Does he ever shut up? Me, I, me, myself, I, myself. Fucking hell. Narcissistic much.
Why are you pissed at me? I'm not the narcissist. Just pointing one out.
Hahahahahaha. Ya, the weak minded for sure. You nailed that one. Hahahahahaha!
Hahahahahaha! I love it here. One gets to observe how humans make excuses in their minds and alter reality to fit their narrative and agenda. It is beyond facisnating to observe. No matter how many times one gets played, they still fall foe the same agenda. Over and over and over.
Has Trump Become Adelsonâs âPerfect Little Puppetâ?
Amid continuing controversy over whether and how much Donald Trump owes his election to Vladimir Putin, it seems pertinent to ask whether he has other IOUs outstanding.
Although his consistent praise of the Russian leaderâand now his angry denials about the allegations contained in the notorious âKompromatâ dossierâhas dominated media attention, a major change during the campaign in Trumpâs views concerning Israel and its governmentâs drive to expand settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank has gotten almost no press at all. That such a change may have been encouraged by the man who turned out to be his biggest financial supporter by far has been largely overlooked. On Thursday, Sheldon Adelson visited the president-elect in Trump Tower, and yet still the media hasnât taken note.
After all, it was nearly 15 months ago, in October 2015, that Trump complained in a tweet that, âSheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to [Marco] Rubio because he feels he can mold him into the perfect little puppet. I agree!â
The tweetâs lack of context made it unclear why Trump believed Adelson wanted to use Rubio. But itâs no secret that, as Newt Gingrich has said, the multi-billionaire casino magnateâs âcentral valueâ is unconditional support for Israel, particularly its right-wing leader, Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party. And, indeed, Rubio appeared to be the favorite of hardline pro-Israel neoconsâsome of whom have benefited from Adelsonâs largesseâamid the crowded GOP presidential field.
Trump Flirts with Neutrality
In fact, Trump did little to ingratiate himself with the same crowd in the early days of the campaign. At an early December 2015 meeting of the militantly Zionist Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), of which Adelson is a former chairman, co-founder, and biggest donor, Trump seemed churlishly defiant, suggesting that he would not accept any strings attached to their contributions.
Youâre not gonna support me because I donât want your money. You want to control your politicians; thatâs fine. âŚI do want your support, but I donât want your money.
The reception he got there was less than enthusiastic. His refusal to offer his views on whether Jerusalem should remain Israelâs undivided capital elicited boos from the audience. It also didnât help that Associated Press had published an interview with Trump just the day before in which he appeared to put the burden of achieving peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians on the former.
âI have a real question as to whether or not both sides want to make it,â Trump said in the interview, adding that his concerns were greater regarding âone side in particular. âŚA lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal â whether or not Israelâs willing to sacrifice certain things.â
Two months later, during the Republican candidatesâ debate in South Carolina, Trump pledged to make a major effort to negotiate a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. In order to do so, he insisted that he had to act as an honest broker, which was presumably the last thing that Adelson wanted to hear.
âLet me be sort of a neutral guy,â Trump said, provoking rival Ted Cruz (reportedly the favored candidate of Adelsonâs spouse, Miriam) to wax indignant over the front-runnerâs position âAs president, I will be unapologetically with the nation of Israel,â the Texan declared. Remarkably, Trump stood his ground, promising to give a peace accord âone hell of a shotâ and reiterating his uncertainty about Israelâs intentions. âIt has to be said that Israel has given a lot,â he said. âI donât know whether or they want to go along to that final step (of making a deal)âŚ.I think it serves no purposes [sic] generally to say thereâs a good guy and a bad guy.â
Comments such as these encouraged a belief that a Trump presidency would actually establish some distance between Washington and Tel Aviv or even be prepared to exert real pressure on Israel to make major concessions to achieve the long-sought two-state solution. After all, these statements were arguably of a piece with Trumpâs denunciation of the Iraq war and the general notion that he was some kind of âisolationistâ who, in any event, was not nearly as interventionist or pro-Israel as Hillary Clinton. The fact that Bill Kristol and many of his fellow pro-Likud neoconservatives led the âNeverTrump campaignâ certainly lent credence to that view.
Trump Pivots to Pandering
On May 3, however, Trump gave an interview in Londonâs Daily Mail voicing strong approval of continued Israeli settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which most analysts believe will kill the possibility of a two-state solution. Asked whether there should be a pause in new construction, Trump replied,
No, I donât think there should be a pause. Look: missiles were launched into Israel, and Israel, I think never was properly treated by our country. âŚThey really have to keep going [in building settlements]. They have to keep moving forward.
That statement, which the major media largely ignored at the time, presaged the nomination of David Friedman, Trumpâs bankruptcy lawyer and a patron of the settlement movement as his future ambassador to Israel. Indeed, Trumpâs expressions of fervent support for Israel, and Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular, have only increased since the election. Most dramatically last month, he called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at Netanyahuâs behest to persuade the Egyptian leader to withdraw his draft UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements. Subsequently, Trump has reportedly wanted to invite Netanyahu to attend his inauguration.
Trump is notorious for changing his positions. But this pivot seems particularly radical. At one point, Trump was mocking Rubio for being a puppet of Sheldon Adelson and declaring his own neutrality between Israelis and Palestinians in future peace negotiation. A few months later, he was expressing his support not only for Israel in general but for the Jewish settlement movement in the Occupied Territories and choosing Friedman, a promoter of the most extreme elements of the settlement movement and an avowed foe of the two-state solution, as his next ambassador to Israel. What happened in the interim?
The Adelson Connection
Trumpâs speech at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on March 21 was a turning point. There Trump retreated into full panderer mode, repeating all the clichĂŠsââno daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel;â âunbreakableâ bond; âmove the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalemââthat are de rigueur for aspiring Republican (and too many Democratic) politicians. That it was reportedly âwritten with a healthy dose of input by his son-in-law, the Jewish developer and newspaper owner Jared Kushner, and Ron Dermer, Israelâs ambassador to the U.S.ââand delivered with the unprecedented help of a teleprompterâsuggested that something fundamental in Trumpâs public views of Israel or the U.S. role in future negotiations had changed. Indeed, in contrast to his previous statements, he made very clear that the main obstacle to a peace agreement was Palestinian terrorism and rejectionism while Israel, on the other hand, was blameless. Trump has maintained this position to this day. The contrast with his unscripted RJC presentation was remarkable, to say the least.
Most likely, Trumpâs pivot reflects the growing influence on Trump of both Kushner and Dermerâand the desire to gain the Adelsonsâ financial backing. Both Kushner and Dermer have become critical conduits to the multi-billionaire couple who, despite Sheldonâs early support for Rubio and Miriamâs for Cruz, ultimately became Trumpâs biggest financial backer. They contributed anywhere from $20 million to $35 million to support Trumpâs candidacy, according to various published sources. Although that was considerably short of the roughly $100 million the Adelsons contributed to the Romney campaign in 2012, it was still more than the billionaire-candidate himself ploughed into his own election effort ($18.3 million, according to FEC filings).
According to the Wall Street Journal, Dermer, a native Floridian and long-time Republican activist, has worked as a key âliaison to influential Republican campaign financiers like Sheldon Adelson.â It was Dermer who conspired with the Republican leadership (behind the backs of the White House and the Democratic leadership) to invite Netanyahu to blast nuclear negotiations with Iran before a joint session of Congress in February 2015. He also helped arrange front-row balcony seats for the Adelsons and their entourage for the occasion. Dermer, sometimes referred to as âBibiâs brain,â also spoke at the âAdelson primaryâ at the Venetian in Las Vegas in 2014, lending the forum a kind official Bibi blessing.
As for Kushner, whom Trump named on Monday as a âsenior adviserâ with a White House office, Politico noted back in July not only that his influence had risen sharply over the course of the campaign but that he had also emerged as a key liaison to âŚAdelson.
The young New York City real estate and media mogul, who is married to Trumpâs daughter Ivanka, has become the most powerful operative atop the campaign in the month since the candidateâs children banded together and forced the ouster of Corey Lewandowski and his âLet Trump be Trumpâ approach.
Now Kushner is making key hires, fine-tuning and sharpening Trumpâs speeches and serving as the central emissary behind the scenes, meeting privately last month with House Speaker Paul Ryan, having direct conversations with billionaire Sheldon Adelson and asserting influence on everything from Trumpâs search for a running mate â he pushed hard for Newt Gingrich, large at Adelsonâs behest â to his tweets.[Emphasis added.]
In the electionâs aftermath, as Trump touted Kushner as a possible mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, The New York Times noted in a profile of the young heir that he âhas become Mr. Trumpâs intermediary with a variety of important Israeli and Jewish American players, including Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Dermer and wealthy donors like Sheldon Adelson, the Nevada casino magnate. He brokered a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu in September and sat in on it.â
Kushner has neither been a frequent visitor to Israel nor has he publicly expressed his own views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the Times article reported that he has known âNetanyahu casually since childhood through is father, Charles Kushner, a real estate tycoon who has been active in business and philanthropy in Israel. And he is friends with Nir Barkat, the [rightwing] mayor of Jerusalem.â And Kushnerâs family foundation, of which he is a director, has itself contributed to Jewish settlements on the West Bank. These settlements include Beit El, a radical religious community near Ramallah for which Friedman is the chief U.S. fund-raiser, and Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva, which the Israeli government defunded for inciting âprice tagâ attacks on Palestinians. Earlier this week, Haaretz reported that the foundation has given several hundred thousand dollars to institutions sponsored by Chabad, adding that, âIn Israel, the movement is affiliated with the political right wing, and its followers tend to be staunch supporters of the settler movement.â
The Adelsons themselves have supported the settlements through contributions to the Central Fund of Israel, although, like the Kushners, that support has paled in comparison to the tens of millions of dollars in philanthropy to hospitals and other institutions inside the Green Line as well as their backing for the Birthright program that sends thousands of young Jewish Americans to Israel each year. Adelson has never seemed bothered by the idea that Israel should annex most or all of the West Bank, as well as East Jerusalem. In recent years, the couple has also been the biggest funder of the Zionist Organization of America, which opposes the two-state solution despite Netanyahuâs nominal support for the idea. Significantly, for the first time since the George W. Bush administration, the Republican Party dropped any reference to the two-state solution from its platform last summer, a reflection of the influence of Adelsons and the RJC, as well as Christians United for Israel and other Christian Zionist groups.
Early Courtship
Despite his taunting of Rubio for being Adelsonâs âperfect little puppetâ in October 2015 and his boasts of independence to the RJC two months later, Trump himself was actively pursuing Adelsonâs financial support since at least that November. According to Politico:
âŚ[S]ources close to the Trump campaign said that it went to great lengths to cast the candidate as an Israel supporter to appeal to [Paul] Singer [who opposed Trump until his election], Adelson and other similarly minded megadonors. In its interactions with Adelsonâs representatives, the campaign highlighted a campaign ad Trump cut in 2013 urging Israeli voters to reelect their hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a favorite of Adelsonâs. âWe had really tried to promote Trump as pro-Israel,â the source said. âHeâs always wanted Adelson money.â
Despite the embarrassment at the RJC meeting last December, the Adelsons apparently began courting Trump in earnest in just a couple of weeks later when the three of them met for a private get-together after which the casino magnate declared the candidate âvery charming.â Itâs unclear whether Kushner or Dermer were also present, but the main subject was Jerusalem and Israel. âHe had talked about potentially dividing Jerusalem and Israel [at the RJC meeting], so I talked about Israel because with our newspaper, my wife being Israeli, we are the few who know more about Israel than people who donât,â Adelson told Business Insider immediately afterwards. Trump was clearly pleased, tweeting: âSheldon knows that nobody will be more loyal to Israel than Donald Trump.â They apparently kept in touch over the following six months as, one by one, the candidates who made support for Israel a centerpiece of their foreign policy platforms fell by the wayside.
On May 5âtwo days after the Daily Mail interview about Trumpâs support for the settlements and three weeks before the Ohio primary that clinched him the nominationâAdelson announced his support for Trump, telling one reporter that he thought the presumptive nominee âwill be good for Israel.â
Putin may indeed be holding some of the strings attached to the president-elect. But, as puppeteers, the Adelsons have likely attached a few of their own. Look for them at the inauguration next week.
One year ago, President Donald Trumpâs inauguration broke records â not in turnout, but in inaugural donations.
Trump pulled in $107 million in individual contributions, nearly doubling President Barack Obamaâs 2009 record of $53 million. With the donations came a set of perks for top donors â âintimateâ dinners with Vice President Mike Pence; exclusive luncheons with Cabinet appointees and congressional leaders; tickets to inaugural balls, dinners and luncheons with appearances by Trump.
The money came flooding in from corporate executives, owners of U.S. sports teams and other wealthy benefactors. And this year, some came calling back.
The Center for Responsive Politics assessed Trumpâs relationships with his top donors a year after the January 20, 2017 inauguration. Some now hold ambassador positions while others have developed close relationships with the administration.
Inaugural donors
The Adelsons (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Chief among the top donors was Sheldon Adelson, a GOP megadonor and CEO of the largest casino company in the United States, Las Vegas Sands Corp. He doled out $5 million for Trumpâs inauguration fund.
The donation was not only Trumpâs largest inaugural contribution, but the largest individual donation made to any presidential inaugural committee. He and his wife, Miriam Adelson, also donated nearly $83 million to Republicans in the 2016 election.
In the past year Adelson has pressed Trump to follow through on his campaign pledge to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a move Trump announced in December.
âThe Adelsons reportedly have been disappointed in Trumpâs failure to keep a campaign pledge to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem on his first day in office,â wrote the Las Vegas Review-Journal after Adelsonâs October meeting with Trump. The paper is owned by the Adelson family.
(Home Depot CEOÂ Bernie Marcus, who donated $7 million to Trumpâs campaign effort but was not an inaugural donor, also has a vested interest in the region as founder of the Israel Democracy Institute).
But he is not the only inaugural donor who may have turned his contribution into special access to the administration.
In April, coal baron Robert Murray, who donated $300,000 to the inauguration, gave Trump a detailed to-do list of environmental rollbacks, according to The New York Times. Since then, the administration is on track to check off most of Murrayâs wish list.
The son of R.W. Habboush, a Venezuelan lobbyist who donated $666,000 to the inauguration, sat in on meetings about sanctions on Venezuela.
In the past year, a series of Trump donors or their close relatives have also been appointed U.S. ambassadors.
Notable among them is Robert Wood Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets. Johnson donated $1 million to the inauguration. In August, he was sworn in as the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Joseph Craft III, president and CEO of Alliance Resource Partners, was another million-dollar donor to the inaugural committee. His wife, Kelly Knight Craft, was sworn in as the U.S. ambassador to Canada in September.
Doug Manchester, owner of Manchester Financial Group and another $1 million inaugural donor, was nominated for a position as the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas in May. Manchester is now awaiting a re-nomination from Trump because of a Senate rule.
Campaign donors
Many of the top inaugural donors also donated millions in support of Trumpâs presidential campaign.
Trumpâs top campaign donor, Robert Mercer, the billionaire co-CEO of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, poured more than $15 million into outside groups to get Trump elected. Mercer also donated $1 million to the Trump inaugural committee. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel donated $1 million to Trumpâs campaign efforts and $100,000 to the inauguration.
Each were top campaign donors and each held close relationships to the administration.
Of the more than $400 million raised to elect Trump, about $50 million was raised by Trumpâs top 13 contributors (below) â many of whom have found themselves in the Trump administrationâs inner circle.
Some like Linda McMahon, owner of McMahon Ventures and co-founder of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) empire, donated over $6 million to getting Trump elected. Much of that was donated to Trump-aligned super PACs, such as Future45 and Rebuilding America Now.
McMahon was later appointed administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration.
In 2009, Dallas banker Andrew Beal, who donated $2.1 million toward Trumpâs presidential bid and $1 million for the inauguration, worked with Carl Ichan in an attempt to take control of the bankrupt Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. Ichan served as an advisor in the early months of the administration until he resigned ahead of a story detailing potential conflicts of interest.
Others toted close relationships to the administration like Stephen Feinburg, who donated $1.5 million to campaign efforts and had a close military ear in the Trump administration. That was before ex-White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannonâs departure from the administration.
Many of Trumpâs top donors have stepped into the political spotlight in the wake of Trump and Bannonâs public feud.
Contributors like Feinburg, Thiel and Marcus â Trumpâs second largest campaign donor â held close relationships to Bannon.
Some of them, such as GOP megadonors Adelson and the Mercer family, have since distanced themselves from Bannon in support of Trump. Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire daughter of Robert Mercer who runs the family business, severed ties with Bannon in a January statement to The Washington Post.
âI support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected,â Rebekah Mercer said. âMy family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements.â
The Genovese-Gambino owned S&A Concrete were involved in building the Trump Towers in Manhattan. Donald Trump used Roy Cohn as his attorney and Cohn has also worked for former Genovese boss Tony Salerno, Gambino boss Carmine Galante, and John Gotti. Atlantic City was built up by the mafia and is where Trump built his casino. The mafia held one of their earliest meetings there in 1929 known as the Atlantic City Conference including Italian, Jewish, and Irish mafia bosses. Donald Trump purchased part of the property for his casino from the mafia hitman Salvatore Testa. The mafia launder their personal criminal profits through casinos and have run the casinos in Atlantic City since its beginnings. Robert Libutti frequented Trumpâs Plaza Hotel and Casino and was an associate of the Gambino crime family and friend of John Gotti. Trump and Libutti can be seen together in video. Robert Libuttiâs daughter Edith further revealed his relations with Trump as friends in an interview. Donald Trump is an associate of the Five Families and Philly Mob and Prince Vittorio Emanuele IV of Savoy is the primary owner of the Genovese crime family. The Savoy family has a Savoy-Genovese noble branch and the Savoy family hold the title of Prince of Naples where the Genovese crime boss Vito Genovese was from. Prince Roffredo Gaetani dated Ivana Trump and he is a hidden top owner of the Gambino crime family. Prince Roffredo Gaetani faked his death and has been hiding out in Switzerland with Prince Vittorio. Prince Vittorio has been investigated for racketeering, corruption, and exploitation of prostitution as well as charged with murder in the past. It was the Savoy family that put the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in power. Atlantic City where Trump owned his casino is mostly controlled by the Philly Mob currently headed up by the mafia boss Joey Merlino.
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/22/nyregion/reputed-mob-leader-among-15-indicted-on-racketeering-counts.html?mcubz=1
According to the 29-count indictment, the Genovese group infiltrated concrete companies to control the construction of high-rise buildings in Manhattan, including Trump Plaza.
Two months later, Trump Management, represented by Roy M. Cohn, turned around and sued the United States government for $100 million (roughly $500 million in todayâs terms), asserting that the charges were âirresponsible and baseless.â
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/john-gotti-thug-kid-untouchable-boss-article-1.476181
Gotti was arrested after a year on the lam. His grateful bosses hired lawyer-fixer Roy Cohn to see what he could do, and Cohn could do a lot. He got the case knocked down to attempted manslaughter, and Gotti wound up doing less time for killing â two years â than he had done for a hijacking that involved $7,000 worth of womenâs dresses.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/29/us/anthony-fat-tony-salerno-80-a-top-crime-boss-dies-in-prison.html?mcubz=1&mcubz=1
Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, the rough-talking, cigar-chomping boss of the Genovese crime family who rose from running numbers in East Harlem to rigging construction bids on Manhattan skyscrapers, died Monday night, Federal prison officials said yesterday.
Roy M. Cohn, Mr. Salernoâs lawyer, described his client as a âsports gambler.â
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/NJGamingReport.pdf
https://www.wmagazine.com/story/ivana-trump-first-lady-melania-trump
Donald Trump and girlfriend Melania Knauss are joined by Trumpâs former wife, Ivana, and her boyfriend, Roffredo Gaetani
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/italian-justice-the-prince-and-the-prostitutes-6097514.html
He believes the former prince is the leader of a criminal gang involved with illegal gambling and prostitution and more.