Fiona Hill
STONE?
MUSK?
bad code
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3 THEORIES
4 26
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AN 4 26
In March, Scottish journalist Andrew Neil — known for being a staunch conservative — expressed his frustration with U.S. President Donald Trump's foreign policy when he lamented, "I think, in some ways, he regards (Russian President Vladimir) Putin as more of an ally than he regards the United Kingdom or any of his European NATO allies."
Neil complained, "He slapped tariffs on all of his allies. He didn't put tariffs on Russia. And he's helped to bail out Russia now with what he's done on the price of oil."
Neil isn't the only one who views Trump as more favorable to Putin than to longtime North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies of the United States. MS NOW host Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman, lamented, during an April 7 rant, that "the Republicans I grew up with" who "believed in a strong west" have "vanished" and been replaced by admirers of Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
In an essay/opinion column published on April 7, the New York Times' Thomas B. Edsall laments that Trump's fondness for Putin hasn't gone away.
"Events over two days last month — Friday, March 6, and Saturday, March 7 — demonstrated President Trump's willingness to sacrifice American interests in subservience to President Vladimir Putin of Russia," Edsall argues. "On that Friday, the Washington Post reporters Noah Robertson, Ellen Nakashima and Warren P. Strobel revealed that 'Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East.' The next day, Trump attended the transfer at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware of the flag-draped coffins of six U.S. members of the Army Reserve killed by a kamikaze drone strike at the Shuaiba port in Kuwait. An inevitable, but unanswerable, question: Was the drone strike guided by information Russia provided to Iran?"
Edsall notes that the Trump White House staff "followed orders to tow Trump's line" on Putin and Iran.
"His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that the Russia-Iran intelligence sharing 'is not making any difference with respect to the military operations in Iran,'" Edsall explains. "She declined to say whether Trump has discussed the issue with Putin or whether the administration would pursue repercussions…. Trump's deference not just to Putin' but to other authoritarian leaders' has repeatedly and profoundly corrupted American foreign policy."
In an interview, Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland, told Edsall, "Trump does seem attracted to Putin as a strongman ruler. He seems more comfortable with — and gives more credence to — Putin than with leaders of America's democratic allies or with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine."
Former National Security Council (NSC) official Fiona Hill is also frustrated by Trump's affinity for Putin.
Hill recently told the BBC, "Well, I think the first thing to disavow everybody of is the idea that there is a relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. I think that's part of the problem, because Trump would like a relationship with Putin, and that's exactly why he doesn't criticize him. It's a kind of unrequited love of some description. You know, everyone keeps talking about bromance. He hasn't even got there. And you know, Putin is very good at playing hard to get, incredibly hard to get. And this drives Trump mad, because he never gets what he wants off Putin, which is really adulation, respect."
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useful idiot?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/elon-musk-fiona-hill-ron-desantis
badash
Florida GOP **Gov. Ron DeSantis** appears to be aligning with the increasingly powerful **Elon Musk**, as the richest man in the world is accused “transmitting a message” for Russian President **Vladimir Putin**.
On Monday DeSantis blasted Musk’s critics, including Ukraine, who were angered the billionaire had threatened to pull his SpaceX Starlink satellites away from Ukraine. The low earth orbit (LEO) satellites provide internet access to Ukraine and especially its military forces.
Despite the U.S. government having paid Musk $3 million for equipment and to keep the satellites over the war-torn country, Musk threatened to pull the hardware critical to the war effort.
He was quickly excoriated, and recently agreed to keep the satellites in place, at least for now.
DeSantis has generally avoided international issues, leading some to question where he stands. Many were surprised when the ultra-outspoken Florida governor not only was silent when Putin invaded Ukraine, but appeared to dodge questions about the illegal war. Politico at the time called his refusal to speak “eerie.” DeSantis has invested what were at the time about $300 million of his state’s pension funds in Russia, and refused to pull out.
Monday was different.
“When Russia invaded Ukraine, Elon Musk positioned his satellites over Ukraine and gave them these things. So they’ve actually been using his devices to be able to defend their country, and I guess some of the people in the government [of Ukraine] were attacking Musk,” DeSantis said Monday, as Florida Politics reported.
“And I’m just thinking to myself, ‘He’s doing this for free,’ ” DeSantis said. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Good Lord!”
“He’s provided that for them for free,” DeSantis continued. “And if you think about it, in a country that big, given what’s going on, that’s tens of millions of dollars that he’s effectively donated.”
READ MORE:... [twt vid] republican former U.S. Congressman Joe Walsh
https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/1582094061539688449...criticized DeSantis.
“Yet another leading Republican voice ‘admonishing’ Ukrainian officials. Republicans never admonish Putin. But they never hesitate to admonish Ukraine,” he said.
More Perfect Union reporter Jordan Zakarin observed: “Ron DeSantis choosing Elon Musk and Putin over the Ukraine is pretty on brand for a wannabe dictator who caters to billionaires.”
Musk reportedly had spoken to Putin before tweeting what many saw as pro-Putin remarks, but Musk denied the claim.
READ MORE: Ron DeSantis Pounded by WaPo Editorial Board for Latest Attempt to ‘Poison Democracy’
“Last week, Musk tweeted out his proposals for ending the war in Ukraine ― and they were very similar to what [Ian Bremmer] said Musk told him Putin wanted,” HuffPost reported.
Bremmer is a political scientist with an expert focus on Russia and the founder of a political risk research consulting firm. He has a PhD from Stanford where he wrote, “The politics of ethnicity: Russians in the Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, earlier on Monday Politico reported on “Fiona Hill, one of America’s most clear-eyed observers of Russia and Putin, who served as an adviser to former President Donald Trump and gained fame for her testimony in his first impeachment trial.”
“In the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Hill warned in an interview with POLITICO that whatPutin was trying to do was not only seize Ukraine but destroy the current world order. And she recognized from the start that Putin would use the threat of nuclear conflict to try to get his way.”
Politico adds that “despite the setbacks Russia has suffered on the battlefield, Hill thinks Putin is undaunted. She sees him adapting to new conditions, not giving up. And she sees him trying to get the West to accede to his aims by using messengers like billionaire Elon Musk to propose arrangements that would end the conflict on his terms.”
“Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin,” Hill told Politico.
“It’s very clear that Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin,” she says.
Watch DeSantis’ remarks above or at this link.
https://www.mediamatters.org/60-minutes/fiona-hill-tells-60-minutes-about-receiving-death-threats-after-she-was-targeted-roger
lESLIE STAHL (60 MINUTES CORRESPONDENT): When you took the job, I know that there were some of your friends who had urged you not to. I wonder if any of your friends stopped talking to you.
FIONA HILL: There were some people in the professional circles in which I move through certainly took, let's just say some took offense, frankly, at the fact that I had-- decided to give this. They had given me counsel not to do the job.And they, you know, actually did believe that I would be aiding and abetting something nefarious by joining the administration. I felt very strongly, however, that we were in a situation where we were to a confrontation with Russia that someone like myself, who was not political, someone who was an expert should step up and try to do something.
STAHL: Right after you started at the White House, there was a smear campaign against you. Public. Distressing I'm sure. What was that all about?
HILL: Well, I'm still trying to get to the bottom of some of that, to be honest.
(CLIP BEGINS)
ALEX JONES: He's got a major Soros mole discovered in the White House, breaking now--
(CLIP ENDS)
STAHL: May 2017, right-wing conspiracists launch an online campaign to discredit her.
(CLIP BEGINS)
ROGER STONE: George Soros has penetrated the Trump White House. A woman named Fiona hill
(CLIP ENDS)
HILL: I have to say that the scale of this did take me by surprise.
STAHL: This was Roger Stone--
HILL: I was, Roger Stone, Alex Jones. And I did think--
STAHL: So from the right?
HILL: "Why me?"
STAHL: Were there death threats?
HILL: There were death threats. There was-- quite a number of them, especially online.
STAHL: She found it disturbing. And she doesn't rattle easily.
...
STAHL: In becoming an overnight public figure, she found herself contending with the anxieties of her 13-year-old daughter. How did she absorb all of this?
HILL: Initially, she was, you know, somewhat concerned about the whole thing.
STAHL: She must have been worrying all that time?
HILL: But she also helped me put things into perspective. Because on the day before I was meant to testify in public, and obviously I was trying to prepare myself for this, she was preparing for a big test. And she was having me quiz her in the car when I was driving her to school. And she was getting quite anxious. And, you know, I was kind of trying to pull rank on this one and said, "Look, put it into perspective. You know, Mommy, tomorrow has to, you know, kind of testify before congress and millions of people might be watching. And, you know, I mean, this is a test. And she just looked at me and she said, "This is much worse." And I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Well, you just have to tell the truth."
11/21/19 1:37 PM EST
11/08/19 5:38 PM EST
11/25/19 3:30 PM EST
:{Alex Jones presses on with Roger Stone’s smear campaign against Fiona Hill:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:normal"):}:
11/25/19 3:30 PM EST
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no lnx
How a Devin Nunes aide was deeply involved in the push for Trump to exploit Ukraine: report
Written by Alex Henderson October 23, 2019
With President Donald Trump now facing an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives because of the Ukraine scandal, Rep. Devin Nunes of California continues to be an aggressive defender of the president — insisting that Trump did nothing wrong during his now-famous July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And according to a report by journalist Natasha Bertrand for Politico, one of Nunes’ top staffers did a lot to promote Trump’s belief that “Ukraine was brimming with corruption and interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats.”
The staffer is Kashyap Patel, who joined the National Security Council’s International Organizations and Alliances directorate in February. Bertrand reports that according to recent testimony by Fiona Hill (formerly a senior director of European and Russian affairs under Trump), Patel was so involved in Ukraine-related activities earlier this year that Trump thought he was in charge of Ukraine policy for the NSC. An anonymous source described by Bertrand as someone with “direct knowledge of (Hill’s) recent deposition” described her Patel-related testimony to Politico.
Previously, Bertrand reports, Democrats on Capitol Hill were aware of Patel because of his efforts to discredit former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. And because of Patel’s efforts to influence Trump on Ukraine, according to Bertrand, House Democrats involved in the impeachment inquiry now have “yet another name to add to their witness list.”
Patel, according to Bertrand, was “promoted to a senior counterterrorism role” on the NEC’s International Organizations and Alliances board around the time of Trump’s July 25 conversation with Zelensky. Bertrand also reports that Patel’s name has come up “in connection with the shadow foreign policy campaign Trump allegedly directed in an effort to extract political favors from” Zelensky.
Counterterrorism expert Joshua Geltzer told Politico that the type of work in Ukraine that Hill described Patel as doing “seems wildly outside the scope of anything a counterterrorism senior director at NSC should be spending their time on. What’s more, it politicizes a piece of the NSC staff that administrations of both parties have worked for decades to keep as apolitical as possible.”