Last night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow connected the dots between President Trump and the members of what Sen. Maxine Waters referred to on Feb. 15 as a “Kremlin clan.”
Like Waters, most Americans have been wondering how this seeming odd “clan” of associates with little government experience came to surround Trump, which includes former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn; Exxon-Mobil CEO and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson; former Trump campaign strategist Paul Manafort; Manafort’s lobbying firm partner Roger Stone; billionaire, former vice chairman of Bank of Cyprus and newly confirmed Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. All, it turns out, have a long history with Russian oligarchs, oil industry, banking or political operatives … and Putin’s interests in Trump is becoming even more clear.
The first report is 21:44 minutes long, but it makes clear some very difficult issues that not only would make your head spin but it will make you sick to your stomach and outraged. The most galling is that the new commerce secretary Wilbur Ross is at the nexus between Trump and a Russian oligarch trying to avoid paying out a $4.5 billion divorce settlement. The report even includes the 35-page dossier about Trump’s 2013 trip to Russia and blackmail concerns.
Above all, the remaining video clips raise further questions about how this “Kremlin clan” got to be part of Trump’s inner circle. Trump has insisted he had never met Manafort, for example, until he became his campaign adviser. It’s interesting to note how many of this inner circle he claims he had never met before …. dementia? A lie? A cover-up?
Just how “business is done?”