FTR #932 The Making of Donald Trump (Top Banana Republic), Part 1

Ear­li­er in 2016, award-win­ning jour­nal­ist David Cay John­ston pub­lished a very well-writ­ten and researched, yet rel­a­tive­ly short and com­pact biog­ra­phy of Don­ald Trump–The Mak­ing of Don­ald Trump. For some weeks, we will be read­ing most of the book into the record, to pro­vide peo­ple with a mea­sure against which to eval­u­ate not just “The Don­ald,” as his first wife Ivana called him, but our soci­ety, its insti­tu­tions and its cit­i­zens. We can’t rec­om­mend strong­ly enough that lis­ten­ers buy this book, read it and use what­ev­er means avail­able to spread the word about it.

This first install­ment of the series com­mences with the read­ing of a poem by Robin­son Jef­fers, “Be Angry at the Sun,” which encom­pass­es Mr. Emory’s feel­ings about the recent elec­tion, as well as the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions that have pre­cip­i­tat­ed this event–one that fig­ures to be dev­as­tat­ing in its man­i­fes­ta­tions.

Fol­low­ing pre­sen­ta­tion of the Jef­fers poem, we exam­ine an arti­cle that embod­ies the enor­mous and fun­da­men­tal flaw in our polit­i­cal and civic process: a poll short­ly before the elec­tion found that most of the prospec­tive vot­ers polled felt that Trump was more hon­est and trust­wor­thy than Hillary Clin­ton. As our read­ing of John­ston’s excel­lent book unfolds, the grotesque, spec­tac­u­lar­ly fal­la­cious char­ac­ter of this per­cep­tion will become uncom­fort­ably clear. “Don­ald Trump is cur­rent­ly track­ing as the more hon­est of the two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in a poll, although fact-check­ing of his state­ments dur­ing the cam­paign have shown he’s lied sev­er­al times. The lat­est ABC News/Washington Post track­ing poll reports that 46 per­cent of like­ly vot­ers believe he is the more hon­est and trust­wor­thy can­di­date, while 38 per­cent believed it was Hillary Clin­ton. This marks the biggest gap between the two can­di­dates in five ABC News/Washington Post polls that asked the ques­tion, begin­ning in May.”

We begin by not­ing that Trump’s father net­worked with an orga­nized crime fig­ure named Willie Tomasel­lo, antic­i­pat­ing Trump’s own use of orga­nized crime fig­ures to fur­ther his com­mer­cial under­tak­ings. And Hillary Clin­ton is viewed as less hon­est than Trump!

Next, we note Trump’s ram­bling, igno­rant and inar­tic­u­late response to a ques­tion from con­ser­v­a­tive talk show host Hugh Hewitt about which ele­ment of the nuclear tri­ad he felt was most impor­tant. (The nuclear tri­ad con­sists of the three vehi­cles for deliv­er­ing nuclear weapons: bomb­ing air­craft, seaborne nuclear missiles–primarily sub­ma­rine-launched weapons–and land-based nuclear mis­siles.) Trump clear­ly had no idea what the nuclear tri­ad was, and could­n’t come close to doing jus­tice to the top­ic. “. . . . Well, first of all, I think we need some­body absolute­ly that we can trust. . . the pow­er is so mas­sive that we can’t just leave areas that fifty years ago or sev­en­ty-five years ago we would­n’t care [about]. It was hand-to-hand com­bat. . . I think–I think, for me, nuclear is just the pow­er; the dev­as­ta­tion is very impor­tant to me. . . . I think one of the most impor­tant things that we have to wor­ry about is nuclear gen­er­al­ly speak­ing. . . . The pow­er of nuclear, the pow­er of the weapons that we have today–and that is, by the way, the deal with Iran–the con­cept of it is so impor­tant that you have to make a good deal and what they should have done is that they should have dou­bled up and tripled up the sanc­tions. . . . ”

thinkbign­kick­ass­We then note Trump’s fun­da­men­tal igno­rance of busi­ness the­o­ry, his pre­tens­es to the con­trary notwith­stand­ing. ” ‘Are you famil­iar with the con­cept of net present val­ue?’ lawyer Andrew Ceres­ney asked. [This is a basic tenet of busi­ness, as famil­iar to grad­u­ate stu­dents of busi­ness as 2 + 2, as John­son says] ‘The con­cept of net present val­ue to me,’ Trump replied, ‘would be the val­ue of the land cur­rent­ly after debt. Well, to me, the word ‘net’ is an inter­est­ing word. It’s really–the word ‘val­ue’ is the impor­tant word. If you have an asset that you can do oth­er things with but you choose to do them–I haven’t cho­sen to do that. . . .”

Enter­ing into the meat of John­ston’s for­mi­da­ble text, the broad­cast high­lights a ram­bling, vul­gar, dis­or­ga­nized moti­va­tion­al talk he gave in Col­orado, in the com­pa­ny of a “con­vict­ed felon and swindler” named Felix Sater. In addi­tion to the inad­e­quate nature of the pre­sen­ta­tion itself, the val­ues Trump expressed are not to be over­looked.

Trump under­scored how much he dis­re­spect­ed “losers” and his belief in vengeance. Of pri­ma­ry sig­nif­i­cance in this con­text is his anec­dote about a for­mer employ­ee who was fired because she would­n’t do some­thing she felt was uneth­i­cal.

Attack­ing actress/comedian Rosie O’Don­nell, he high­light­ed his dis­taste for her phys­i­cal appear­ance in crude, vul­gar and fun­da­men­tal­ly ado­les­cent lan­guage.

Author John­ston notes that Trump stressed dur­ing his cam­paign that he was a devout Chris­t­ian, and yet his belief in “vengeance uber alles” is in fun­da­men­tal con­flict with Bib­li­cal teach­ing.

In the next chap­ter of the book, David Cay John­ston illus­trates how Trump prac­tices what he preach­es. When his nephew Fred Trump III filed suit after hav­ing been all but exclud­ed from Fred Jr.‘s will, Don­ald Trump saw to it that Fred’s son William, who had been borne with seri­ous health prob­lems, was pre­vent­ed from obtain­ing bad­ly need­ed med­ical care under the fam­i­ly med­ical pro­gram.

This placed young William’s life in jeop­ardy.

In the last excerpt read into the record in this broad­cast, David Cay John­ston relates the gen­e­sis of Trump’s rela­tion­ship with Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn. Hav­ing been sued by the Jus­tice Depart­ment because of his dis­crim­i­na­tion against peo­ple of col­or when rent­ing apart­ments in his prop­er­ties, Trump turned to Cohn. It was the begin­ning of a long rela­tion­ship between the long-time red-baiter and orga­nized crime apol­o­gist and “The Don­ald.” Trump and Cohn lost the case.

FTR #930 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 9: Alfa Males, Part 3 (German Ostpolitik, Part 3)

With the (jus­ti­fi­able) out­rage swirling around FBI direc­tor (and Mitt Rom­ney backer) James Comey’s pub­lic dis­cus­sion of the dis­cov­ery of more of Hillary Clin­ton’s e‑mails hav­ing been dis­cov­ered, anoth­er elec­tion-relat­ed inves­ti­ga­tion has gone large­ly unex­am­ined. Indeed, the impor­tance of the inves­ti­ga­tion has been down­played.

Com­put­er experts dis­cov­ered a link between a serv­er reg­is­tered to the Trump orga­ni­za­tion and two servers reg­is­tered to the Alfa Bank in Moscow, a bank that is part of the Alfa con­glom­er­ate dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 530 and 573.

In the Foer piece, and in attempt­ed dis­cred­it­ing arti­cles of same, it is appar­ent that the inves­ti­ga­tors do not under­stand the nature of the enti­ty they are inves­ti­gat­ing. The jour­nal­is­tic “spin” put on Alfa in the cov­er­age is “Russia/Putin/Kremlin” new Cold War con­text. Alfa is very, very dif­fer­ent.

In FTR #‘s 530, 573 we examnined the nature of Alfa’s his­to­ry, oper­a­tions and insti­tu­tion­al and eco­nom­ic foun­da­tions. It is any­thing BUT “Kremlin/Putin/Russia.”

It appears to be Under­ground Reich, all the way, with evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning in the direc­tion of: the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal; the Iraq­gate scan­dal; the oil-for-food scam vis a vis Iraq; malfeasanace by a coterie of GOP big­wigs includ­ing Dick Cheney and oth­ers close to George W. Bush, and Haley Bar­bour; mon­ey-laun­der­ing by pow­er­ful inter­na­tion­al drug syn­di­cates; Chechen war­lords and drug-traf­fick­ing syn­di­cates; the Roy­al fam­i­ly of Liecht­en­stein; the Bank al-Taqwa (which helped finance al-Qae­da); the Marc Rich oper­a­tions; East­ern Euro­pean and Russ­ian asso­ciates of Wolf­gang Bohringer, one of Mohamed Atta’s close asso­ciates in South Flori­da; and the Carl Duis­berg Fel­low­ship, which brought Mohamed Atta to Ger­many from Egypt and may have helped him into the U.S.

The pro­gram high­lights major aspects of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Alfa/Trump link:

The Trump/Alfa link was not a mal­ware attack, as some of the com­put­er sci­en­tists ini­tial­ly thought: ” . . . . The researchers quick­ly dis­missed their ini­tial fear that the logs rep­re­sent­ed a mal­ware attack. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion wasn’t the work of bots. The irreg­u­lar pat­tern of serv­er lookups actu­al­ly resem­bled the pat­tern of human conversation—conversations that began dur­ing office hours in New York and con­tin­ued dur­ing office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sus­tained rela­tion­ship between a serv­er reg­is­tered to the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion and two servers reg­is­tered to an enti­ty called Alfa Bank. . . .”

The set-up was high­ly unusu­al: ” . . . . The researchers had ini­tial­ly stum­bled in their diag­no­sis because of the odd con­fig­u­ra­tion of Trump’s serv­er. ‘I’ve nev­er seen a serv­er set up like that,’ says Christo­pher Davis, who runs the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firm HYAS InfoS­ec Inc. and won a FBI Direc­tor Award for Excel­lence for his work track­ing down the authors of one of the world’s nas­ti­est bot­net attacks. ‘It looked weird, and it didn’t pass the sniff test.’ The serv­er was first reg­is­tered to Trump’s busi­ness in 2009 and was set up to run con­sumer mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. It had a his­to­ry of send­ing mass emails on behalf of Trump-brand­ed prop­er­ties and prod­ucts. Researchers were ulti­mate­ly con­vinced that the serv­er indeed belonged to Trump. (Click here to see the server’s reg­is­tra­tion record.) But now this capa­cious serv­er han­dled a strange­ly small load of traf­fic, such a small load that it would be hard for a com­pa­ny to jus­ti­fy the expense and trou­ble it would take to main­tain it. ‘I get more mail in a day than the serv­er han­dled,’ Davis says. . . .”
The arti­cle details more unusu­al aspects of the link: ” . . . . That wasn’t the only odd­i­ty. When the researchers pinged the serv­er, they received error mes­sages. They con­clud­ed that the serv­er was set to accept only incom­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion from a very small hand­ful of IP address­es. . . . Eighty-sev­en per­cent of the DNS lookups involved the two Alfa Bank servers. ‘It’s pret­ty clear that it’s not an open mail serv­er,’ Camp told me. ‘These orga­ni­za­tions are com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a way designed to block oth­er peo­ple out.’ . . . .”

Paul Vixie–one of the pre­mier experts in the field–felt the con­nec­tion was high­ly unusu­al: ” . . . . Ear­li­er this month, the group of com­put­er sci­en­tists passed the logs to Paul Vix­ie. In the world of DNS experts, there’s no high­er author­i­ty. Vix­ie wrote cen­tral strands of the DNS code that makes the inter­net work. After study­ing the logs, he con­clud­ed, ‘The par­ties were com­mu­ni­cat­ing in a secre­tive fash­ion. The oper­a­tive word is secre­tive. This is more akin to what crim­i­nal syn­di­cates do if they are putting togeth­er a project.’ Put dif­fer­ent­ly, the logs sug­gest­ed that Trump and Alfa had con­fig­ured some­thing like a dig­i­tal hot­line con­nect­ing the two enti­ties, shut­ting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own exis­tence. . . .”

The avail­able evi­dence indi­cates that the hookup indi­cat­ed “human-lev­el com­mu­ni­ca­tion”: ” . . . I put the ques­tion of what kind of activ­i­ty the logs record­ed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of California’s Nicholas Weaver, anoth­er com­put­er sci­en­tist not involved in com­pil­ing the logs. ‘I can’t attest to the logs them­selves,’ he told me, ‘but assum­ing they are legit­i­mate they do indi­cate effec­tive­ly human-lev­el com­mu­ni­ca­tion.’ . . . ”

More about the nature of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, from the sci­en­tist using the code-name “Tea Leaves”: ” . . . . Tea Leaves and his col­leagues plot­ted the data from the logs on a time­line. What it illus­trat­ed was sug­ges­tive: The con­ver­sa­tion between the Trump and Alfa servers appeared to fol­low the con­tours of polit­i­cal hap­pen­ings in the Unit­ed States. ‘At elec­tion-relat­ed moments, the traf­fic peaked,’ accord­ing to Camp. There were con­sid­er­ably more DNS lookups, for instance, dur­ing the two con­ven­tions. . . .”

The sci­en­tists attempt­ed to get the pub­lic to pay atten­tion to their inves­ti­ga­tion and New York Times writ­ers turned their atten­tion to the case: ” . . . In Sep­tem­ber, the sci­en­tists tried to get the pub­lic to pay atten­tion to their data. One of them post­ed a link to the logs in a Red­dit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Licht­blau and Steven Lee Myers began chas­ing the sto­ry.* (They are still pur­su­ing it.) Licht­blau met with a Wash­ing­ton rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied hav­ing any con­nec­tion to Trump. . . .”

Things got “inter­est­ing” after that. Accord­ing to the com­put­er sci­en­tists, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion shut down the serv­er! As the bril­liant Berke­ley researcher Peter Dale Scott not­ed, in a dif­fer­ent con­text, “The cov­er-up obvi­ates the con­spir­a­cy. ” . . . . In Sep­tem­ber, the sci­en­tists tried to get the pub­lic to pay atten­tion to their data. One of them post­ed a link to the logs in a Red­dit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Licht­blau and Steven Lee Myers began chas­ing the sto­ry.* (They are still pur­su­ing it.) Licht­blau met with a Wash­ing­ton rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied hav­ing any con­nec­tion to Trump. . . . The com­put­er sci­en­tists believe there was one log­i­cal con­clu­sion to be drawn: The Trump Orga­ni­za­tion shut down the serv­er after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the con­nec­tion. Weaver told me the Trump domain was ‘very slop­pi­ly removed.’ Or as anoth­er of the researchers put it, it looked like ‘the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.’. . . . Four days lat­er, on Sept. 27, the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion cre­at­ed a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the very same serv­er via a dif­fer­ent route. When a new host name is cre­at­ed, the first com­mu­ni­ca­tion with it is nev­er ran­dom. To reach the serv­er after the reset­ting of the host name, the sender of the first inbound mail has to first learn of the name some­how. It’s sim­ply impos­si­ble to ran­dom­ly reach a renamed serv­er. ‘That par­ty had to have some kind of out­bound mes­sage through SMS, phone, or some non­in­ter­net chan­nel they used to com­mu­ni­cate [the new con­fig­u­ra­tion],’ Paul Vix­ie told me. The first attempt to look up the revised host name came from Alfa Bank. ‘If this was a pub­lic serv­er, we would have seen oth­er traces,’ Vix­ie says. ‘The only look-ups came from this par­tic­u­lar source.‘According to Vix­ie and oth­ers, the new host name may have rep­re­sent­ed an attempt to estab­lish a new chan­nel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But media inquiries into the nature of Trump’s rela­tion­ship with Alfa Bank, which sug­gest­ed that their com­mu­ni­ca­tions were being mon­i­tored, may have deterred the par­ties from using it. Soon after the New York Times began to ask ques­tions, the traf­fic between the servers stopped cold. . . .”

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the FBI has dis­missed the rel­e­vance of the com­put­er link.

This dis­missal comes against the back­ground of sev­er­al late-break­ing devel­op­ments:

The unsuc­cess­ful attempt by Alfa sub­sidiary Crown Resources to buy Marc Rich’s com­modi­ties firm: ” . . . A deal to sell the Swiss-based com­modi­ties oper­a­tion of for­mer U.S. fugi­tive financier Marc Rich to Rus­sia-owned ener­gy trad­ing group Crown Resources is off. . . . Crown is owned by the Alfa Group con­glom­er­ate. . . . .”

The sub­se­quent suc­cess­ful attempt by Alfa play­er Mikhail Frid­man to pur­chase the Marc Rich firm: ” . . . Mikhail Frid­man: ‘Defen­dant Mikhail Frid­man cur­rent­ly serves as Chair­man of the Board of Direc­tors of co-con­spir­a­tor Alfa Bank and as Chair­man of the Board of Direc­tors of Defen­dant Con­sor­tium Alfa Group. Frid­man fur­ther served on the Board of Vim­pel­Com, a NYSE com­pa­ny, and has con­trol over Gold­en Tele­com, a NASDAQ com­pa­ny ... pur­chased the Unit­ed States trad­ing firm owned by Amer­i­can, Mark Rich, the one time com­modi­ties baron par­doned by Pres­i­dent Clin­ton with much con­tro­ver­sy. . . .”

The FBI’s long-dor­mant Twit­ter account began tweet­ing files about Bill Clin­ton’s par­don of Marc Rich, short­ly after the offi­cial dis­missal of inves­ti­ga­tions into the Alfa/Trump link: ” . . . . Now, a new inter­a­gency mys­tery is rais­ing ques­tions about whether the F.B.I. has become politi­cized, just days before the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. On Sun­day, a long-dor­mant F.B.I. Twit­ter account sud­den­ly sprung to life, blast­ing out a series of links to case files that cast the Clin­tons in a decid­ed­ly neg­a­tive light. . . . Then, on Tues­day, the “FBI Records Vault” account—which had not tweet­ed at all between Octo­ber 2015 and Sunday—published a link to records relat­ed to the 15-year-old, long-closed inves­ti­ga­tion into for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clinton’s par­don­ing of one­time com­modi­ties trad­er turned fugi­tive Marc Rich. The post, which was quick­ly retweet­ed thou­sands of times, links to a heav­i­ly redact­ed doc­u­ment that repeat­ed­ly ref­er­ences the agency’s “Pub­lic Cor­rup­tion” unit—less-than-ideal optics for Hillary Clin­ton, who has spent her entire cam­paign fight­ing her image as a cor­rupt politi­cian. . . .”

FBI Direc­tor James Comey was in charge of the orig­i­nal Marc Rich inves­ti­ga­tion and the par­don of Rich by Bill Clin­ton. Is there a con­nec­tion between the offi­cial dis­missal of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the Alfa/Trump link by the FBI, the tweet­ing by the FBI of the files on the Clin­ton par­don of Marc Rich and the fact that it was Comey who presided over the Marc Rich inves­ti­ga­tions? ” . . . . In 2002, Comey, then a fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, took over an inves­ti­ga­tion into Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton’s 2001 par­don of financier Marc Rich, who had been indict­ed on a laun­dry list of charges before flee­ing the coun­try. The deci­sion set off a polit­i­cal firestorm focused on accu­sa­tions that Rich’s ex-wife Denise made dona­tions to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, the Clin­ton Library and Hillary Clin­ton’s 2000 Sen­ate cam­paign as part of a plan to get Rich off the hook. Comey ulti­mate­ly decid­ed not to pur­sue the case. The kick­er: Comey him­self had over­seen Rich’s pros­e­cu­tion between 1987 and 1993. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: details of the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety’s links to Atta and to major Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions; dis­cus­sion of the Alfa Fel­lowhip against the back­ground of Ger­man Ost­poli­tik dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 918 and 919; detailed analy­sis of Vik­tor Kozeny asso­ciates Frid­man and (Pyotr) Aven (Kozeny employed Bohringer as a pilot); a sum­ma­ry analy­sis of the major points in FTR #‘s 530 and 573.

FTR #929 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 8: The Trumpen Kreis

The title of the pro­gram derives from “the Himm­ler Kreis”–Himmler’s cir­cle of friends, the indus­tri­al­ists who financed the day-to-day work­ings of the Nazi SS and, in turn, received slave labor from Himm­ler’s inven­to­ry of incar­cer­at­ed work­ers. We bor­row on the Third Reich term to char­ac­ter­ize the Friends of Trump–the Trumpen Kreis.

Begin­ning with review of UK Inde­pen­dence Par­ty leader Nigel Farage, we note the “Brex­it” archi­tec­t’s sup­port for Don­ald Trump. In addi­tion, we note that Farage has a Ger­man wife. Under oth­er cir­cum­stances this would be unre­mark­able. In the con­text of covert operations/clandestine pol­i­tics, a romantic/sexual partner/spouse might also be a case offi­cer and/or pay­mas­ter.

We bring this up because the “Brex­it” engi­neered by Farage and com­pa­ny removed a major obsta­cle to the cre­ation of a Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed EU mil­i­tary force. ” . . . . With Britain, which had always adamant­ly opposed an inte­grat­ed EU mil­i­tary pol­i­cy, leav­ing the EU, Berlin sees an oppor­tu­ni­ty for reviv­ing its efforts at restruc­tur­ing the EU’s mil­i­tary and mobi­liz­ing as many mem­ber coun­tries as pos­si­ble for the EU’s future wars. . . .”

Inter­est­ing­ly, and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Don­ald Trump has drawn sup­port from Hin­du nation­al­ists of the Modi stripe. There is an impor­tant ele­ment of net­work­ing here: Trump cam­paign man­ag­er and “Alt-right” media fig­ure Stephen K. Ban­non is a sup­port­er of Mod­i’s move­ment, as well as that of Nigel Farage. ” . . . . Mr. Trump may be large­ly indif­fer­ent to the rea­sons behind his Hin­du loy­al­ists’ fer­vor, but his most senior advis­ers are not. The campaign’s chief exec­u­tive, Stephen K. Ban­non, is a stu­dent of nation­al­ist move­ments. Mr. Ban­non is close to Nigel Farage, a cen­tral fig­ure in Britain’s move­ment to leave the Euro­pean Union, and he is an admir­er of India’s prime min­is­ter, Naren­dra Modi, a Hin­du nation­al­ist Mr. Ban­non has called ‘the Rea­gan of India.’ It may be pure coin­ci­dence that some of Mr. Trump’s words chan­nel the nation­al­is­tic and, some argue, anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ments that Mr. Modi stoked as he rose to pow­er. But it is cer­tain­ly not coin­ci­den­tal that many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hin­du sup­port­ers are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent back­ers. . . .”

Trump has also received the sup­port of the mer­cu­r­ial, bom­bas­tic Russ­ian fas­cist Vladimir Zhiri­novsky, whose polit­i­cal career was launched with the assis­tance of Ger­hard Frey, a promi­nent Ger­man Nazi. Trump and Zhiri­novsky have over­lap­ping polit­i­cal styles: ” . . . . His com­bat­ive style, rem­i­nis­cent of Trump’s, ensures him plen­ty of tele­vi­sion air time and mil­lions of votes in Russ­ian elec­tions, often from the kind of blue-col­lar work­ers who are the bedrock of the U.S. Repub­li­can can­di­date’s sup­port. Zhiri­novsky once pro­posed block­ing off most­ly Mus­lim south­ern Rus­sia with a barbed wire fence, echo­ing Trump’s call for a wall along the U.S. bor­der with Mex­i­co. Zhiri­novsky, who said he met Trump in New York in 2002, rev­els in his sim­i­lar­i­ties with the Amer­i­can busi­ness­man — they are the same age, favor coarse, some­times misog­y­nis­tic lan­guage and boast about putting their own coun­try first. . . .”

In FTR #921, we not­ed that Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speech­es by his bed and read it to gain tips on the use of rhetoric. He appears to have bor­rowed a play from Der Fuhrer’s rhetor­i­cal play­book when address­ing the Val­ues Vot­ers Sum­mit: ” . . . He regaled the crowd of Chris­t­ian vot­ers in his usu­al bom­bas­tic way, but near the end of the speech, Trump seemed to play into the hands of his accusers who claim that not only does Trump remind peo­ple of infa­mous dic­ta­tors like Ital­ian fas­cist Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni and Ger­man Nazi leader Adolf Hitler with his jin­go­ism, bla­tant nativist nation­al­ism, and over-the-top fact-twist­ing scape­goat­ing, but he sounds like them as well. He para­phrased the infa­mous Nazi Par­ty slo­gan, ‘Ein volk, ein reich, ein Fuhrer!’ . . . If one saw the speech, or watch­es it in replay, Trump begins rais­ing his voice on the first use of the word ‘one,’emphasizing each part of the ver­bal trip­tych. Not only does he invoke the tra­di­tion­al lines from the Pledge of Alle­giance, he pro­gress­es from, just as the Nazi Par­ty slo­gan does, ‘one peo­ple’ (‘ein volk’) to ‘under one god’ (an implied uni­fied Chris­t­ian nation or ‘ein reich’) to ‘one flag’ (‘ein Fuhrer,’ the sym­bol of a uni­fied nation). . . .”

Trump is also bor­row­ing a rhetor­i­cal page from the Nazi play­book in his attacks on the press: ” . . . . On Sat­ur­day night, a new and for­eign accu­sa­tion came to the fore: ‘Lügen­presse!’ The term, which means ‘lying press’ in Ger­man, has a his­to­ry dat­ing back to the mid-1800s and was used by the Nazis to dis­cred­it the media. In recent years, it has been revived by Ger­man far-right anti-immi­grant groups. And on Sat­ur­day, it made an appear­ance at a Trump ral­ly in Cleve­land, Ohio. . . Bre­it­bart News [edit­ed by Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Stephen K. Ban­non] report­ed favor­ably on the term in an inter­view ear­li­er this year with the leader of the Ger­man far-right group PEGIDA, writ­ing, ‘It will come as no sur­prise to many that the main­stream media would lash out against a word that high­lights their own, inten­tion­al fail­ings. But [Lutz] Bachmann’s PEGIDA has pop­u­lar­ized the term to the point where it has become a pil­lar — even a ral­ly­ing cry — for the nation­al­ist, pop­ulist move­ments across the con­ti­nent.’ . . . Mean­while, the hatred toward the press among the larg­er pop­u­la­tion of Trump sup­port­ers grows increas­ing­ly pro­nounced near­ly every day. In these final weeks of the cam­paign, at near­ly every ral­ly, Trump riles up his audi­ence against the press as reporters sit in the media pen, easy tar­gets for vit­ri­ol. Reporters dis­em­bark­ing the press bus at Trump’s ral­ly in Naples, Flori­da, on Sun­day, the day after the ‘lügen­presse’ inci­dent, were imme­di­ate­ly greet­ed by boos and shouts of ‘Tell the truth!’ . . . ”

Con­clud­ing the broad­cast, we note that David French, a con­ser­v­a­tive vet­er­an of the Iraq war, has been vicious­ly trolled by Trump’s Alt-Right fol­low­ers because of his adop­tion of an Ethiopi­an orphan: ” . . . . In par­tic­u­lar, the alt-right made a point to attack French’s youngest daugh­ter, whom his fam­i­ly had adopt­ed from Ethiopia. You see, alt-righters view bring­ing in chil­dren of col­or to Amer­i­ca as the ulti­mate betray­al of the white race, which is why they had par­tic­u­lar scorn for French. ‘I saw images of my daughter’s face in gas cham­bers, with a smil­ing Trump in a Nazi uni­form prepar­ing to press a but­ton and kill her,’ he writes. ‘I saw her face pho­to-shopped into images of slaves. She was called a ‘niglet’ and a ‘din­du.’ The alt-right unleashed on my wife, Nan­cy, claim­ing that she had slept with black men while I was deployed to Iraq, and that I loved to watch while she had sex with ‘black bucks.’ Peo­ple sent her porno­graph­ic images of black men hav­ing sex with white women, with some­one pho­to­shopped to look like me, watch­ing. . . There is noth­ing at all reward­ing, enjoy­able, or sat­is­fy­ing about see­ing man after man after man brag in graph­ic terms that he has slept with your wife. It’s unset­tling to have a phone call inter­rupt­ed, watch images of mur­der flick­er across your screen, and read threat­en­ing e‑mails. It’s sober­ing to take your teenage kids out to the farm to make sure they’re both pro­fi­cient with hand­guns in case an intrud­er comes when they’re home alone.”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of Trump’s links with the Steuben Soci­ety; review of the Steuben Soci­ety’s posi­tion in the Nazi under­ground in this coun­try, before, dur­ing and after World War II; review of the polit­i­cal resume of Ger­hard Frey; dis­cus­sion of Blacks for Trump sup­port­er “Michael the Black man” and his back­ground in a mur­der­ous, anti-Semit­ic cult.

FTR #922 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 5: Walkin’ the Snake with “The Donald” (The Underground Reich Comes Into Plain View, Part 3)

Sup­ple­ment­ing analy­sis in the first four pro­grams about the Trumpenkampfver­bande, this pro­gram exam­ines the media bias in his favor in the con­text of the Nazi tract “Ser­pen­t’s Walk,” about a Nazi takeover of the U.S. in the mid-twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. That takeover occurs after the SS goes under­ground (which hap­pened), builds up their “eco­nom­ic mus­cle,” (which has hap­pened with the Bor­mann net­work), buys into the opin­ion-form­ing media (which has hap­pened) and sways the Amer­i­can peo­ple. “A cen­tu­ry after the war they are ready to chal­lenge the democ­rats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Amer­i­cans, who have begun to have their fill of gov­ern­ment-enforced mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism and ‘equal­i­ty.’ ” This appears to be hap­pen­ing with the Trump cam­paign. Not­ing the inces­sant grilling of Hillary Clin­ton over the e‑mail non-scan­dal (110 of 30,000 e‑mails con­tained clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al, a 0.36 per­cent mar­gin of error) and the Clin­ton Foun­da­tion (a char­i­ty that helps the dis­ad­van­tage and enjoys a high­er offi­cial rat­ing than the Amer­i­can Red Cross), Paul Krug­man com­pared this–accurately–to the kid glove treat­ment afford­ed the dis­hon­est and incom­pe­tent George W. Bush dur­ing the 2000 cam­paign. Review­ing Trump’s cred­i­tors, we note the pri­ma­ry role of Deutsche Bank in under­writ­ing his real estate projects and the mys­te­ri­ous, opaque projects involv­ing Ger­man indus­tri­al and aris­to­crat­ic ele­ments. After review­ing the absolute con­trol that the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work wields over cor­po­rate Ger­many, the pro­gram high­lights the fun­da­men­tal rela­tion­ship between Deutsche Bank, Bor­mann and the remark­able and dead­ly net­work the Reich­sleit­er found­ed. Heav­i­ly invest­ed in Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions, the Bor­mann group and the Under­ground Reich are in an excel­lent posi­tion to manip­u­late media cov­er­age of events, through direct cor­po­rate edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy and through the award­ing of adver­tis­ing con­tracts. We note, also, that the Bor­mann group con­trols cor­po­rate Ger­many: ” . . . What will not pass is the eco­nom­ic influ­ences of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, whose com­mer­cial direc­tives are obeyed almost with­out ques­tion by the high­est ech­e­lons of West Ger­man finance and indus­try. ‘All orders come from the share­hold­ers in South Amer­i­ca,’ I have been told by a spokesman for Mar­tin Bor­mann. . . .” The con­trol of cor­po­rate Ger­many fur­ther enhances the abil­i­ty of the Under­ground Reich to con­trol media cov­er­age. We are of the con­sid­ered opin­ion that this dynam­ic is a major fac­tor in the grotesque­ly slant­ed cov­er­age of Trump’s cam­paign. While the “pun­dits” nat­ter end­less­ly about Hillary Clin­ton’s health (nev­er even con­sid­er­ing that she may have been vec­tored), they are com­plete­ly ignor­ing the fact that Trump is hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in debt to Deutsche Bank, a preda­to­ry “too big to fail” insti­tu­tion that has flout­ed this coun­try’s reg­u­la­to­ry statutes and engaged in open law break­ing. And, it’s a Bor­mann bank. The broad­cast con­cludes with a tran­si­tion­al ele­ment that notes Trump’s polit­i­cal evo­lu­tion from the anarcho/fascist lib­er­tar­i­an milieu of Ron Paul, the same polit­i­cal forces that are the foun­da­tion of “Team Snow­den” and WikiLeaks/Assange. ” . . . . Trump’s style and posi­tions — endors­ing and con­sort­ing with 9/11 truthers, pro­mot­ing online racists, using fake sta­tis­tics— draw on a now-obscure polit­i­cal strat­e­gy called “pale­olib­er­tar­i­an­ism,” which was once quite pop­u­lar among some Repub­li­cans, espe­cial­ly for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ron Paul. . . . But it was [Mur­ray] Rothbard’s found­ing of the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute in 1982 that enabled the fledg­ling polit­i­cal move­ment to estab­lish affin­i­ty with the neo-Con­fed­er­ate Lost Cause move­ment. . . . In the past few years, how­ev­er, it’s been reborn as the alt-right, as a new gen­er­a­tion of lib­er­tar­i­ans dis­cov­ered their hid­den her­itage and began embrac­ing racism and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Many alt-right writ­ers trace their roots to Roth­bard. As one of them, Gre­go­ry Hood, put it, pale­olib­er­tar­i­an the­o­ries about race and democ­ra­cy “helped lead to the emer­gence [of the] Alter­na­tive Right.” Rothbard’s call for “sov­er­eign nations based on race and eth­nic­i­ty” is very sim­i­lar to beliefs Trump’s alt-right sup­port­ers express today. . . .” Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of the own­er­ship of the Quandt cor­po­ra­tion, par­ent com­pa­ny of BMW and Audi auto­mo­biles by the heirs of Joseph Goebbels; BMW’s use of adver­tis­ing con­tracts to influ­ence edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy at “The Atlantic” mag­a­zine; review of George Soros’s role in financ­ing Trump’s Chica­go tow­er; review of the gen­e­sis of Soros’s busi­ness career “Aryaniz­ing” Jew­ish prop­er­ty dur­ing the Holo­caust.

FTR #920 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 3: The Underground Reich Emerges Into Plain View

QUICK: How many Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates can you name who kept a book of Adolf Hitler’s speech­es by their bed­side? Don­ald Trump does. For many years, what Mr. Emory terms “The Under­ground Reich” has been a fun­da­men­tal point of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis in these broad­casts and posts. In the third pro­gram ana­lyz­ing the Don­ald Trump cam­paign, we exam­ine the “Trumpenkampfver­bande,” its polit­i­cal antecedents and adher­ents. Exem­pli­fy­ing, and net­work­ing with, gen­er­a­tions of fas­cists and fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions, the Trumpenkampfver­bande embod­ies the emer­gence of the Under­ground Reich into plain view. A sig­na­ture ele­ment of Trump’s cam­paign is his resus­ci­ta­tion of the “Amer­i­ca First” slo­gan and con­cept, a man­i­fes­ta­tion both of his thin­ly-veiled appeal to Nazi and white suprema­cist ele­ments and his will­ing­ness to cede dom­i­nance over world affairs to a Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed “third pow­er bloc.” The Amer­i­ca First con­cept mobi­lizes pow­er­ful feel­ings among those feel­ing over­whelmed and left behind by polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ments glob­al­ly and in the Unit­ed States. We note that the “orig­i­nal” Amer­i­ca First was financed by Nazi Ger­many. Trump’s invo­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca First exem­pli­fies the nature of his polit­i­cal her­itage and alle­giances. One of his top advis­ers Joseph E. Schmitz, “obsessed with all things Ger­man” and, accord­ing to asso­ciates, some­one who “fired the Jews” (from the Pen­ta­gon) and man­i­fest­ed Holo­caust denial. This is not atyp­i­cal of “Team Trump.” One of the most impor­tant fig­ures in main­stream­ing “alt right” (i.e. Nazi, white nation­al­ist and anti-Semit­ic) atti­tudes has been Breitbart’s Steve Ban­non, now essen­tial­ly run­ning the Trump cam­paign. Trump and his cam­paign have a habit of re-tweet­ing infor­ma­tion from “alt right” web­sites and mes­sage boards. Of pri­ma­ry sig­nif­i­cance in ana­lyz­ing Trump con­cerns the main finan­cial backer of his real estate projects–Deutsche Bank. In addi­tion to the fact that this places a poten­tial Pres­i­dent in the posi­tion of owing upwards of $100 mil­lion to an insti­tu­tion that has open­ly defied U.S. reg­u­la­to­ry posi­tions, Deutsche Bank is a pri­ma­ry ele­ment of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, about which we speak so often. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Analy­sis of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Trump’s father was in the Ku Klux Klan; review of Trump’s asso­ci­a­tion with for­mer Axis spy Nor­man Vin­cent Peale; review of Trump’s counsel–Senator Joe McCarthy aide Roy Cohn; Trump’s addi­tion­al finan­cial back­ing from George Soros, who got his start in busi­ness “Aryaniz­ing” Jew­ish prop­er­ty dur­ing the Holo­caust; Trump’s tweet­ing of a cam­paign ad fea­tur­ing Waf­fen SS-clad World War II re-enac­tors; The enthu­si­as­tic sup­poprt Trump has received from David Duke.

Bern This! Why is Karl Rove a “Bernie Bro’?”

Karl Rove’s Amer­i­can Cross­roads orga­ni­za­tion has been chan­nel­ing mon­ey to Bernie Sanders’ cam­paign. This, alone, should make think­ing peo­ple ask seri­ous ques­tions about Saint Bernard. Oth­er ques­tions the Sanderis­tas are not ask­ing include: why has Sanders been cit­ed by the Fed­er­al Elec­tions Com­mis­sion three times?; why haven’t the media asked ques­tions about his Communist/radical past, includ­ing serv­ing as a Pres­i­den­tial elec­tor for the Trot­skyite Social­ist Work­ers’ Par­ty in 1980; just what was his wife’s role in the col­lapse of Burling­ton Col­lege?; why has Sanders been so reluc­tant to release his tax infor­ma­tion?; why is he repeat­ing the GOP theme of Hillary as “a liar?;” why is Gra­ham E. Fuller, a promi­nent advo­cate of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and rad­i­cal Islam pro­mot­ing Bernie Sanders? All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

FTR #906 The Destabilization of Hillary Clinton

Ana­lyz­ing the medi­a’s psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare against Hillary Clin­ton, we note how much of the “neg­a­tive narrative”–including asser­tions par­rot­ed by Bernie Sanders and his associates–about her comes from the right-wing media attack machine. How many peo­ple note, for exam­ple, that the Inspec­tor Gen­er­al’s refer­ral to the Jus­tice Depart­ment was not crim­i­nal? We note that George H.W. Bush–the man for whom CIA head­quar­ters was named–was defeat­ed for re-elec­tion by Bill Clin­ton. Fox News is head­ed by Roger Ailes, who was George H.W. Bush’s cam­paign direc­tor.

Much of the media/internet cov­er­age of Hillary comes from Fox, echoed duti­ful­ly by oth­er, so-called “respon­si­ble” media out­lets. It should be not­ed that both “The New York Times” and “The Wash­ing­ton Post” have long­stand­ing ties to the CIA. Both papers have contracted–along with Fox News–for excerpts from a book titled “Clin­ton Cash,” authored by Peter Schweiz­er, a Koch broth­ers polit­i­cal spear car­ri­er and for­mer advis­er to Sarah Palin. We note that the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion had as its cen­ter­piece an anti-Hillary movie called Hillary Clin­ton: The Movie. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the New York Times has fea­tured slant­ed cov­er­age of the Clin­ton e‑mail non-scan­dal.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of FBI direc­tor James Comey’s work as a Mitt Rom­ney sup­port­er in 2012; Hillary Clin­ton’s vot­ing record as the 11th most lib­er­al Sen­a­tor; CNBC’s “Morn­ing Joe” pro­gram’s delib­er­ate dis­tor­tion of Wash­ing­ton Post colum­nist David Ignatius’s state­ments on the Hillary Clin­ton e‑mail non-scan­dal; Joe “Morn­ing Joe” Scar­bor­ough’s role as a GOP mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives; CNBC own­er Chris Burke’s major con­tri­bu­tions to George W. Bush’s cam­paigns.

Echoes of Maidan: Yugoslavia (Yesterday); Ukraine (Today)

We’ve been cov­er­ing infor­ma­tion point­ing to the sniper fire that ignit­ed the Maid­an coup as hav­ing come from the anti-gov­ern­ment forces. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, per­son­nel from Svo­bo­da and the fas­cist “pun­ish­er bat­tal­ions” crop up repeat­edy in the unfold­ing nar­ra­tive. German-Foreign-Policy.com fea­tures a com­par­i­son with the “cook­ing” of jour­nal­is­tic infor­ma­tion about Ukraine with what took place in the for­mer Yugoslavia, the NATO oper­a­tion against Koso­vo, in par­tic­u­lar. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

Benghazi Follies

With the polit­i­cal firestorm gen­er­at­ed by the GOP over the Beng­hazi attack in 2012, it is cer­tain­ly inter­est­ing and pos­si­bly very rel­e­vant to note that the C.I.A. base chief ordered five com­man­dos guard­ing the base to stand down, there­by enabling the lethal vio­lence that claimed the life of the Amer­i­can ambas­sador to Libya. One won­ders if the delay was in fact to pre­cip­i­tate the lethal deba­cle being uti­lized by the Repub­li­cans in their anti-Clin­ton, anti-Oba­ma pro­pa­gan­da?

FTR #767 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 11: The Destabilization of the NSA and GCHQ

The activ­i­ties of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook make no sense in the con­text of civ­il lib­er­ties. They make a great deal of sense in terms of the desta­bi­liza­tion of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, the NSA and the GCHQ. Snow­den may have tak­en up to 1.7 mil­lion doc­u­ments, includ­ing infor­ma­tion that could per­mit a male­fac­tor to suc­cess­ful­ly evade NSA scruti­ny. Snow­den’s activ­i­ties may lead to nul­li­fi­ca­tion of the NSA plans to defend against cybert­er­ror­ism.