather than undecided about whether they’re going to vote for Trump or not.

  41. 41.

    boatboy_srq

    @nonynony: Oh granted. Just more interested in how deep the rot is in House tRump than how r he bout side factors interrelate

    It is interesting that a Murdoch ex is now a Putin accessory. Wonder how deep THAT interrelationship goes.

  42. 42.

    nonynony

    @dmsilev: I didn’t know about the Tony Blair connection.

    This is like a cross between a James Bond film and a telenovela.

    This is a story element that would be excised from a James Bond film for not being believable enough.

  44. 44.

    Splitting Image

    @dmsilev:

    If it gets any more farcical, I might argue for upgrading to the Marx Brothers version. Harpo would make a great Trump.

    I protest, sir. Harpo was, by all accounts, the nicest of the Marx Brothers.

  45. 45.

    gene108

    Yawn…Libtards don’t understand the REAL SCANDAL!!!

    The corrupt ties of “Pay-for-Play” between Sec. Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation.

    State Department employees recommended people to work at the Clinton Foundation.

    Companies that were lobbying the State Department, also donated to the Clinton Foundation and paid Bill money to give speeches.

    People, who wanted the U.S. government to help settle matters abroad, also gave to the Clinton Foundation.

    Fine there’s no actual direct one-to-one link between donation to the Clinton Foundation and actions taken by Secretary Clinton.

    But it is a whole lot more unseemly than anything else. And in the end isn’t keeping up appearances what really matters?

  46. 46.

    dedc79

    @trollhattan:

    If I lived in Ukraine I’d be yoogely nervous right now.

    And the Ukraine is already a leading candidate for “Place Where the Most Blood Has Been Spilled in the Last Few Centuries.”

  47. 47.

    retr2327

    @Lyrebird: Speaking of Trump campaign spending lots of money . . . NYT this weekend (IIRC) pointed out that Trump campaign disclosures show that 63 million dollars of the money raised in the last two months has essentially vanished: it’s not been spent on ads, campaign infrastructure, etc.

    So where the hell did it go? What’s the split between Trump and Manafort, I wonder?

  49. 49.

    Aleta

    From the Guardian in April. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/27/paul-manafort-donald-trump-campaign-past-clients

    In 2008, Manafort teamed up with real estate executive Brad Zackson, who was a top aide to Trump’s father Fred, and others in a real estate scheme to buy prime properties in the US, including the famed Drake Hotel site in New York, and elsewhere, mainly on behalf of Ukrainian gas billionaire Firtash, another backer of Yanukovych. No deals were ever completed; in 2011 a civil racketeering suit that alleged money laundering in excess of $25m was filed against Firtash, Manafort and several affiliated companies by then jailed Ukrainian political opposition leader and Firtash business competitor Yulia Tymoshenko. But a New York court dismissed the charges on procedural and jurisdictional grounds.
    Like Yanukovych, Firtash had a troubled reputation. Former US ambassador William Taylor said in a secret memo from 2008 that in a meeting he had with him, Firtash “acknowledged ties to Russian organized crime figure Semyon Mogilevich, stating that he had needed Mogilevich’s approval to get into business in the first place”.

    The ties that Manafort had with Firtash – which included three meetings in 2008, according to documents that were part of the lawsuit – in their abortive real estate ventures involved a maze of companies and solicitations of investors with dubious backgrounds. One key example: a private equity company called Pericles Emerging Markets Partners, which Manafort helped set up with funding from Russian investors. A principal one, an informed source says, was aluminum oligarch and Putin favorite Deripaska, who at the time was barred from entering the US due to concerns about organized crime links.

    The article describes other Manafort projects too. (I wonder if he interned for Iran Contra.)*
    *(baseless and biased joke, sort of)

  50. 50.

    jl

    I’ll pass on the popcorn for this one. The possibilities are just too ugly. And if Trump wins, the implications too dangerous.

    Part of my concern stems from the gross incompetence and negligence of our worthless news media. Trump is building what little credibility he has on foreign, and national security, policy on top of bald face lies about his past positions. That fraudster is supposed to give some policy speech today slamming HRC, and Democrats more generally on ISIS/ISIL/Daesh and Middle East policy. What credibility does Trump have? His claim that he opposed the Iraq invasion and opposed the US withdrawal from Iraq. He is quite clearly on the record as having the OPPOSITE positions at the time. Yet he is allowed to spout crap for months, the media can’t seem to find the means to report out that his whole line is total BS, based on a lies. Damned lies, bald face lies, obvious lies.

  51. 51.

    Kropadope

    Meanwhile, I’m watching an excellent economic policy speech by Hillary Clinton in Warren, MI from the other day that gleaned only passing mentions in media outlets. I had trouble even finding the video, since it was so sparsely covered I couldn’t find a search term I needed (the location) until I spotted it in a small local paper.

  54. 54.

    dmsilev

    @retr2327: We’ll get a better idea of that towards the end of this week or maybe beginning of next, when the FEC reports for July get posted. My guess is a lot of money spent on Trump planes and Trump hotels and Trump toilet paper and so forth.

  55. 55.

    Kropadope

    @Punchy: Hey, Rubin is a grown adult woman and can do what she pleases. We can choose to highlight her support or not. Perhaps when speaking to Rmoney supporters from 08?

  63. 63.

    Keith P.

    One day, I need to print these articles out, turn them into powder, and snort a line of them. Wendy Deng is dating PUTIN now?!??!

  64. 64.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    Maybe Paul Manafort can use Trumpys CPAs and lawyers when the IRS audits him on this $12M cash.

  65. 65.

    Matt McIrvin

    @nonynony: The only remaining Trump victory scenarios that are at all plausible (and their plausibility is rapidly dwindling) involve Hillary Clinton’s support collapsing rather than Trump’s increasing. People who would have voted for Clinton vote third-party or stay home, and the election is either low-turnout or the vote is badly split. (It could manifest as Trump getting a larger fraction of the vote, though, if the denominator is shrinking.)

  66. 66.

    Bobby_D

    Man, these acid flashbacks are killer! It took 25 years for them to arrive, but this is more surreal than the original trips. I’m seeing nonsensical plotlines, orange-hued shitgibbons with tiny little paws, Jennie Rubin switch hitting, and KKK members hooting it up for DT.

    If only Hunter S. Thompson was still with us, this stuff was tailor made for him.

  69. 69.

    dedc79

    @Roger Moore:

    It’s more along the lines that “even the odious dumbfucks like Jen Rubin can see how atrocious Trump is”.

    Exactly. And more generally, to the folks upset about Rubin and other cons endorsing Clinton: Guess what? If we’re going to get the kind of landslide we’re all hoping for, it’s going to be by convincing a lot of people we don’t normally agree with that their candidate is so beyond the pale awful that our candidate is preferable.

    You can’t both celebrate the growing Hillary bandwagon while bitching about who is sprinting to climb on. Well I guess you can, but you’d be a hypocrite.

    The fact that Rubin may vote for Clinton doesn’t worry me. What would worry me would be Hillary saying “That Jennifer Rubin, she sure is smart. She has the best ideas and I’d like her to advise me on foreign policy.” And I don’t expect that to happen.

  73. 73.

    shomi

    @nonynony: The guy running Trumps campaign getting money under the table from Russian/Ukraininan political interests is hardly “silly season stuff”.

    Take what Republicans wanted BullGhazi/email gate to turn into and multiply x100.

  75. 75.

    ET

    It is never a good thing when the campaign manager gets to be so newsworthy (particularity for their boss who always likes to be be the biggest gas bag in the room). It is even worse when they are getting newsworthy for things that may get him into legal hot water.

  76. 76.

    randy khan

    @Lyrebird:

    On the flip side, G..gle ads decided to serve up a Trump commercial right on top of this article, funny!

    I hope their campaign spends LOTS of money to show me and others like me ads for their hateful candidate.

    I don’t know for sure how campaign ads work, but most advertisers pay on a click-through basis. If you want to stick it to Trump and can stand it, you should click the ad.

  77. 77.

    hueyplong

    If GOP “establishment” types were to receive death threats from the Trumpenproletariat whenever we see published rumors of a funding cut-off or replacement on the ticket, do you think we’d learn about those threats?

    It’s difficult to resist the temptation to start rooting for intramural Dolchstoßlegende narratives in the GOP. Let them fear their own for an extended period and let’s see how wedded they remain to the idea that talk of “second amendment solutions” means nothing more than a hat tip to a dependable voter turnout demographic. I could see Jen Rubin and Billy Kristol experiencing a little Road-to-Damascus action about their base.

  78. 78.

    ET

    I must admit I have been confused about Manafort’s business in the Ukraine. I would understand if he had been employed for his connects in the US if activities and interests were directly related to the US but most of what I have seen is all confined to Russia/Ukraine. I am not obsessively following this so I definitely could and likely have, missed a lot but still don’t understand why he was involved in some of what he has been involved with.

  82. 82.

    Amir Khalid

    @ET:
    A campaign manager — or, for that matter, any member of campaign staff — should never make the news outside of their function in the campaign. As a high-ranking staffer, Paul Manafort should have been vetted before hiring to ensure he didn’t have connection s that might embarrass the Trump campaign. This being the Trump campaign, of course he wasn’t vetted.

  83. 83.

    Brachiator

    @nonynony:

    There are still a ton of “undecided” voters out there. Or at least people claiming to be undecided when talking to pollsters.

    Political junkies need to understand that a large chunk of people don’t even start thinking about elections until after Labor Day.

    But there were also years when the conventions were held closer to Labor Day.

    This stuff has had time to sink in and be amplified by social media.

    I don’t know if there were previous posts about Trump surrogates being laughed at for telling outright lies about Obama or Hillary. But I see that it is having an effect. Comments on news sites mock Trump, often without any furious reply or denial by a Trump supporter. What’s in the air about Trump is that he is a bit of a tired buffoon, not a master of the universe, and even people who are not following the election closely yet have got to be getting this impression of Trump.

    And this means that Trump is going to have to work harder to counter this new negative impression that he is giving people.

  85. 85.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Iowa Old Lady: Good to see how quickly Clinton’s people jump all over Trump’s missteps and turn them into fabulous ads. This is how you tar and feather your opponent while he’s dithering and spinning out of control (and not spending any money on ads).

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    they might have to face that they, themselves, are motivated by idiot bigotry.

    They are motivated by idiot bigotry. They’re just angry that Trump is not using dog whistles to cover their idiot bigotry like the rest of them mostly do.

  88. 88.

    trollhattan

    @hueyplong:
    Ruben, Krystol et al are pining for the good ole days of the neocons and getting their war back on, conveniently forgetting the many deals with countless devils it took to build their winning coalition. The devil delivered the check and the credit card has been declined.

  89. 89.

    hovercraft

    @nonynony:
    Too convoluted for a movie, but it could be a plausible script for a daytime soap. “Glitz and Glamor in the Golden Tower.” The residents of Trump Tower are probably getting nervous, Manafort is not the only one there with ties to Russia, Trump has bragged about the foreign millionaires and billionaires who have bought property from him. As for Uday, Qusay and Ivanka, they are trying to foist their father who is patently unqualified and dangerous onto the world, for personal gain, (prestige and monetary), so phuck em. I hope he drives their brand into s**t, they are all privileged brats who don’t care for anything but themselves.

  90. 90.

    Kropadope

    @Humdog: It may not even have been tough to find so much as I didn’t know precisely what I was looking for. And it was less than a two day intensive search than 10 active minutes followed by a period of passive awareness. But, in any case, here it is.

    It’s a little choppy/awkward at the beginning, but it was the top listed.

    @dedc79:

    The fact that Rubin may vote for Clinton doesn’t worry me. What would worry me would be Hillary saying “That Jennifer Rubin, she sure is smart. She has the best ideas and I’d like her to advise me on foreign policy.” And I don’t expect that to happen.

    QFLulz

  92. 92.

    Gemina13

    @boatboy_srq:

    I don’t think anyone honest and/or decent would be caught having anything to do with Donnie Boy that didn’t involve an investigation.

  93. 93.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Shell: The Clinton Foundation which has done a lot of good in Africa and around the world? That foundation? It’s great.

  94. 94.

    Amir Khalid

    @Shell:
    FSM forgive me for saying this, but if Nina Hartley put on about 20lbs she might have the perfect look for the part.

  95. 95.

    Gin & Tonic

    @ET:

    but still don’t understand why he was involved in some of what he has been involved with.

    He’s a mercenary. It’s all about the Benjamins. The man has no allegiance to anything or anyone that he can’t monetize.

  97. 97.

    Betty Cracker

    Trump’s campaign appears to be staffed entirely by stupid and/or evil people to an unprecedented degree. I’m trying to think of one Trump operative who wouldn’t make me reach for the pepper spray if I met him or her in a dark alley. Nope. Can’t think of one.

  98. 98.

    catclub

    @retr2327:

    disclosures show that 63 million dollars of the money raised in the last two months has essentially vanished: it’s not been spent on ads, campaign infrastructure, etc.

    So where the hell did it go? What’s the split between Trump and Manafort, I wonder?

    Good question! I am interested also, too.

  99. 99.

    gvg

    I think the Wendi Deng and Putin rumor has been either debunked or has nos substance to back it up and Deng has denied ever meeting him.

    This proves Trump is not experienced nor wise. Frankly I would expect any 12 year old to know to run away from Russian connections if you want to get ahead in American politics. How did Trump just happen to have this guy on his staff? Bernie had another one too though I didn’t hear as much about that…..what an amazing coincidence. I wonder if the Russians were trying ti hedge their bets.

    The other idiots running in the GOP primary showed how few remained of any quality. Come to think of it, it was almost that bad in 2012. Too many obvious fools running, I wonder if they realize how it looks to us?

  102. 102.

    Mudge

    @Amir Khalid: Then again he may have been vetted and still hired; Manafort being a winner and all. Trump’s Russian investors may have “requested” that Trump hire Manafort. Bring on those tax returns.

  106. 106.

    Origuy

    Someone dug up this tweet from Trump back in 2013.

    Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow – if so, will he become my new best friend?

  109. 109.

    Feathers

    British House of Cards, perhaps. I haven’t watched all of the US version. Love Spacey and Wright, but making him a Democrat was a lost opportunity. The British version, filmed while Thatcher was still in office, dealt with the post-Thatcher Tory power struggle. It was timely enough that her resignation came while it was on the air. Imagine the US version, just as shocking on the relationship front, but also accurately depicting fairly recognizable Republican types, with many of them purely on the grift, and others doing nothing but obstructing Obama. Much better show, but would the usual types have adored it so?

    For those just catching up on the Deng-Murdoch-Blair-Putin chronicles, here’s a link to the Vanity Fair dissection of the Murdoch-Deng divorce: Seduced and Abandoned. For the completists, search the Vanity Fair site for “Wendi Deng.” Lots of fun, featuring Ivanka, Shrub, Jerry Hall, Google and MORE!

    ETA: fix of italics and to add Eric Schmidt of Google to the list of supposed Wendi Deng affair havers. How Baud managed to keep the rumors out of the press is beyond me.

  110. 110.

    Fair Economist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    That widget at the bottom of the NYT’s prediction page is getting truly comical;

    I note that in their Dem/competitive/Rep rankings of states they have only 268 electoral votes as “likely Dem” meaning Trump can win without some black swan event. But that requires considering New Mexico as “competitive” when all 6 rankers have it at least leaning hard to Dem. Add it in and it’s 273 “likely Dem” votes.

  111. 111.

    nonynony

    @shomi:

    The guy running Trumps campaign getting money under the table from Russian/Ukraininan political interests is hardly “silly season stuff”.

    It’s news breaking during the “silly season” – the end of July/start of August through Labor day.

    Normally the stuff that breaks in August is meaningless – though normally the stuff that breaks in August is stupid because the opposition research people keep their powder dry until after Labor Day.

    So like I said Trump may be an exception here because everything about Trump is an exception. He’s had multiple actually important news bits drop through August so we’ll see if this ends up being the exceptional case.

    I imagine that there are opposition research people on Clinton’s team who are seeing their work getting discovered by journalists without their help. I wonder how they’re feeling right now – happy to see the stuff get out there or miffed that their own carefully crafted plans for releasing it at the moment when it can do the most damage have to be constantly revised.

  112. 112.

    Kropadope

    @Emma: The reason for Manafort’s dealings with Russia as opposed to the administration. I thought that was the purpose of srv’s failed attempt at hypocrisy porn and I was hoping to contribute an element to your response. Sorry if I misunderstood something or was unclear.

  113. 113.

    glory b

    @gene108: No, making sure that people of color and lgbt people don’t lose legal protections, that Muslims aren’t deported because of their religion (or shot down in the street, wait, people of color too!), that the economy isn’t crashed by a massive tax cut fir the wealthy, that the world doesn’t end in a nuclear winter, that white supremacists and neo Nazis don’t gain a foothold, etc., etc., is more important.

    I’d like to hope our “betters” think this too.

    This is snark, right?

  114. 114.

    Joyce H

    @gvg:

    I think the Wendi Deng and Putin rumor has been either debunked or has nos substance to back it up and Deng has denied ever meeting him.

    That may be, but it’s a real rumor. By that I mean it’s not something from an internet fever swamp, it was actually reported in actual gossip columns back in the spring. That being the case, any COMPETENT campaign ought to realize that the candidate’s DAUGHTER should postpone vacationing with the subject of the gossip until after the election. Honestly, the sheer magnitude of the incompetence going on here – I’m so gobsmacked, I’m walking around in a perpetual state of gobsmackedness.

  116. 116.

    Mike E

    I just watched my local teevee news team report that an op/ed in today’s WSJ essential called for the GOP to drop all support for Trump as their candidate. Courage

  117. 117.

    ET

    @Gin & Tonic: That was pretty much what I thought but one would have thought any Republican of a certain age would stay away from getting in bed with pro-Moscow politics (or Moscow politics). I mean the GOP is still fighting the Cold War in some respects (look at their reaction to re-establishing ties with Cuba).

  119. 119.

    Ian

    @srv:

    Any country that wants to work with the U.S. to defeat “radical Islamic terrorism” will be a U.S. ally, he is expected to say.

    Like Russia,Iran, and China?

  120. 120.

    Brachiator

    @nonynony:

    I imagine that there are opposition research people on Clinton’s team who are seeing their work getting discovered by journalists without their help. I wonder how they’re feeling right now – happy to see the stuff get out there or miffed that their own carefully crafted plans for releasing it at the moment when it can do the most damage have to be constantly revised.

    I would hope that these people realize that this is not a typical campaign season. The old news do not apply. It’s funny that Trump benefited from breaking the rules during the primary, but now he is sinking his own ship because he cannot shift or adjust.

    Who knows what the situation will be like in 3 or 4 weeks, but for now, all that the Clinton team need to do is to gently help Trump demolish himself.

  121. 121.

    jl

    @Ian: Whatever countries, OK? There are many, many countries. I’m having some top people look into the countries. What is important is doing great, winner not loser, deals with those countries on the ISIS thing.

  122. 122.

    Applejinx

    @Jeffro:

    I don’t even know how to ‘flip’ this as an example to show RW folks how off-base they are for continuing to support Trump…”If Huma Abedin had tweeted a story that slammed John Podesta for his ties to China, and China had been hacking the RNC, and there was evidence that Clinton owed a lot of money to Chinese interests (not to mention was a serial, blatant liar) while Podesta was being paid from a Chinese slush fund, and if Clinton was already demonstrably behind in the Electoral College, with major newspapers calling for her to step off the ticket and major pundits openly deriding her sanity…”

    Don’t. They’ll just start repeating that, and the next thing you know the news will be gravely debating whether it’s worse than Trump.

    Post-truth, man. And I have no idea how we get away from this.

  124. 124.

    Aleta

    Here’s the plot line for Scandal:
    Ivanka and Jared hired Manafort to push out Lewandowski and get Trump elected, based on Manafort’s assurances that after a (brief but lucrative) dictatorship Trump will be ousted and forced to flee the county like Paul’s previous clients. It is still before the election, and Trump signs control of his businesses over to all the children, but after Eric survives an assassination attempt, he suspects Ivanka and Jared and goes to Olivia Pope. Instead of coming clean to her about his suspicions, he begins leaking the Manafort stories to different press outlets. Somehow Marla Gibbs and then Maya Lewis get involved, much to everyone’s surprise, and by the end Olivia has ensured that the children will neither be seen nor heard from ever again. At the tail end of the episode, Huck comes across a low res surveillance photo of four people of about the same age and height shoveling watery elephant poop at a heavily guarded elephant rehab refuge, but since he is not in the loop, he does not know what to make of it.

  125. 125.

    Brachiator

    @Mike E:

    I just watched my local teevee news team report that an op/ed in today’s WSJ essential called for the GOP to drop all support for Trump as their candidate.

    Last week, a Republican strategist appearing on a Los Angeles area talk radio show suggested that GOP candidates running for office distance themselves from Trump if his poll numbers still looked bad after the Olympics.

    It looks as though Rupert Murdoch is using the WSJ to accelerate the abandonment.

    Who knew that Trump Tower was really the Titanic. “Hey, that iceberg is huge.”

  129. 129.

    Gelfling 545

    @Amir Khalid: Just what would it take to actually embarrass the Trump campaign? I don’t believe they are capable of that emotion. They seem perfectly fine with behavior that would cause most humans to perish of shame. I feel reasoably sure t hat this just looks like a smart business deal to Trump.

  130. 130.

    catclub

    @Origuy: Trump was talking up Putin in 2008.
    Trump was buying full page ads in the 1980’s saying the US is doomed by bad trade deals.
    He has always been the way he is, but has suddenly struck gold in his match-up this year with the insane right zeitgeist.

  131. 131.

    Betty Cracker

    @Amir Khalid: What a repulsive piece of crap Paladino is. The fact that Trump would appoint such a person to a prominent role in his campaign tells us all we need to know about Trump, even if by some miracle he’d been stricken with lockjaw back in June.

  132. 132.

    Enhanced Voting Techinques

    “Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump vacations with Wendi Deng Murdoch, who just happens to be Putin’s girlfriend ”

    a) I can’t even imagine Reagan’s getting away with this out of side of some “let’s be friends and not nuke each other” photo opp.

    b) Is this the woman Ivanka was messing with in those photos? Are the Trump’s literally in bed with the Russians?

  133. 133.

    Jeffro

    @Applejinx:

    I have no idea how we get away from this.

    True. Something like a 347-191 EV blowout would help (this is the NYT widget’s most likely scenario at this point; it’s also what I get when I use the interactive map at 270towin dot com…that’s a LOT of unskewing to try and pull off with a straight face. But hey, post-truth, they could try I guess.

  134. 134.

    Feathers

    @Brachiator: That’s the other crazy thing about the Ivanka vacation. Sure, it’s a Putin, Putin, Putin news cycle, but what about Murdoch? That was a seriously nasty divorce. Trump is in huge trouble. Stirring up a personal beef with the Murdochs (pere et fils) via his daughter’s friendship with the ex-wife is a truly reckless thing to be doing. Ivanka is supposed to be the sane one, so if she doesn’t see this as harmful to her father, she loses much respect. I still do see her as picking up her father’s political mantle at some point in the future.

  137. 137.

    p.a.

    So what’s the consensus? MSM tucks tail and sticks to both-siderist hooey and the Trussia stuff is buried? Or does the sweet smell of real scandal get ’em up on their hind legs for some real reporting (assuming any left are capable)?

    Crimea river!

  139. 139.

    daves09

    @Feathers: @Joyce H: They’ll never get the mud off that mantle. Ivanka has been ultra rich ultra privileged her entire life. Unless someone writes the script for her she can’t imagine what real life is like.
    So nah, she may try, but will anyone buy?

  140. 140.

    Amir Khalid

    @Feathers:
    Ivanka might well be the sane Trump, if there is such a person; but remember that she’s as inexperienced in politics as anyone else in her family.

  141. 141.

    Ian

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    I agree completely. I think the United States would benefit from better ties to all three countries. Our conservative troll-brethren normally freak out over those ‘ebil furners’.

  142. 142.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @liberal: They’re both disgusting theocracies, but SA has Mecca, and thus more ability to impose their own medieval view of the universe on Islam than Iran has.

  145. 145.

    Gin & Tonic

    This response from Manafort is great: “The chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign says he never received a single off-the-books cash payment for political work in Ukraine.”

    The NYT doesn’t say he did. So he’s deflecting. And, of course, no word on his joint ventures with Deripaska or Akhmetov.

  146. 146.

    sukabi

    @Amir Khalid: drumpf and Manafort go back a looooong way, have done (shady) business together, he’s someone drumpf trusts and that’s all the vetting you need.

    It NEVER occurred to drumpf that bringing Manafort in was a bad idea, because to drumpf how they do “business” is how everybody does business.

  148. 148.

    Mike in NC

    Too bad Joe Pesci retired from making movies. He’d be pretty good as The Donald starring in “Badfellas”.

  150. 150.

    Amir Khalid

    @sukabi:
    You’re supposed to vet people no matter how well you think you know them. As Fox Mulder once said, “Trust no one.”

  152. 152.

    Joyce H

    @Amir Khalid:

    Ivanka might well be the sane Trump, if there is such a person; but remember that she’s as inexperienced in politics as anyone else in her family.

    Well, there’s inexperienced and then there’s oblivious. This vaca story wasn’t broken by the large and ruthless horde of Dubrovnik paparazzi, but by Ivanka posting a pic to her Instagram account. I know better than that, and I’ve never so much as run for a seat on the Tri-County Soil And Water Conservation Board.

    CNBC has the vacation story, btw, so I imagine it’s going to sidebar the Manafort Ukraine stuff.

  154. 154.

    Enhanced Voting Techinques

    @p.a.:

    So what’s the consensus? MSM tucks tail and sticks to both-siderist hooey and the Trussia stuff is buried? Or does the sweet smell of real scandal get ’em up on their hind legs for some real reporting (assuming any left are capable)?

    I think they will report just ’cause it’s the Trump circus and that’s good for ratings. What the real question is will it get threw to the Right in their post truth era?

  155. 155.

    sukabi

    @Amir Khalid: well I know that and you know that, but apparently the greatest, yuuuugest, richest tiny handed cheeto doesn’t need to vet anyone.

  156. 156.

    Peter

    @retr2327: I’m willing to bet that it never existed, the disclosures were doctored, and the upcoming FEC filing is going to be really embarrassing for the Trump camp.

  157. 157.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jeffro: My current best guess, just based on the PEC model, is 341-197: Hillary loses Iowa, but wins back North Carolina, otherwise it’s a repeat of Obama 2012.

  159. 159.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

    No, No, you misunderstand the question. WHY would anyone pay Paul Manafort $12,000,000 for something so amorphous we can’t even tell if there was something he was paid for.

    They didn’t buy anything from him, he doesn’t have anything (of value) to sell. So that money must have been given to Manafort to be passed on to someone with something worth paying for. He may have been paid for being a bagman.

    How big a bag of money was involved if the bagman was paid $12,000,000??? Wow, that’s a big bag of money, if he got 10%…

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