Trump's Russian Connections

Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out. This is how he made a come back

► Trump was first compromised by the Russians back in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money and it continued for decades. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.

► In 1984, David Bogatin — a Russian mobster, convicted gasoline bootlegger, and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)

► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.

► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.

► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years, that many of them have owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties, that they were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel. (Mogilevich's role today is unclear).

► One of the most important things that is often overlooked is that the Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. that is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.

► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."

► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower.

► According to a Bloomberg investigation (March 16, 2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”

► In July 2008, the height of the recession, Donald Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.

► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. In addition to card games, they operated illegal gambling websites, ran a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.

► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive under his tenure in the Southern District and Mayor. And now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties tot he Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.

► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnel got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.

► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."

► Eric Trump told James Dodson, a golf reporter, in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

Outcomes that show Trump is taking orders from Putin:

► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. "I don't care, I believe Putin"

► Trump met in secret with Putin the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.

► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.

► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events. .

► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.

► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.

► In summation: Trump was $4 billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.

I've reached my 10k limit and URLs are the first thing to go.

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Republicans are Traitors and Russian Puppets

Links to Russian money by Republicans traitors

McConnell, Kasich, Rubio, McCain, Graham, Scott Walker all got money from one single Russian.

More info here

Michael Cohen was the Deputy Finance Chairman of the RNC

A confirmed Russian spy was moving money through the NRA to politicians - full affidavit for the details on Butina

All Republicans in the senate, a large amount of Republicans in the house and a 4 Dems in the house took money from the NRA

The NRA and the Trump campaign were illegally coordinating ad buys.

NRA May Have Illegally Coordinated With GOP Senate Campaigns

The thing is, with all this information out there. All that the Russians needed to get by hacking the GOP was that they knew that the money was coming from Russia (illegally) to the NRA and they have everyone on the hook for knowingly taking that money. What are your odds that the people who can't figure out how to format a PDF were talking about it in emails or other tech?

EXAMPLE:

Graham before December 2016

[Trump] He is a jackass... and he shouldn't be Commander in Chief

Graham after December 2016

I am like the happiest dude in America right now,” a beaming Graham said on “Fox & Friends.” “We have got a president and a national security team that I've been dreaming of for eight years.

What happened between? - Graham: Russians hacked my campaign email account

And somewhere in there he took Russian money.

For those of you thinking about Pence

Pence is the guy who vouched for Flynn in the transition team (that Pence lead) - even publicly stated that Flynn had no contacts with Russia.

The same transition team that is listed in Flynn's sentencing memo

Mueller says Flynn helped his investigation “on a range of issues, including interactions between individuals in the Presidential Transition Team and Russia.” Then he mentions something else that is redacted. So there appear to be two main areas here where Flynn is helping.

He also claims he didn't know Flynn was under investigation

Vice President Pence is standing by his claims that he did not know former national security adviser Michael Flynn had been secretly lobbying for the Turkish government until March, despite a new report claiming Flynn had actually disclosed to the Trump transition team back in January that he was under a federal investigation

Pence was hand picked by Manafort after he took over.

Paul Manafort, who was hit with 12 counts tied to alleged financial schemes, pushed for Pence to become Trump's running mate and even managed to talk Trump out of his doubts.

The top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform told then Vice President-elect Mike Pence in a November letter that the man Donald Trump had tapped to be his national security adviser was lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.

So we know for a fact that he was informed by the oversight committee and then he rapidly went in public and stated that Flynn had no contacts with Russia.

Given that piece of information, and the fact that we know that the erratic behavior around explaining to Trump that people were dirty and his response was to ignore them and then lie about it - is what caused him to have a counterintelligence investigation into him, what do you think the chances are that the scope of that counterintelligence included anyone in Trump's circle that would be considered part of a RICO case.

Say.... perhaps.... the Vice President who was actively lying about intelligence information he was given.

This article gives some interesting insight

Oct. 14, 2016: Pence says on Fox News that the national media is chasing after unsubstantiated allegations that the Trump campaign is in cahoots with WikiLeaks, a website that publishes documents from anonymous sources. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” Pence says.

Dec. 28, 2016: Obama signs an executive order announcing sanctions against Russia for interfering in the 2016 election. Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak contacts Flynn, according to Flynn’s plea agreement. Pence is in Indiana for his son's wedding.

Dec. 29, 2016: Flynn calls “a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team," according to the plea agreement, at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. for guidance on talking to Kislyak. (Other senior members of the transition were also at the resort.) Flynn then calls Kislyak and asks him not to “escalate the situation," and reports the conversation back to a transition official. 

Dec. 30, 2016: Russian President Vladimir Putin announces Russia will not retaliate.
Jan. 12, 2016: The Washington Post reports Flynn and Kislyak spoke several times as the sanctions announcement was unfolding.

Jan. 15, 2017: Pence discusses the calls between Flynn and Kislyak on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” saying “they did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.”

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Republicans and Democrats are not the Same: or Why Republicans Suck

Fuck Republicans.

Exhibit 1: Opinion of Syrian air strikes under Obama vs. Trump. Source Data 1, Source Data 2 and Article for Context

Exhibit 2: Opinion of the NFL after large amounts of players began kneeling during the anthem to protest racism. Article for Context (viewing source data requires purchasing Morning Consult package)

Exhibit 3: Opinion of ESPN after they fired a conservative broadcast analyst. Article for Context (viewing source data requires purchasing YouGov’s “BrandIndex” package)

Exhibit 4: Opinion of Vladimir Putin after Trump began praising Russia during the election. Source Dataand Article for Context

Exhibit 5: Opinion of "Obamacare" vs. "Kynect" (Kentucky's implementation of Obamacare). Kentuckians feel differently about the policy depending on the name. Source Data and Article for Context

Exhibit 6: Christians (particularly evangelicals) became monumentally more tolerant of private immoral conduct among politicians once Trump became the GOP nominee. Source Data and Article for Context

Exhibit 7: White Evangelicals cared less about how religious a candidate was once Trump became the GOP nominee. (Same source and article as previous exhibit.)

Exhibit 8: Republicans were far more likely to embrace a certain policy if they knew Trump was for it—whether the policy was liberal or conservative. Source Data and Article for Context

Exhibit 9: Republicans became far more opposed to gun control when Obama took office. Democrats have remained consistent. Source Data and Article for Context

Exhibit 10: Republicans started to think universities had a negative impact on the country after Trump entered the primary. Democrats remain consistent. Source Data and Article for Context

Exhibit 11: Wisconsin Republicans felt the economy improve by 85 approval points the day Trump was sworn in. Graph also shows some Democratic bias, but not nearly as bad. Source Data and Article for Context

Exhibit 12: Republicans became deeply negative about trade agreements when Trump became the GOP frontrunner. Democrats remain consistent. Source Data and Article for Context

Exhibit 13: 10% fewer Republicans believed the wealthy weren't paying enough in taxes once a billionaire became their president. Democrats remain fairly consistent. Source Data and Article for Context

Exhibit 14: Republicans suddenly feel very comfortable making major purchases now that Trump is president. Democrats don't feel more or less comfortable than before. Article for Context (viewing source data requires purchasing Gallup's Advanced Analytics package)

Exhibit 15: Democrats have had a consistently improving outlook on the economy, including after Trump's victory. Republicans? A 30-point spike once Trump won. Source Data and Article for Context

Exhibit 16: Shift in opinion of the media's utility for keeping politicians in check. Democrats reacted a bit after Trump took office (+15 points), but Republicans had a 35-point nose dive. Source Data and Article for Context

Exhibit 17: Republicans had an evenly split opinion in April regarding whether James Comey should be fired. After he was fired, they became overwhelmingly in favor. Source Data 1, Source Data 2 and Article for Context

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The Overwhelming Hypocrisy of Republicans

While the question is rhetorical this does offer an opportunity to really address one of the biggest frustrations all thinking humans should have with the Republican party: Hypocrisy.

Every single day we watch as Donald Trump rubs his adultery and unchristlike behavior in the "party of family values" pussy, and they let him! In fact they actually like it, Trump has an 88% approval rating among Republicans (Oddly fitting.) This is the same Republican party that overwhelmingly voted for Roy Moore, their candidate being a pedophile didn't even decline turnout. He lost 3% with evangelicals though, and only 80% of self described born-again Christians gave him their vote. Good for them.

You might not be surprised to find out that the "party of life" is racking up record numbers of civilian casualties in the war on terror, or whatever we're calling it these days. (Who's the terrorist when we're the ones killing theirfamilies?)

Oh, and Saudi Arabia is using our weapons to kill civilians in Yemen, too! A 164% increase since President Trump was elected.

Party of life.

Of course I don't need to tell anybody about how the party of personal responsibility has a habit of blaming everyone else for their problems. Is it the gay agenda? Political correctness? Immigrants? Millennials? Liberals. Women? Transexuals?

My life sucks because of...

/draws card

...postmodernism.

Let's leave room for the "party of fiscal responsibility" just added a trillion dollars to the federal deficit. What are Mitch McConnell's feelings on the matter?

“It’s disappointing but it’s not a Republican problem,”

It's.

Your.

FUCKING.

JOB!

^Mitch.

Here's a headline worth reading:

When Paul Ryan leaves government, the federal deficit will be $1.2 trillion higher than when he arrived
TL;DR:

Under Ryan’s tenure as speaker, the deficit will have more than doubled. If we extend that idea backward, though, it’s worse: Since he joined Congress in 1999, the budget will have gone from a $125 billion surplus to a $1.1 trillion deficit — a swing of $1.2 trillion to the red.

Have you ever seen a trillion written out?

1,200,000,000,000.00
,
2
0
0
,
0
0
0
,
0
0
0
,
0
0
0
.
0
0

1.2 e¹² dollars.

Twelve zeros, not including the coins.

I know that's a big number. It's so big that I have no way of really conceptualizing it in my head, y' know? Once I held $15,000 in assorted bills in my hand, and even though I had just counted every dollar of it twice now I still couldn't quite grasp it. Almost, but not quite.

To help put a trillion dollars into perspective let's think about it in a different way: Weight.

A trillion dollars in single dollar bills would weigh one million, one hundred and two thousand, three hundred and eleven tons.

A trillion dollars in single dollar bills would weigh one hundred and fifty seven million, four hundred and seventy three thousand stone.

A trillion dollars in single dollar bills would weigh nine hundred and ninety nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, seven hundred and seventeen kilograms.

A trillion dollars in single dollar bills would weigh two billion, two hundred and four million, six hundred and twenty two thousand pounds.

1,102,311 tons.

157,473,000 stone.

999,999,717 kilograms.

2,204,622,000 pounds.

Just two billion pounds, that's way easier to understand!

-_-

Family values
Christian values
Value of human life
Fiscal responsibility
Personal responsibility

To do:

• Patriotism
• National security

Actually I guess those two come down to the same thing. They definitely don't give a shit about national security, their obstruction of the Russia investigation proves that.

Republicans didn't just withhold evidence from Democrats, didn't just share classified and sensitive information with the subject of the investigation (not including the leaks), didn't just close the case on the House Intelligence Agency's Russia probe, they [even campaigned for President Trump by declaring him innocent of all suspicion.

It says investigators found “no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded, coordinated, or conspired with the Russian government,” even as it details contacts between campaign officials and Russians or Russian intermediaries.

How can one say they care about national security, they care about law and order, then willfully ignore facts and evidence?

That's the ultimate hypocrisy of the Republican party, isn't it? The refusal to address or acknowledge reality.

"My grandfather was vaccinated as a child and he died of cancer eighty years later, that's no coincidence."

"Climate change is a hoax and I've got the snowball to prove it!"

"The body has ways of shutting that whole thing down."

One could write a book on Republican hypocrisy.

And it's all because Republicans fall in line.

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Republican Hypocrisy

Trump isn't the problem, voters are. Some examples of Republican hypocrisy:

• If we win the presidency, our Supreme Court nominees should be confirmed. When you win the presidency, we will block you at every turn.
• If Trump wins, the election is legitimate and the people have SPOKEN. If Hillary wins, it must be RIGGED.
• Donald Trump is accused of forcing himself on over ten women. STICK TO THE ISSUES. Bill Clinton accused of misconduct by four women. His wife should be disqualified from office and imprisoned.
• Hillary Clinton has not directly mentioned any of Trump's accusers. She needs to stop distracting from real issues. Trump has a press conference with four of Bill Clinton's accusers, gives them front row seats to the debate, and mentions them during debate. Great job taking the gloves off, president Trump.
• Bill Clinton cheats on his wife. Impeach him. Trump proudly brags about sexual assault (has 5 kids with 3 wives and has cheated on his wives). Elect him.
• Hillary oversaw the Department of State while four people died in an embassy attack. JAIL HER. Two Republicans were in office while over 200 people died in embassy attacks. No problem.
• Immigrants don't pay taxes. Round them up and kick them out. Trump doesn't pay taxes. He's a business genius.
• Independent fact checkers found Trump is likely the least truthful candidate in the history of modern politics. He tells it like it is. Hillary is statistically more truthful than most politicians according to fact checkers. She is the most untrustworthy, lying liar who has ever run for political office.
• The Clinton Foundation only spent 87% of their donations helping people (average amount is 75%). CROOKED. Trump's foundation paid off his debts, bought paintings of him, and made political donations to avoid investigations for a fake university while giving less than 5% of funds to charity (and he got shut down by NY State). So savvy...put him in the White House.
• Trump made 4 billion dollars in 40 years, when an index fund started at the same time with the same "small loans" he received would be worth $12 billion today... without a trail of bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits and burned small business owners. He's a real business whiz. Hillary took a loss of $700k. She's a criminal.
• Trump is the first candidate in the modern era to not release his tax returns, and he took a almost billion-dollar loss in one year. Genius. Hillary releases 40 years of taxes. Corrupt. Trump denies saying things (on the record) he actually said (on the record). He's just telling it like it is.

Their arguments are nonsensical and their willful ignorance of facts is disturbing. The double standards and eagerness to blindly support and recycle misleading rhetoric is frightening. Opinion and memes are not fact. Hypocrisy does not make for responsible governance. Eisenhower is rolling over in his grave over what they have done to the once-great Republican party.

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Different Types of republicans

The modern GOP is in no way a united political party. It's more of an umbrella organisation now, and has been for some time. There are several distinct groups vying for control, and their interests don't always coincide.

You have the 'traditional' Conservative (with a capital 'C') stream, who probably represent the last bastion of what Republican Party ought (for lack of a better term) to be. Sensible, intelligent pragmatists who have conservative views and who genuinely believe that a smaller government is what's best but who believe that everyone deserves a fair crack of the whip. Think John Huntsman. Hell, think George HW Bush. Think Campaign Kasich, if not necessarily Governor Kasich.

Then you have the Money Party, arguably an offshoot of the above who are firm in their belief that the ultra rich really are 'job creators' and deserve special consideration. Of course, they're not all ultra rich themselves. Many are 'temporarily embarrassed billionaires'. But a lot of them are rich, and always have been, and have grown up insulated from 'real' people. They tend to be out of touch, corporatist and, whether unintentionally or intentionally, callous. They're the 'let them eat cake' faction. Mitt Romney is arguably a representative, and richer yet are people like Sheldon Adelson, who are undeniably looking out for themselves and to hell with everybody else. These guys are master manipulators, and are used to getting their own way. They're not above exploiting other factions.

Among those exploited factions are the GUNS JESUS Republicans, who are generally not very well off, under-educated white social conservatives or, less kindly, the Redneck faction. These are the Trailer Park Republicans, who are easily manipulated by the Moneypublicans. These 'grass roots' folks are the reason deep red states take in so much Federal money, while braying and howling about Federal money being given to anyone else. They're the Welfare Republicans, who have been convinced to vote against their own interests because the Moneypublicans know they're a valuable resource when it comes to elections. LBJ shepherded them into the GOP fold when he turned his back on the Blue Dogs, and Nixon cemented their loyalty with the Southern Strategy.

Beyond them, you have the CHRISTIAN (all caps) Republicans. These guys are scary, and they're an offshoot of Reagan's plan to bring Fallwell's flock and their ilk into the Republican fold. They're the hard-core fundamentalist Protestant (usually) ultra-conservatives, almost exclusively white and generally (but not always) quite comfortable, money wise. They believe that temporal concerns like the economy, the military, health care, infrastructure...you name it...should all take a back seat to school prayer, the Ten Commandments in public places, and JESUS in general. America's problems only appear geopolitical to them, but they know that everything from natural disasters and stock market crashes to terrorist attacks and hospital waiting lists are really caused by gay people and abortions, and know that America can be put right again by getting rid of these things. They're the Dominionist Party, operating under the umbrella of the GOP. Ted Cruz and Michelle Bachmann are good examples. They are fucking insane.

There's a lot of overlap between the last couple of groups I've mentioned and the Tea Party, the only sub-faction to have given themselves a separate name and a definite identity. They're just as gun crazy and Jesus loopy as the last few factions, but they're better at dressing it up as patriotism and constitutional fundamentalism. They're a safe haven for the loud and unsmart. Like many of the other factions, there's a distinctly racist bent to their outlook, but it's not too high on their list of priorities. They're the thin end of the anti-establishment wedge, and they're dangerous primarily because they smarten up well (style over substance) and they're a feeder group for both the CHRISTIAN Republicans and the last and lowest of their GOP stablemates; the Trumpists.

The Trumpists were just waiting in the wings until they had a figurehead to unite behind and they've done it by siphoning from the GUNS JESUS group, the CHRISTIAN group, the Tea Party and the like. They're RINO to the core, and they're flying under a flag of convenience when they call themselves Republicans. They've fully subscribed to Donald Trump's cult of personality. They're aggressively nationalistic, misogynist, fundamentally racist and sectarian, loud, uneducated, irrational, fact-blind (if not downright anti-fact) and delighted to have the backup and support of millions of like-minded howler monkeys now, after years of having to couch their language and views to make them more acceptable to the mainstream. They exalt ignorance. They draw on the worst dregs of the Redneck Republicans, the Tea Party, the CHRISTIAN Republicans and any other wide-eyed, spittle-flecked unaffiliated 'Republicans' out there. These are the lowest common denominators within the GOP. These are the people who will rant and rave about the US Constitution while never having read it. They're Breitbart in human form. They're The Brownshirts. They're The_Donald.

So...what is the modern Republican Party? Truthfully, there is no such thing. These people will all vote Republican because the abstract concept which has taken over from the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Taft and Eisenhower is the one in which they can see, if they squint, a reflection of themselves somewhere in the hall of mirrors the GOP has become since the 1980s.

EDIT: A lot of people have said (smart people...the best people...) that I overlooked the Libertarian wing. I haven't, I'm just not sure what to make of them. I answered one of those smart, best people with this (and there's a quick breakdown of my take on the Democrats somewhere in the maelstrom too...and that link ought to work now):

"I find them (the Libertarian Republicans) to be a bit of an anomaly. I was going to mention the Pauls, but there's already a Libertarian party. I view Libertarian Republicans as a bit of a curveball, and I haven't given them as much thought as I ought to, so I decided that not mentioning them at all would be better than half-assing a mention just for the sake of it.

I like Rand Paul. I like Ron Paul. I can't think of too many other examples. I wouldn't vote for them, but I think I'd enjoy talking to them, and that we'd find a lot of common ground."

I'd like to point out that not a huge amount of thought went into this post. It's not some sort of political thesis, and it makes a lot of generalizations. I didn't expect it to get as much attention as it has. Posters have accused me of copying it from somewhere, of spending a lot of time on it, of having some sort of agenda, of being biased, of being paid by Hillary Clinton, etc. 

None of that is true. I type fast, I had a few minutes to spare where I felt like giving a detailed response to another poster. That was off the cuff, 

I'm not a Democrat or a Republican (or even an American) and while I'll admit that there is a certain anti-Republican bias, it's not a 'Correct The Record' effort. At no point have I claimed it was a dispassionate, academic analysis of the GOP. It's a quick musing and it's more of a stream of consciousness than anything else. That said, to the dozens of people who've taken it as a personal insult: relax. It's just Reddit. And read it again, because some of the things you're accusing me of aren't actually there at all.

There is no smoke. There are no mirrors. I'm not a shill. I'm not a pundit. I'm not a Democrat. I'm just some guy who's bored with the work he's supposed to be doing and who's fascinated with the Great Big 2016 Shitshow.

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