The Trump campaign’s pro-Russian friends who live in the hills, overlooking the Budapest Bridge
Part 1 of a 3 part investigative report by András B. Göllner
“There must be some way out of here” said the joker to the thief. “There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief. Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth.
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”
“No reason to get excited”, the thief he kindly spoke. “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”.
–Nobel laurate, Bob Dylan All Along the Watchtower
Introduction
In an earlier 3 part report (András B. Göllner. „The Budapest Bridge”. Hungarian Free Press, April 13, 14, 21, 2017) I wrote about the cozy relationship between the Trump campaign and the people who are programming every move of a government, that Princeton Professor Jan Werner Müller has described as Moscow’s Trojan Horse within the transatlantic alliance. (Jan Werner Müller. „Moscow’s Trojan Horse”. Foreign Affairs. August 6, 2014.)
Madart / Megan Duncanson
Up to now, no one on the Trump campaign or in the White House has disowned the following words I attributed to J.D. Gordon, Chairman of the Trump campaign’s National Security team, who, on his last visit to Budapest, proclaimed that Mr. Orbán’s regime is a model for the new American President. “Orbán is one of the best world leaders in my opinion” said Gordon days after the Trump victory, and added that „The team of President-elect Donald Trump deeply admires the Hungarian leader. With Trump in the White House, a new chapter will be opened in American-Hungarian relations. Mr. Trump and Mr. Orbán will become good friends.” (See: Mandiner.hu. December 1, 2016; The Budapest Business Journal. December 2, 2016 and The Budapest Beacon. December 18, 2016)
Contrary to some of the critics of The Budapest Bridge, we did not suggest that Russia’s dumping of stolen property on the American political market – a claim, backed up by 17 separate US intelligence agencies, and their Western European counterparts – was the sole reason for Hillary Clinton’s defeat. Nor did we assert, that the entirety of the Trump campaign’s „anti – Hillary” strategy and tactics were off-shored. I simply stated the obvious: globalization, global supply chains, played a role in Donald Trump’s victory.
For the sake of Stephen F. Cohen and all left wing academics in America who look upon any criticism of Putin’s kleptocracy (copyright Karen Dawisha) as a right-wing, pro-Clinton, McCarthyite reflex, I would like to submit the following caveat: Strategic errors by the Clinton campaign team, especially during the home stretch, and in the critical battleground states and ridings, sloppy micro-polling and messaging, the public’s fatigue with establishment candidates, the communications style of the Democratic candidate, the after effects of the bitter rivalry between Clinton and Sanders supporters, the „mood of the electorate” and its preference for emotional rather than rational persuasion, all had a role to play in Clinton’s loss (never mind, that she garnered a plurality of the popular vote.) If anyone doubts, that Putin is a mafia-state operator, please read Karen Dawisha. Putin’s Kleptocracy. Simon and Schuster, New York. 2014. Anyone who doubts the Hungarian Prime Minister’s mafia-like political management credentials, please read Bálint Magyar. Post-Communist Mafia-State: The Case of Hungary, Budapest. CEU Press. 2016.)
I happen to agree with prominent Trump campaign associate, Roger Stone, who is one of the best known graduates of the Arthur J. Finkelstein School of political campaigning. Roger Stone has repeatedly told Americans, that a substantial part of the American electorate looks upon facts as boring. He reminded us often during the campaign, that not just the girls, but most of us, just wanna have fun, we want to be entertained rather than bombarded by facts.
Donald Trump was and for many he still is, a more entertaining person, than Hillary Rodham Clinton. If he wasn’t, why would CNN and the major networks, who are rightly mindful of ratings, spent so much time on him? But Steve Bannon also comes close to the truth, by proclaiming that: „The Democrats have lost sight of what the world’s about. The media has no f***ing idea what’s going on. Donald speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates with people in a very visceral way.” (The Hollywood Reporter, November 18, 2016)
But most importantly, I agree with one of the greatest political economists of the 20th century, Karl Polányi, who 73 years ago, and even before Hillary saw the light of day, pointed to the fatal flaw in HRC’s electoral armour: “Nowhere has liberal philosophy failed so conspicuously as in its understanding of the problems of change” (Karl Polányi. The Great Transformation. The quote is taken from the text edited by R.M. MacIver and published by Beacon Press in 1957. pg. 33. The Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Christopher Hedges says more or less the same thing, but to me, less convincingly. See: Christopher Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class. Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.)
Having said the above, I’d like to point to the 7 basic pillars of The Budapest Bridge that remain standing two weeks after I shined my journalistic flashlight on them.
- Mr. Trump publicly encouraged the Russians to commit a crime.
- Mr. Trump publicly encouraged an anti-American „fence” – WikiLeaks – to dump stolen property onto the American political market.
- The FBI head, Comey has publicly confirmed under oath, that there were off-shore, third Party participants in the Russian effort to disrupt the democratic process in America. His statement has been strengthened by other American and European intelligence agencies. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has stated more or less the same thing, when he denied that the Russian government was the source of his e-mail dump.
- The Hungarian PM’s top political strategist in Budapest, and a long time Trump associate, Arthur J. Finkelstein and his handpicked crew in the US and in Budapest, were in regular contact with the Trump team. Finkelstein and Árpád Habony created a London based company at the start of the Trump campaign, with the express purpose of lending support to right-wing extremist groups, who are contesting elections in the transatlantic alliance, including the US.
- Senator Jeff Sessions’ right hand man on the Trump campaign publicly stated, that Trump and his team look upon Putin’s Trojan Horse as the model for America (see above).
- The Russian secret service has shifted its European hub from Sofia to Budapest, after Viktor Orbán came to power in Hungary in 2010 in order to have easier access to the Western „battlefield” states. The access of these agents to the „battlefields of Europe and America” is greatly helped by the corrupt passport business, run out of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s office. Congressional or FBI acceptance of offers of help from Hungary’s secret services, to untangle the collusion between the Trump team and Budapest or London based operatives, would be tantamount to deputizing the criminals, in pursuit of their own arrests, and
- Neither the Trump campaign, the Russians, the Hungarian government, nor Finkelstein, his partners, or DBC Ltd have been able to destroy – refute with empirical evidence – any of the pillars of The Budapest Bridge. The only three things I had to correct since I published my report, were three typos and a couple of commas that were out of place.
In this follow up investigative report, we shift our focus. We shall direct our light on the most prominent of the hundreds of influential Western, and American extremists that moved into the hills overlooking the Budapest Bridge, in order to create havoc for members of the transatlantic community. We shall name, and highlight the motivations of the creatures who are busy destroying the values that millions have died to defend during the course of two world wars. (Among the dead, who sacrificed their lives, we include the millions of Russians who fought against the Aryan, white, supremacists who have found safe haven now under the wings of a regime that the Trump campaign has designated as its role model.)
To be continued tomorrow
András Göllner
