Made me larf.
What specifically are you having trouble believing?
Question of the hour seems to be Did Trump ever actually meet Putin. Just recently, he said he had never met him. But a couple of sites I visit claim that he is on record on at least two occasions saying he did meet Putin. There were no links offered, which is unusual, so I do not put this out there as solid fact.
What kind of a moron says something like this publicly? (asking Putin to hack Clinton’s emails)
And this moron wants the nuclear codes?
OK, a bit more clarity. According to this from Time
Trump claimed to have met Putin when both were on 60 Minutes, but that wasn’t true, which is to say, he’s not lying now because he was lying then. OK, then.
However, this:
from the National Press Club luncheon is cited as Trump claiming he met Putin in Moscow and found him a delightful chap, etc. Only trouble with this cite is that its a video of the whole hour long thing, so if you want to verify, you gotta listen to all of it. I pass.
So, anyway, in the first instance, maybe he was telling the truth about not meeting Putin because he was lying when he said he did. Might also be true in the second instance, I suppose. But he was lying, the only question being what he was lying about. Frankly, at this point, I doubt he even knows himself.
“If you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember as much.”
- Mark Twain
Trump continues to dodge questions about Russian investment, even though as has been noted previously, Don Jr. claimed that the Russians were giving them a lot of investment money and Kremlin official spokespersons directed further questions about the matter to the kid (which is weird, right?)
Today, he was asked directly if Russians had invested in Trump’s business:
Yeah, I’ll take “Answers that don’t actually address the question, Alex”.
This thread is not about Romney or about respect or disrespect for Obama. Those are perfectly acceptable discussion topics that need to be taken to a new thread.
[ /Moderating ]
Maybe there are investors, but not “oligarchs”? Just small investors, which he tends to prefer, because they don’t have lawyers on retainer.
Can anyone doubt that he’d be willing to sell that information if the price is right? (To ISIS, to the Russians, to the North Koreans…to anyone.)
Apparently this is actually going to happen. The briefers presumably have some discretion over what they reveal, but:
A veteran candidate briefer from the CIA on Trump and classified information.
I’d take that as question too narrow to get the complete answer. It’s completely believable there are no other equity investors in, IOW joint owners of, The Trump Organization besides Trump. And Russian oligarchs have no particular interest in acting as banks nor Trump any shortage of banks to borrow from, so debt owed by TTO to Russian oligarchs is equally unlikely. It’s highly unlikely that Russian oligarchs have ‘investments in TTO’.
It doesn’t mean he actually has no dealing with Russian oligarchs (or other entities there), through for example joint investments by TTO and others in projects, etc. But that wouldn’t be an investment in TTO, which is what was asked.
Anyway Trump seemed to say pretty clearly he has no dealings with Russian entities. If someone can prove he has significant ones, they’ll show him to be a liar (though it hasn’t had a dramatic impact up to now when Trump was shown to be lying).
I think this is mainly a gambit to bring back the topic of Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns, which should be a problem for Trump, by putting it in terms of the hot issue of the moment so it’s not ‘old news’.
? I thought the WaPo article had already been linked.
But it doesn’t disprove Trump’s statement in the press conference (other link above) particularly in respect of the joint investment in a ‘Trump Tower’ in Moscow which he says never came to fruition, and AFAIK that hasn’t been contradicted.
I wasn’t trying to be Clintonian 
with has and significant. I just doubt it’s going to hurt Trump with persuadable voters to show that he intended (‘yeah we wanted to’) joint investment in a building project in Moscow some years ago that never happened, nor that Trump getting ‘a portion’ of $14mil, some guy said, as part of deciding where to hold the Miss U pageant some years ago is significant (if we’re not going to play the reglar feller game, ie ‘by cracky that’s a lot of money to me!’), as proof that Trump is lying in saying he has no dealings with Russians.
I’d stick with Trump’s zero, zero answer about Russian investors in TTO being overwhelmingly likely to be true, significant dealings of TTO there now have not been demonstrated, and the whole line of questioning is mainly to bring back up his refusal to release tax returns while dodging the ‘old news’ label (though I don’t have a problem with ‘old news’ if it’s stuff a politician stonewalled into being ‘old news’, which is the case here).
In fact, Donald Trump does have a shortage of banks to deal with, because of his habit of leaving his investors high and dry. This WSJ article mentions it for one -
http://www.wsj.com/articles/when-donald-trump-needs-a-loan-he-chooses-deutsche-bank-1458379806
Trump was asked, “Have any oligarchs invested in your business”?
He replied, “No, I own the business”.
Just because he owns the business - a point no one disputes or cares about - doesn’t mean that other people have not invested in his business. It certainly doesn’t mean that the business doesn’t owe money to anyone.
Trump dodged the question and straight up lied about his business relations with Russia.
In addition to the matter that CarnalK linked, proving that Trump is lying, there’s also this item from the NYT -
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/us/politics/donald-trump-soho-settlement.html?_r=0
Discussing Russian and Kazakhstan involvement in Trump’s Manhatten projects.
The article goes on to talk about how Felix Satar was arrested for stabbing a man and also for stock manipulation. Later on, he turned states’ evidence and helped the FBI break up a criminal group. But he continued his association with Donald Trump -
As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo points out, the above information only came out because Trump was being sued by a bunch of other investors in his Trump Soho project, who claimed they were being lied to about the state of the finances.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-putin-yes-it-s-really-a-thing
In short: Donald Trump is pathalogical liar and con man, with longstanding ties to shady Russian businesses.
We’ve provided actual examples of Donald Trump lying his face off about his connections to Russian business men - for example, claiming he didn’t even know Felix Sater, a man he’s on record of knowing for years.
It won’t change the minds of the non-persuadable voters who don’t care about Donald’s pathological lying and shady Russian friends. It won’t probably won’t change the minds of Donald’s apologists. They should be ashamed of themselves.
That’s no reason for the rest of us to let up on pointing out the truth.
He’s claiming it was a joke? :rolleyes: Yeah, like joking about a bomb while you’re in the TSA line, eh?
Don’t forget that other Great Republican who told Russia “the bombing starts in five minutes”.
I don’t disagree with the last statement, minus the psychoanalysis, Trump lies a lot.
Also I understand that people in a campaign or caught up in it have to flog the issue of the day. I don’t expect Democratic operatives to come out near the end of the day and say ‘OK, there’s really not that much here’. I get that.
But, I don’t think there’s much there in terms of proving Trump lied significantly in what he said as related by the Slate article. Nor was he evasive particularly. I’m not ruling out that somebody will prove he lied to a degree that will change the opinion of people who don’t already think he’s a ‘pathological liar’, but the info in the WaPo and NYT articles doesn’t IMO.
On TTO’s funding, the WSJ article noted that some major banks don’t want to deal with him. That is not the same as saying he doesn’t have plenty of banks to borrow from, which he does, there are lots of banks. The likelihood he is borrowing from Russian oligarchs is near zero, people like that are not seeking low returns like you get from lending money to other big companies. And what Trump was clearly saying, in ordinary business language, is that he is sole owner of TTO, IOW there are no other equity investors, which is also highly likely to be true. This is just by way of information. That was a silly question basically. The fact that TTO is a solely owned entity and doesn’t borrow from foreign/private entities is pretty much a no brainer. The right question would instead have been what (or whether) TTO owns or partly owns assets in Russia, and if so jointly with whom. Trump seemed pretty clearly to say no, but wasn’t 100% directly asked that. The most specific question was the wrong one, by a political reporter who doesn’t know how to ask the right question about such a topic, a common problem.
And the other articles referred to specify cases where TTO tried to make investment there some years in the past. Trump said, per the Slate article, ‘yeah we tried to’, but didn’t. If Trump was basically lying on that, it’s yet to be demonstrated to a level which would move the needle with people who aren’t going to go semi-ape shit, with due respect, at any suggestion Trump isn’t the devil incarnate. But about equal numbers of voters now favor Trump to opposing him when Clinton is the alternative. I don’t see the Russian dealings thing or Trump’s statements about it as very decisive in changing that if the media doesn’t come up with a lot more. And the ‘treason’ thing by Democrats wrt Trump’s dumb comment about Russian hacking risks overplaying that and looking desperate, IMO.
PS to add, or it would have been relevant to ask if Russian entities are joint investors with TTO in any assets inside or outside Russia. But the question asked was not investments ‘in your business’. It was any ‘oligarchs who have investments in the Trump Organization.’ Trump’s answer to that too narrow question was highly likely correct.
Now hold on just a damn minute, there; can you prove that wasn’t John Barron?