Who is Carter Page, and why we should care?

Politics & Elections
1

for starters:

Gazprom? my horsesh*** browser isn’t letting me copy and paste from this wingnut site, but he’s got heavy ties to Russian energy interests, including Gazprom, and has been quoted to be in favor of lifting sanctions against Russia, while BLAMING the US for Russia’s ‘rescue’ of the Ukraine.

the has lots of crazy quotes attributed to him, and his very existence should have been made much more of by the TV media, which, of course, has ignored his peculiarly Russian love affair.

just the tip of the Page iceberg, from above:

Page did not respond to questions from The Post. In an interview this year with Bloomberg News, he hinted that Trump’s election could be a boost for some of his Russian associates who have been hurt by U.S. sanctions imposed after Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. “There’s a lot of excitement in terms of the possibilities for creating a better situation,” Page told the news service.

National Review has some interesting insight, along with revelatory quotes:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/433613/

this guy is one of Trump’s “top” foreign policy advisors, who bragged about how good this will be for his own business. here’s one of his typically lunatic observations, from the NR:

Page represented Ukraine as a runaway province of Russia, and excused the Kremlin’s aggression by saying that the United States would take similar action if Quebec tried to secede from Canada. “Although Canada is slightly smaller than Ukraine in terms of the population living across the U.S. border,” wrote Page, “Ukraine is similarly important to Russia in terms of trade and other aspects of its relationship. From a U.S. perspective, Washington would likely come down hard if Russia precipitated in such a destabilizing revolution in Canada. Potentially much harder than Russia is responding now.”

you get the picture…

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/the-mystery-of-trumps-man-in-moscow-214283

…while Page might not be helping Trump, Trump has been a significant help to Page. Since being named by Trump as an advisor, Page, who has spent his career trying to put together energy deals in Russia and the former Soviet Union, has finally begun to be noticed in the region. He is being treated in Russia as a person with potentially important ties in America. “He’s an extremely well-informed, authoritative expert on Russia,” says Mikhail Leontiev, a pro-Kremlin talking head and spokesman for Rosneft, Russia’s state oil giant. “People really respect him in this industry. He’s a very serious guy, and he has a good reputation.” According to the Yahoo report, U.S. intelligence believes Page had an audience with top Russian officials—including Rosneft head Igor Sechin—during a summer trip to Moscow. From what I could find about him, it’s hard to imagine he could have secured those meetings without that mention by Trump.

…

lots of intriguing stuff here…I’ll end with this>>>>read the article

As I started looking into Page, I began getting calls from two separate “corporate investigators” digging into what they claim are all kinds of shady connections Page has to all kinds of shady Russians. One is working on behalf of various unnamed Democratic donors; the other won’t say who turned him on to Page’s scent. Both claimed to me that the FBI was investigating Page for allegedly meeting with Igor Sechin and Sergei Ivanov, who was until recently Putin’s chief of staff—both of whom are on the sanctions list—when Page was in Moscow in July for that speech.

should/could this be a big story? will it affect the beyond Teflon Trump? who knows. it would seem worthy of at least 1/10th the coverage of the totally faux CGI optics scandal (and what happened to the true to life Biondi bribery brouhaha, for that matter?), not to mention the no-smoking-email story fiasco.

both of these concoctions were played to Swiftboat dimensions by the endlessly willing mainstream media, who are only too happy to exaggerate the wildest claims of the Clinton Scandal Industry, who saw a graving train pulling into the station almost 25 years ago, and are riding it to the hilt. are you reading this, Larry Klaman?

will the media ever do its job?

don’t hold your breath.

2

***Over the years since CGI began, in fact, its membership and operations were resolutely nonpartisan, with the participation of many Republicans and independents who shared the desire to do good for the world. Republican businessmen like John Chambers of Cisco Systems joined CGI, provided financial support, and undertook the “commitments to action” that were at the heart of its mission. Republican politicians like John McCain, Mitt Romney and Carly Fiorina came to the annual conference and offered high praise for its work.

But that was then — and now, with Hillary Clinton as the historic nominee of the Democratic Party, what Republicans once lauded as a font of good works is jeered as a sewer of venality. While scarcely a word of the criticism is true, that doesn’t matter as much as the opportunity to smear the Clintons for political advantage. The most illuminating example was a widely publicized press release that falsely depicted a 2005 CGI “commitment” by Bahrain’s crown prince as a bribe to sway the secretary of state in 2010. Like so many other slanders surrounding the Clintons’ philanthropy, that “expose” from the right-wing claque Judicial Watch was a clumsy fraud, yet the media fell for it — and reputations were damaged.

Both Bill and Hillary Clinton are accustomed to such attacks after a quarter-century under the national spotlight. As he sometimes quotes, “Politics ain’t beanbag.” But the vicious attacks on the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative don’t only injure those two battle-hardened politicians. The collateral damage includes many decent, hardworking people who have toiled for years on foundation and CGI projects, including thousands of volunteers, whose pride in helping humanity has been turned to ashes by this sustained propaganda campaign.

Pouring abuse on the people who do hard work to save lives is vile — and as James Carville observed recently, “somebody is going to hell for this.”***

3

We’ve talked about Carter Page before, in the “Trump is a Putin Patsy” thread and elsewhere -

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb//showpost.php?p=19525568&postcount=368

and

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19649589&postcount=7162
Carter Page is a guy with long financial ties to Gazprom (Russia’s state oil company). He’s also an advisor to Donald Trump.

He gave a speech in Moscow a few months, agreeing with a Russian student that America’s focus on democracy is hypocritical.

You can see the whole speech at this link -

Dude’s a lousy public speaker.

Page explicitly told the Russian audience that he was on their side in disdaining America’s “liberalism”.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/2016-trump-putin-russia-gop-platform-214074

So that’s Republican Donald Trump’s foreign policy advisor, Carter Page, call America lying hypocrites in front of a Russian audience.

Page’s speech also included the wish that the US might ease the sanctions which were imposed on Russia following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Page hoped that doing so would allow a better American partnership with Gazprom.

This is notable because it was only a week later that Donald Trump’s team insisted that the GOP platform soften its language to Russia over the Ukraine invasion. Originally, the GOP platform would have supported sending arms to the Ukrainian resistance. Trump’s people insisted on removing that language. It was the only change Trump insisted on in the whole document.

So really, Carter Page is another of Trump’s advisors who have been linked to Russian money. He’s another string in the Russian’s attempt to influence Donald Trump.

I’m pleased if the Feds are really looking into him.

4

will be spending some time there when I feel like hitting myself over the head…not tonight, though

amazing how the coverage on this venal opportunist gets almost no coverage

perhaps when the shootings have lost their shiny thing luster for the media, and the debate hoopla dies down, this might get a small percentage of the faux CGI/email/health Swiftboating scandals.

5

That doesn’t even make sense. Yes, Canada would respond forcibly if Quebec tried (illegally) to leave Canada, but why would the U.S. invade Quebec? The comparison is stupid.

It’s also stupid, because, since 1991, Ukraine was not part of Russia. The invasion is of one sovereign making war against another. If Quebec had been independent since 1991, and then Canada decided to invade, you can be sure the U.S. would object.

Page is evil, and Trump is stupid, and by such as these are we served!

6

Carter Page was on MSNBC yesterday and claims that he’s being victimized by the Clintons and the MSM. It’s interesting that some of the quotes attributed by Page has had the source material scrubbed from the internet.

Here is the interview: Carter Page: ‘I don’t deny’ meeting with Russian ambassador

http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/10/02/2015/new-slaves-global-edition-russia-iran-and-segregation-world-economy

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3462411-2017-02-12-Letter-to-DoJ-Re-Election-Fraud-Final.html#document/p1

7

Thanks for booking The Strand. Everybody should be watching out for Carter page.

8

It’s all about the oil, isn’t it? All of that sweet, sweet light crude gonna come gushing up out of the frozen Arctic. The Prime Minister of Exxon had a deal all worked out with Vlad the Impaler, all the 'T’s dotted and the "I"s crossed, and then Obama gets all worked up about Russia asserting her traditional control of her “spheres of influence”. Oh, Crimea river!

That’s why. That’s why the trajectory of the shit has intersected the locus of the fan. Oil. Back when they started this. Arctic oil was a spigot stuck into the snow, turn the tap, and the money comes out.

Money Russia needs. And needs bad! When was the last time you bought anything that came from Russia? When was the last time anybody bought anything that came from Russia?

Funny part? Russia now wants to get into a market that has Stage Three leprosy. Even the Saudis are nervously looking to invest in solar and renewables. That oil was liquid gold when they started down this road, now, not so much, and tomorrow? Tickski, tockski, my droogies!

Oil. That’s it, that’s all. Oil.

9

Here’s an extensive interview with that lying weasel (Carter Page) on CNN’s 360 with Anderson Cooper.

That cringe-worthy grimace and truth-shy response to every question is pathological.

10

Carter Page did neither himself nor Trump any favors with the Hayes and Cooper interviews. He came off as a nervous, evasive shill for Vladimir Putin, on whom he appears to have a crush that makes Trump’s fanboying of Putin look like open antagonism.

Just weird, odd, and not remotely credible.

Democrats should be mentioning this at least parenthetically in their remarks about investigating Trump. It does seem to have dropped off the radar (and shouldn’t have). (Pam Bondi of Florida, in case that’s not clear.)

11

His constant smiling was odd. Duper delight? Amused at the bullshit coming out of his mouth?

Burn the oil, melt the icecaps, get more oil. It’s basically a Captain Planet episode in real life.

12

Saw that constantly shit-eating-smiler on NPR recently, telling Judy Woodruff that he never had any contact with Russians.

13

I saw a presentation given by him on RT, read a Politico report on him, and skimmed an article he wrote comparing American foreign policy towards Russia to the enslavement of Africans.

The upshot of all of this is that the man is nuts, like literally nuts. But it also seems plausible that Trump was never even aware of his existence and that he may just have been hired on because the guy has a PHD, is a foreign specialist, and he sent in his resume when Trump was forming his initial team. Until the media actually pointed him out, it’s quite possible that no in the campaign even knew he existed.

As much as I may dislike Trump and find him to also be a nutball and idiot, Page really does seem like he might be more of a fanboy than the real deal, and he’s probably milking the limelight for everything it’s worth, now that he’s back in the news, to try and get his business off the ground. The media will probably love him, because he makes Trump look like an idiot, and is probably the sort to start coming up with bigger and better lies about how Trump was tied to the Russians, if it keeps him in the news.

I don’t know whether to be hopeful that Page will take Trump down or worry that he starts to spread so much obvious BS that it helps to turn Page into the scapegoat. On the whole, I’d probably recommend against paying attention to Page since the risk outweighs the reward. Trump can take himself out without Page’s involvement. There’s no sense risking that Page will take the idiot nutball crown from Trump and make that the story which everyone remembers about all of this.

14

Page was sent letters by Trump’s campaign lawyers to cease and desist. He denied having knowledge of those letters when asked about them by Andersen Cooper.