Collusion

if not collusion, how bout useful idiocy?

mediaite:

In his first major interview since leaving civil service, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman shared a less than a charitable description of President Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin, calling him a “useful idiot” to the Russian president.
[…]
“President Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of Putin,” he says. Useful idiot is a term commonly used to describe dupes of authoritarian regimes; fellow traveler, in Vindman’s description, is a person who shares Putin’s loathing for democratic norms.
But do you think Russia is blackmailing Trump? “They may or may not have dirt on him, but they don’t have to use it,” he says. “They have more effective and less risky ways to employ him. He has aspirations to be the kind of leader that Putin is, and so he admires him. He likes authoritarian strongmen who act with impunity, without checks and balances. So he’ll try to please Putin.”
Vindman continues, “In the Army we call this ‘free chicken,’ something you don’t have to work for—it just comes to you. This is what the Russians have in Trump: free chicken.”

lest we forget we WERE warned

also happening in florida orlando sun sentinel: Hours after the announcement that billionaire Mike Bloomberg raised more than $20 million to offset fines and court costs for Florida felons so they can vote, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz appeared on the Lou Dobbs show and called the donation little more than a political bribe. In the appearance on the Fox News show on Tuesday, Gaetz, R-Fla., called on Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to open an investigation into what he called “vote buying” for helping to pay the fines for a reported 31,000 felons. […] The Florida Rights Restitution Council had raised about $5 million before Bloomberg made calls to raise almost $17 million more, according to Bloomberg advisers, who weren’t authorized to speak on the record because the announcement hadn’t been made yet. The money is targeted for felons who registered to vote while the law was in question and who owe $1,500 or less. That accounts for about 31,100 people, Bloomberg advisers say. In a state that decided the 2000 presidential election by 537 votes, that could be critical in a year when polls show President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in a dead heat. Organizers for the group say they aren’t targeting people registered with a particular political party. Moody has not responded publicly to Gaetz’s request, but on Wednesday morning, Moody recused herself from a clemency board vote on Desmond Meade, a felon who led the push for the 2018 constitutional amendment. Meade was denied a full… Read more »

see where judge ordered  eric trump to show up to be deposed by NY atty gen.  wonder if this quote reported by vanity fair in 2017 will come up:

“So when I got in the cart with Eric,” Dodson says, “as we were setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks—because of the recession, the Great Recession—have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.’ And this is what he said. He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’ Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty interesting.”

 ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’

how interesting, eric, tell us more

NEW THREAD