Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has some sort of financial influence over former President Trump.

In an interview with MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki,” Pelosi said Putin is the “richest person in the world” and has “stiff competition” to being named the most evil person in the world.

Pelosi asked “what does he have on Donald Trump that he’d have to constantly be catering to Putin?”

Her comments came just after Trump doubled down on his criticism of NATO and said he would encourage Russia to attack U.S. allies who fail to reach the alliance’s defense spending goals. Trump has also declined to criticize Putin for the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison last week.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Jesus Christ, Democrats. Stop pussyfooting around with this shit. He’s a traitor. He’s a rapist. He wants to be a dictator. Putin controls him. Just come right out and say this shit.

    I’ve said this already once today. Just say these words: “If you vote for Trump, you’re voting for a rapist.” And say it repeatedly.

    They can’t even do that! Fucking baffling.

    • gloss@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 months ago

      A tape was released where he boasted about committing sexual assault. He bragged about grabbing them by the pussy. That tape came out like a month or two before the 2016 election. An October surprise that would have sunk any other candidate in the history of the USA. His fans did not care at all. Most of them probably cheered him on.

      Rape? This is the party who think it’s impossible to rape your own wife. Rape doesn’t even exist to them.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        An October surprise that would have sunk any other candidate in the history of the USA.

        It only sinks your campaign if your voter base disapproves of the behavior. Trump won a majority of white women voters. An outright majority. Think about that.

        Our country is so fucking misogynist that white women will hear “real estate cretin grabs actress by her crouch just because he can” and reply “as is his right” as though he’s a fucking 13th century aristocrat claiming prima nocta.

        This is the real primal power of a fascist campaign. You’re not bound by the rules. You are, in fact, rewarded for breaking them. And the more rules you can break without anyone stopping you, the more popular appeal you possess.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        Rape doesn’t exist to MAGA people. They will vote for Trump anyway. They are not who they should be trying to reach.

        Do you think that it shouldn’t be brought up?

    • unalivejoy@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      “If you vote for Trump, you’re voting for a rapist.”

      This didn’t really work that first time.

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        9 months ago

        Then nothing will work, but at least Dems can show some fucking spines instead of trying to compromise with traitors.

        • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          But compromising with traitors is the best way to show progressives that traitors are better regarded by the party than they’ll ever be.

        • Drusas@kbin.social
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          9 months ago

          That’s the tactic the Democrats used in 2016 when they lost. It seemed like a slam dunk tactic to point out that anyone voting for Trump was voting for someone who commits sexual assault against women, but his voters ate it up.

          • snooggums@midwest.social
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            9 months ago

            Who fucking cares about his voters? The point is to motivate everyone else to vote and maybe catch undecided voters by showing a spine.

            It didn’t work in 2020 because Hilary’s campaign focused on safe states instead of battleground states. The same thing worked in 2020 because Biden campaigned better. Both won the popular vote, but one didn’t motivate where it mattered.

            • suction@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              I agree a hundred percent but whoever is still not motivated to vote against Trump probably secretly roots for him.

      • kautau@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        And trump just sold nearly half a million dollars in cheap chinese shoes in half a day. Idiots are idiots. And the “representative” of the LLC that was just formed a month ago to sell these shoes is Andrew Pierce, of Cloud Peak Law (which seems to be distancing themselves from that name really quickly lol) https://wyomingllcattorney.com/About.

        They are a tax evasion firm. https://www.offshorealert.com/wyoming-asset-protection-law-firm-cloud-peak-seeks-to-quash-irs-summons-for-danish-tax-investigation/

        Trump may be an idiot. Or he may be somebody pretending to be an idiot. But his team isn’t. They are excellent at convincing idiots that they are smart by supporting him.

        • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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          I can almost guarantee you that he didn’t actually sell that many. The whole grift is to sell like 100 pairs, but say you sold 1000, and then put another 100 on eBay for 3x the price to cash in on the fomo

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          And trump just sold nearly half a million dollars in cheap chinese shoes in half a day.

          Selling cheap imported designer goods to rubs is half the fashion industry playbook. $400 for a pair of shiny high tops is honestly a steal. Some of these sneakers go for a full four figures. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Trump Shoes get resold at some rally for north of a grand.

          Trump may be an idiot.

          The argument that Trump is an idiot keeps running counter to the comic inability for American civil authorities to meaningfully censure or deter him from doing obvious frauds, scams, and crimes. If he looks stupid, it may only be due to the fact that the whole system is fucking stupid and he’s just the clown at the front of the parade.

    • danc4498@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Keep in mind the Trump v Biden election cycle hasn’t even started. September/October are going to be spicy.

    • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I think you want war. When they are thinking long term. We all know it. But lowering themselves to his level allows A LOT more mud slinging. Which is bad enough. It’s distracting enough to give the citizens nothing. And that’s what it should be about.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        Because the short term is really fucking dire. And they want war. Taking the high road and not giving to them is not going to work.

        • mriguy@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          They are currently fighting the war. And winning it, because we keep pretending they aren’t. When they go low and we go high, they get what they want and fascism gets further up the beach.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      I think they are legitimately fearful that going too hard will provoke violence.

      Or rather, if you believe that these people can be deprogrammed at some point… eventually… and again become functional members of society, then you need to leave some path back.

      Or rather, most people are still afraid of confronting the reality where these people actually have no path back from this collective edgy post-truth fascist-life-crisis.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Just say these words: “If you vote for Trump, you’re voting for a rapist.”

      And Republicans will retort “If you vote for Biden, you’re voting for a baby murderer.”

      It won’t change a single vote.

      If Trump is a rapist, he should be criminally prosecuted for rape. He’s already lost multiple civil lawsuits on the subject. This should be practically trivial to accomplish.

      But Democrats have been pussyfooting around an actual criminal prosecution for the last four years. They seem entirely disinclined to put their money where their mouths are and LOCK HIM UP. Instead, its just folks shouting “You’re a criminal!” from one pulpit while their peers on the GOP side retort “No, you!”

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Except that “baby murderer” is what cause Republicans to do so badly a couple of years ago. Abortion has been a big loss for them.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Republicans still hold a majority of state governors’ mansions and a plurality of legislatures.

          Democrats wish they could perform as badly.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Laughing up my sleeve in '94, '02, '10, and '16, asking the same thing. Can Donald Trump defeat an unpopular incumbent party in the wake of a mediocre economic recovery while everyone is fixated on Black Crime, Illegal Immigration, and Evil China? Who can say?

              But the Senate map alone promises Republicans three viable pickups in Trump-friendly Arizona, Montana, and Ohio, while the Democrats’ best shot is still Texas.

              • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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                9 months ago

                Mediocre? Biden inherited an actual trainwreck. In terms of purely technocratic policy, the recovery will be talked about for decades as a textbook template for both crisis management and economic planning. Nothing like that has ever happened in the modern era.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  Biden inherited an actual trainwreck.

                  Its funny you should use the term trainwreck, given one of Biden’s early acts as President was to sign a bill authored by Democrat lawmakers to forbid the US Railway Workers from striking. Consequently, we’ve had a wave of train derailments and rail infrastructure failures.

                  Nothing like that has ever happened in the modern era.

                  The '08 Recession was far worse. And a great deal of the modern trainwreck stems from failures under the Obama administration to stabilize the housing market, rein in catastrophic speculative bubbles in the finance sector, and PASS UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE.

                  All objectives Biden fumbled (or deliberately undermined) as VP back when Democrats enjoyed a 60 vote Senate majority. Is there any surprise that he’s once again unable or unwilling to address corporate mismanagement in his current role as chief executive?

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      They can’t because both parties are both rapists. And they love each other.

      “Jeffrey Epstein” ring a bell?

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Ah yes, both parties are the same. Because Obama or Biden would totally have nominated SCOTUS judges that would have ended Roe v. Wade or threatened Chevron or decide that a man who committed treason can run for president.

    • index@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      He’s a traitor. He’s a rapist. He wants to be a dictator.

      That is indeed true they are also corrupted and have the blood of thousands on his hands, but to believe that Putin controls the ceo of USA means that you have no clue how the state works. USA spend trillions on war yearly, many billions alone on propaganda, psyop and all sort of political and technological warfare. They spend hundreds of thousand on bulletproof clothes for the ceo and drives him around in military convoys a mile long. To believe a country that is 6 to 7 times weaker than USA has any control over his ceo it’s just naive and feeding on propaganda.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        And yet he has total fealty to Putin. He praises Putin. He gives Putin his blessing to run roughshod over Europe. When he was president, he met with Putin and made the entire thing totally off the record so we have no idea what they said to each other.

        I’m not sure what the U.S. spends has anything to do with what kompromat a former KGB agent might have on someone he wants in his sphere of influence.

        • index@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          And yet he has total fealty to Putin.

          There are worst dictators than Putin such as saudi arabia kings who are well respected and supported by USA ceo and formers ceos, this does not mean these dictators have any jurisdiction over USA

          He praises Putin

          So does Netanyahu who you can see in plenty of pictures hugging with current USA ceo and other world leaders

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu#Relations_with_foreign_leaders

          "In his 2022 book, Netanyahu wrote positively about Putin and describes him as “smart, sophisticated and focused on one goal – returning Russia to its historical greatness”

          He gives Putin his blessing to run roughshod over Europe.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_installations

          When he was president, he met with Putin and made the entire thing totally off the record so we have no idea what they said to each other.

          Governments do classified meeting they don’t tell the public about daily.

          I’m not sure what the U.S. spends has anything to do with what kompromat a former KGB agent might have on someone he wants in his sphere of influence.

          Lean how modern warfare works, they don’t spend trillions on bullets

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Your argument seems to be “other people do it too, therefore he doesn’t have fealty to Putin.”

            Which is not a very convincing argument.

            • index@sh.itjust.works
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              9 months ago

              That’s to give you a picture of how politics work, you can search for any politician you like and there will be pictures of them shaking hands with mafiosi or dictators. Politicians loyalty it toward these who give them money and power.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                And yet that still doesn’t mean that Trump is being used by Putin through kompramat.

                Your entire “this isn’t happening with Trump” argument hinges on “this other thing is happening with different people.” Which is not how it works.

                • index@sh.itjust.works
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                  9 months ago

                  To believe that trump is a russian puppet is a really poor attempt at blaming USA problems at someone else. If you are outraged that trump has ties with the russian mafia you then should be outraged at the whole government for having the same ties and being totally rigged.

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    9 months ago

    Not my original work, and its outdated, from like 2019.

    Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.

    ►Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for the dismantling of NATO.

    ►In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)

    ►Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen–Trump’s former “fixer” attorney. Cohen’s family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother’s in-laws. Felix Sater’s father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.

    ►Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock. Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.

    ►In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.

    ►Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump’s crown jewel.

    ►From Craig Unger: “Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don’t expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence.”

    ►According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”

    ►In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.

    ►The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.

    ►Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob.

    ►A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP–often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnel got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Unger’s book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.

    ►At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference in Manhattan, in September 2008, Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying “…And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”

    ►Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

    ►Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.

    Trump now takes cues from Putin:

    ►At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

    ►Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn’t believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don’t care, I believe Putin”

    ►Trump met in secret with Putin the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.

    ►Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.

    ►He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin’s version of events.

    ►Trump pulled out of the INF treaty, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.

    ►Demanded Russia get invited back into G7

    ►Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.

    ►Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty

    ►Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn’t done anything about it by the time of this writing.

    ►Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America’s missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)

    ►And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    This kind of adroit aloofness to reality is why Democrats struggle so hard.

    The easiest to punch opponents they’ll ever have, but they wont take a meaningful swing.

    Come out and full throatedly say that voting Republican in 2024 is anti-Democratic and fascist. Fight while we’ve still got a chance.

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    I have no reason to think she’s wrong here, but I also think people should “suggesting” and “hinting at” these things. Instead, people should present the evidence to the prosecutors and let the man go to prison. You don’t need any media circus for this to happen.

    But then again, I guess everything is a presidential race now.

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      The problem is time. Trump doesn’t need any more criminal charges to send him to jail, he just needs the courts to finish doing their job, which takes time.

    • ZMonster@lemmy.world
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      Did I slide to a dimension where trump hasn’t spent most of his adult life in business with Russian oligarchs? Is your response to hearing Pelosi’s lucid musings anything other than “no titty fucking shit Sherlock”? Did trump seriously not have a giant money laundering casino for Russians named the Taj Mahal here???

      I am going to enjoy this reality. 😊 Checks Wikipedia 🙄 Oh, nvm. I forgot that I already live in the dimension where a preponderance of evidence isn’t enough to establish a preponderance of evidence. My bad.

    • UnspecificGravity@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      She is probably right, but she also likes to accuse anyone who disagrees with her of being a Putin shill so they should find someone with better credibility.

  • Queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    9 months ago

    Cool! Now are we gonna get any laws to prohibit this national security threat? Maybe ban shady donations from billionaires both American and abroad? Because if we just ban Putin from donating directly, they can just make a shell company in New York and fund him.

    We’re going to get the laws put into place to stop this, right? Anything to stop Trump from getting into the office again?

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    9 months ago

    Next she’s going to suggest Alphabet has financial influence over Google!

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    9 months ago

    I’m inclined to believe this. But I wouldn’t dare repeat it without better journalistic integrity.

    Any staunch political operative saying anything at all about their opponent should be treated like nothing at all had been said, much less as news.

    This goes for literally every statement that comes off of Trump’s mouth and fingers too.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      Any staunch political operative saying anything at all about their opponent should be treated like nothing at all had been said, much less as news.

      I mean, this statement would carry more weight from someone who wasn’t the in Leadership for 30 years thanks entirely do to her prodigious fundraising abilities. For Nancy Pelosi, a woman who coordinated $37M from disgraced cryptocurrency con-artist Sam Bankman Fried in exchange for carte blanche legislative authorship, to complain about someone being financially influenced…

      It isn’t that she’s wrong, its that - from Ted Cruz to Adam Schiff - getting fat stacks for your campaign / private business / family in exchange for influence over public policy is totally normal. Democrats are orders of magnitude more terrified of AIPAC than any MAGA Republican is of a Russian influence peddling campaign. And they’re all bent over and cheeks spread to JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and the rest of the mega-banks.

      The only thing that makes this news is the national understanding that getting kickbacks from a billionaire psychopath in Saudi Arabia or Korea is cool and good but getting them from a National Enemy like Putin is unacceptable.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      What other evidence do you require? All of his very well documented deals in Russia are only allowed if the Kremlin approves the contracts. Trump personally profits directly from those deals and he refused to put his holdings into a blind trust, casually continuing to profit off of dealings with the enemy.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      This is always said so dismissively. Like, even if everyone knows it, if it’s still a problem it’s a good idea to keep talking about it.

      Better would be doing something about it, which she’s not doing. But still.

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    Do these people have a multi-year brain lapse of this stuff? We suspected and had a good idea about this 4 years ago (and longer). And only now does Pelosi figure it out?

    More reason to not have old farts around.

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      9 months ago

      What makes you think she just figured it out? Good chance she was asked to not confirm it/talk about it publicly for some reason or didn’t feel like it was right do so. Why? No mother fucking clue (and I’m not defending her) but guaranteed people at the cia, fbi, etc have known about this for decades which would mean anyone with a security clearance probably knew as well.

      Remember when we were the crazy conspiracy nut jobs because we “knew” russia helped get trump elected with a social media psy op campaign? Pepperidge farms remembers.