Why Was Trump’s Own National Security Adviser So Stumped by Putin’s Hold on Trump?
Why Was Trump’s Own National Security Adviser So Stumped by Putin’s Hold on Trump?
There’s no mystery about Trump's deference to the Russian leader. Here's an abridged list of potential reasons for it.
Donald Trump’s former national security adviser says he was mystified by Vladimir Putin's hold on his old boss. That's mystifying.
In a new book, retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster relates the mystery he carried with him as he left the administration – one he confided to his wife in early 2018.
“After over a year in this job,” he told her, “I cannot understand [Vladimir] Putin’s hold on Trump.”
It sounds as if McMaster decided to play diplomatically dumb. There’s nothing mysterious about Putin’s hold on Trump at all.
As his careers in business and politics have demonstrated, Trump has no discernible beliefs or scruples. He approaches life as a series of transactions, guided exclusively by the interests of his bank account, his ego, or both.
Trump’s Dealings With Putin’s Russia
Trump has conducted many transactions, over many years, with Putin’s Russia. Let’s review a few of them:
Trump SoHo
In 2006, the former president’s partners in the Trump SoHo hotel and condo project included a former official of the Soviet Union and a Russian who had confessed to felony fraud involving organized crime.
Real Estate
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. described the family business this way at a real estate conference: “In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets…We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
One especially lucrative example came in Florida that year. A Russian oligarch paid Trump $95 million for a Palm Beach mansion – a mansion Trump had bought for $41 million just four years earlier.
“I will demand that he put up the American flag – and the Russian flag can fly right under it,” Trump told CNBC at the time. His former lawyer, Michael Cohen, later wrote in his book that “Trump was convinced the real buyer of that house was Vladimir Putin” since he considered the oligarchs “just fronts for Putin.”
Golf Courses and Miss Universe
When American banks would not supply sufficient capital for Trump golf courses, the former president’s son, Eric, reportedly told a journalist in 2013 that Russian financiers would. (Eric Trump later denied saying that.)