Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I was promised a recession.

No one could have predicted…

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

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

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Let’s finish the job.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Second rate reporter says what?

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

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

Come on, man.

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

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Russiagate Open Thread: Forget the Sex Worker — Who Was Selling Trump’s “Access”?

Russiagate Open Thread: Forget the Sex Worker — Who Was Selling Trump’s “Access”?

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Cash Rules EveryONE Around Him… dolla-dolla, y’all, get th’ money:

For Elliott Broidy, Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign represented an unparalleled political and business opportunity.

An investor and defense contractor, Mr. Broidy became a top fund-raiser for Mr. Trump’s campaign when most elite Republican donors were keeping their distance, and Mr. Trump in turn overlooked the lingering whiff of scandal from Mr. Broidy’s 2009 guilty plea in a pension fund bribery case.

After Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Broidy quickly capitalized, marketing his Trump connections to politicians and governments around the world, including some with unsavory records, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Broidy suggested to clients and prospective customers of his Virginia-based defense contracting company, Circinus, that he could broker meetings with Mr. Trump, his administration and congressional allies.

Mr. Broidy’s ability to leverage his political connections to boost his business illuminates how Mr. Trump’s unorthodox approach to governing has spawned a new breed of access peddling in the swamp he vowed to drain.

Mr. Broidy offered tickets to V.I.P. inauguration events, including a candlelight dinner attended by Mr. Trump, to a Congolese strongman accused of funding a lavish lifestyle with public resources. He helped arrange a meeting with Republican senators and offered a trip to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private Florida resort, for an Angolan politician. And he arranged an invitation to a party at Mr. Trump’s Washington hotel for a Romanian parliamentarian facing corruption charges, who posted a photograph with the president on Facebook…

As with so many other political conventions, Mr. Trump has upended the traditional system of access to the president, among the most prized chits in Washington. That is partly because of lax vetting that has allowed largely unfettered access to Mr. Trump and his White House by loyalists, friends and hangers-on with their own policy agendas or business interests.

But it is also because few of Washington’s established lobbyists have close connections to the president. In their place, a new class of insider has emerged, able to lobby the president directly on behalf of clients or business partners, an uncommon opportunity in prior administrations, when lobbyists focused on winning support from lawmakers or regulators…

So, expect a lot of words to be spewed tomorrow about how “our” poor, naive businessman-president allowed himself to be taken advantage of by sweet-talking Beltway lobbyists. Because this will presumably sell better to Trump’s in-every-sense-Base than the alternate understanding that Donny Dollhands has never not been for sale to the highest bidder, no minimum reserve.

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  3. 3.

    Raoul

    After 8 years of Obama running a remarkably clean ship, it’s almost as if a significant part of Washington forgot that venal, corrupt politics is the norm. Here. Abroad. Everywhere.

  9. 9.

    Yutsano

    @efgoldman: Ooh…I love that! Will there be many pictures forthcoming?

    Speaking of conventions, my younger nephew is extremely popular at these things. True he is quite social and (mostly) well-behaved in public. But putting someone named Jean-Luc in front of a bunch of sci-fi nerds? He’s like candy.

  11. 11.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @efgoldman:

    My daughter, who is a bit gender-fluid, cosplays a lot (choosing male characters half the time). She has a lot of fun and is learning some useful skills.

    I think it all started with Miyazaki.

  12. 12.

    Mary G

    @Raoul:

    After 8 years of Obama running a remarkably clean ship, it’s almost as if a significant part of Washington Republicans forgot that venal, corrupt politics is the norm. Here. Abroad. Everywhere.

    Fixt it for ya.

  14. 14.

    PJ

    @Mary G: @Raoul: You’re kidding, right? Venality and corruption have been the name of the game for Republicans at least since Reagan started selling weapons to the Iranians, and the level of chutzpah has only increased with each administration.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: Here you go:

  21. 21.

    Bruuuuce

    I happened to be tangent to a great story today, and wanted the Jackals to hear it.

    An artist, TL Duryea, was so inspired by Naomi Wadler’s speech at the March for Our Lives in Washington that she painted her (link to FB post).

    My better half knows Ms Duryea, and also knew (because I’d told her) that Naomi is the niece of a friend of mine. When M saw the painting finished today, we were in the car on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, on our way home from a friend’s funeral. She planned to link the painting for my friend when we got home, and in a private conversation, was told that the artist wanted to offer the painting to Naomi and family.

    When we got home, she got on the laptop to do that, and voila! a heretofore-unknown OTHER connection had not only posted the painting for my friend, but obtained and passed on the offer. As of now, I don’t have any source as to whether the family has accepted the offer of the original; I hope they accept, as it’s quite the work in my not-humble opinion.

    This is a case where, if you read the FB thread, the comments are not toxic, as they ought not to be, for this awesome young lady and for the art she inspired.

  24. 24.

    Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)

    @Omnes Omnibus: It’s gotten much better with the departure of the Allen/VandeHei team. It still features the odd Villager toolishness, but Shafer & Lowry are really the only consistently bad columnists Politico regularly publishes.
    @Adam L Silverman: The original comment was said more in despair than disbelief. Though it makes sense – the actual adult in the room generally won’t seek out a reputation as the “adult in the room” (in point of fact I’d assumed he’d died/resigned/was on permanent vacation without telling anybody).

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    @Bruuuuce:

    One of the ways I know I’ve been in Hollywood for a while is that I saw the phrase “passed on the offer” and assumed that meant that the other party had turned down (passed on) the painting on behalf of the family. Took me a couple of readings to figure it out. ?

    It is a lovely painting, though. I hope the family is able to accept it.

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: I think a request for courses of action for strikes in eastern Gouta would be legitimate requests regardless of who was president right now given where we have troops in contact in Syria. The others are, in my professional estimation, not something that need to be made now. With one caveat: if the purpose is to demonstrate to the President that there are no good outcomes for any military courses of action we might take in regard to the DPRK or Iran.

  32. 32.

    Bruuuuce

    @Mnemosyne: When and if I hear something, I’ll pass along the news. Until then, I’m still in recovery mode from the weekend (awesome Saturday, bummer Sunday) and trying not to get all the eejits get me down.

  35. 35.

    Mike J

    @Raoul:

    venal, corrupt politics is the norm. Here. Abroad. Everywhere.

    Bullshit. I know plenty of politicians and none of them are crooked. Cynicism is a tool to suppress votes.

  39. 39.

    Brachiator

    Because this will presumably sell better to Trump’s in-every-sense-Base than the alternate understanding that Donny Dollhands has never not been for sale to the highest bidder, no minimum reserve.

    Stormy Daniels is a p0rn star. Donald Trump is a whore.

  41. 41.

    Mike J

    Daniel Kibblesmith ☃️ @kibblesmith 1d
    Half of all guns are owned by 3% of Americans. That’s roughly 9.75 million people.

    The AMC Theaters rewards program has 10 million members.

    Your kids’ lives are subsidizing a doomsday cult smaller than the group who gets popcorn upgrades at Black Panther.

  42. 42.

    Kelly

    @efgoldman: I explained to my 4 year old granddaughter this afternoon that her street was white with flower petals not snow. She found that even more wondrous and exciting.

  45. 45.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: From all reports he had dinner at Mar a Lago with Cohen last night. By the time he gets back to DC from Florida he should be fully cooked.

  46. 46.

    Brachiator

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Avenatti isn’t playing to the President’s base, he’s trying to bait and trap the President and Michael Cohen.

    He certainly appears to be ready to go up against Trump. And he may pack a hell of a punch. Liked this piece supposedly from a politico story.

    Avenatti: “I would prefer to litigate against high-quality lawyers as opposed to low-quality lawyers.” Asked if Michael Cohen is a low-quality lawyer, he fell silent. 10 seconds ticked by. 15. “I’m thinking,” Avenatti said. Then, finally: “No comment.”

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    Looks like they still don’t have the targeting software on the Patriots dialed in correctly. You’d think after almost 20 years they could debug those things:

  55. 55.

    Bruuuuce

    @Adam L Silverman: It took a moment, until I scrolled far enough down, to realize those were Patriot missiles and not the football team (which I thought might have been getting pushback from the ammosexual crowd for having loaned their jet to the March for Our Lives organizers’ trip to Washington). Sad that the missiles are still unreliable

  56. 56.

    Gelfling 545

    @Amir Khalid: He’s always claiming to be the first to do something others have done routinely & without comment. Here’s a real first for him: first president to be better rested on leaving office than on beginning it.

  57. 57.

    Raoul

    @PJ: I’m not kidding about the absurdly short memories, no.
    Dubya has been resuscitated to an alarming degree, despite his many scandals and tons of incompetence.

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Bruuuuce: 1 dead, 2 injured. In Iraq they’d lock on to our fighter jets because their targeting software couldn’t discriminate between the profiles on the radar returns. They supposedly fixed that in 2005 or 2006. But no matter what anyone says with these things, the physics are still about trying to hit a bullet with a bullet. My understanding is that Israel’s Iron Dome and Jericho batteries only really work when they can fix on the target from the side, not head on.

  61. 61.

    Bruuuuce

    @Adam L Silverman:

    trying to hit a bullet with a bullet

    I’m only an educated layman, but ISTM that it’s easier to make their bullet hit our cloud of shrapnel or other such. Has that approach been tried and found wanting (too little contact, too hard to sustain the cloud or time its creation, too hard to place well, too much damage when it inevitably falls)?

  62. 62.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    IANAL, but it does seem like Avanetti is trying to get Cohen to make a stupid move of some kind. Watching him on “60 Minutes,” he seemed kind of pissed that Cohen and Trump are trying to ruin Daniels over a $130,000 payout.

    Also, as a layperson, I was unaware that having an NDA could compel someone to actively lie about what they knew rather than just refusing to comment, but that seems to be part of Daniels’ claim about the advice she got from her previous lawyers.

  63. 63.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Bruuuuce: You’re asking the wrong guy. I know very little about the actual technical details of how this stuff should work. I just pay attention to the reports about the failures. I pay attention to that because I think far too much stock is placed into these systems as they currently work, and will work for the foreseeable future. This creates a false sense of security, which can lead to bad decision making under the false assumption that we have tech that works and will protect us from a missile attack.

    If Cheryl’s about you may want to ask her. She’s likely to know much more about this than I do.

  64. 64.

    Bruuuuce

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks. If I get a chance (after doing some actual research), I may.

    Re the false sense of security and bad decision making, GIGO. Except for the yutz at the top, who apparently thinks we have Wonder Woman tech for our “invisible” fighters.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: We now know that her previous lawyers had a previous connection to Cohen. Specifically the one who came to her with the pitch to take the money not to talk is the same guy that brought the National Enquirer pitch to talk to MacDougal. Basically they were running a scam where the lawyer supposedly working for Daniels and MacDougal was really working with Cohen.
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/stormymat-or-why-did-stormy-and-2nd-trump-girlfriend-have-ndas-negotiated-by-the-same-lawyer

    3. Note that Daniels’ then lawyer apparently had much more lucrative offers to tell her story but directed her toward the deal with Michael Cohen. Give that Karen McDougal and Daniels both ended up with the same lawyer, there’s now lots of evidence suggesting that the lawyer was actually in cahoots with Cohen. That’s a big no no in terms of holding on to your license to practice law.

  69. 69.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: It’s beyond that. Her original lawyer, who was, apparently, also MacDougal’s original lawyer, really wasn’t either one’s lawyer. Rather he was working for and with Cohen.

  71. 71.

    jl

    @efgoldman: Shouldn’t ‘he’ be ‘they’?

    It’s in cases like this that I am that IANAL. I don’t understand why this supposed NDA agreement is taken seriously by anybody. How can it stand up a second in court? Daniels had already talked about the affair in an interview back in 2010 or 2011, right? So, after talking, she’s supposed to deny it? Or ust stand mute? The thing was corrupt plot by two corrupt lawyers who were working together behind her back. And the dope Cohen violated it himself, for no apparent reason I can see, other than that he is a stupid thug who does things like that for no reason.

    Why did the idiot Trump want to do the damned thing in the first place? He’d already survived the tape that had him bragging about sexual assault, didn’t he? Maybe not, I don’t have time to go look it up.

    but just going on those three issues I mentioned, why is Daniel’s lawyer even going through the motions of taking it seriously as a legitimate legal document?

  72. 72.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: @jl: Not yet. Avenatti is making it clear that he expects sanctions against these guys. Both from their state bar associations and criminal as well.

  73. 73.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Bruuuuce:

    TL Duryea does beautiful portraiture. Thanks for the link. Was pleased to see, when I clicked on her page, that I also have a mutual friend with her. Say what you will about Facebook, these kinds of connections are what it does best.

  80. 80.

    Bennett

    Why does the New York Times say trump is “unconventional” when the correct descriptor is “corrupt”?

  82. 82.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Bennett:
    Because the NYT is staffed with idiots, fellow travelers, and clueless Villagers. That’s why.

  86. 86.

    Amir Khalid

    @Yutsano:
    There’s still time for Trump to have that stroke. He can get doctors like Bornstein and Jackson to give him a bullshit clean bill of health, but he can’t get Mother Nature to spare him the consequences of a lifetime of bad habits.

  87. 87.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Yutsano:
    I was worried he wasn’t going to age like the presidency normally causes someone to since he spends so much time screwing around. Between his golf trips to Mar-a-go-fuck-yourself and “Executive Time” when he is at the White House (which he called a dump by the way) as well as his obsession with his self-image, I thought he would stay “fresher” than he looks now.

  89. 89.

    NotMax

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    In some cases it comes on suddenly. As Charles Coburn said to his playboy-about-town son David Niven in the movie Bachelor Mother, “I was like that at your age. Then one day I woke up and looked like this.”

    :)

  91. 91.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Amir Khalid:
    I was being facetious. I know the guy was appointed by Bush, but why would he attempt to mislead the public? The best (as in the most charitable) interpretation would be to protect the President and project a strong image to the rest of the world. IOW, the medical report of the POTUS as presented to the press, has always been kabuki theatre bs.

  92. 92.

    Gvg

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: my opinion is Trump has so much executive time because he doesn’t keep his word. There is no point in making a deal with him. Even being the last man to talk to him doesn’t really work because he also doesn’t actually know how things work nor does his staff and he can’t do what he promised. He is missing a lot of power through ignorance.
    In addition our system is meant to and does only work with some cooperation. We aren’t a dictatorship and other people have power too although they have to cooperate more, Congress, the military, the courts etc. he isn’t getting anywhere on his wall because even the republicans don’t want it. I think that other countries have found even the flattery of him doesn’t get results so they are going to Congress instead. trump is being ignored. He is lazy and old but normally every one would be finding ways to see the President because they wanted to so bad. It was that way at first with Trump, but now they have stopped because the results are useless.

  94. 94.

    CarolDuhart2

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Guy’s in his fifties, needs to make it to retirement age. Being fired for unauthorized disclosure means he falls short, and ends up working at Inner City General for the last years of his working career with no pension.

    Besides, there can be two files: the first one the physician works off of, and the second report for public disclosure. Maybe it’s always been that way-JFK and LBJ weren’t the picture of health either. It’s just that Obama was so open and honest and frankly-healthy-so there was no reason not to disclose.

  98. 98.

    Matt McIrvin

    …I think when Mattis gets fired or quits–and I think that is coming soon–that’s when we really start to slide into mass catastrophe. He’s gonna get replaced by some Bush administration type like Paul Wolfowitz or Doug Feith. Or by, say, Sean Hannity.

  99. 99.

    J R in WV

    @Bennett:

    Because ownership and editorial control of the NYT content is evidently compelled to support right-wing politics no matter how stupid the RWNJ in question is.

    Hence we get collusion instead of criminal conspiracy, etc, etc.

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