this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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Are you suggesting that $20k in Facebook ads didn't decide the result of a $4B election season?
Sounds like Russian propaganda to me
It can be two things. Read this or anything else about Cambridge Analytica to get a sense of the difference between what they were doing and the same hack political radio ad hour after hour.
Trump's ties to russia are many and varied, going back forty-plus years. It’s all been documented in Proof of Conspiracy, Mueller found collusion; these are not hypotheticals. It’s a known part of the current befuckdedness.
Is it the ONLY part? No. But it starts there and it stays there.
UK group and Facebook profit maximization is not Russia. Blaming the pure establishment corruption of democracy on Russia is just partisan whining for more establishment warmongering.
Trump's ties to the Italian Mafia are stronger. He's a second generation fence and money launderer who made a fortune helping to move money out of Eastern Europe back in the 90s.
But he's an American creation who worked on behalf of American institutions. That's why he's tied up with Guliani, Bloomberg, Clinton, and Epstein.
The tunnel vision liberals have with Russia ignores a rich vein of corruption for one of its more salacious and partisan tributaries.
We're probably splitting hairs, but - what? I haven't heard that before but I've heard a LOT about the russian angle. (we seem to converge on Eastern Europe though)
It was bigger news back in 2016
The Russia connection was minor by comparison, and largely a result of Trump's status as a lynchpin in NY crime.
I think that DCJ piece is good, and clearly ‘mob’ connections are rife, but outside of that early-80’s wash of Roy Cohn and the ready-mix concrete guys, there’s not a lot more specific to Italian mafia.
I read that Giuliani’s ‘cleanup’ of Italian mobsters allowed in the russians which was duly appreciated. Early 80s is the same time the Kremlin started to keep tabs on Trump, giving him a tour and business opportunities then.
Felix Sater, Michael Cohen, Rybolovlev and others who consistently and repeatedly appear in any honest accounting of his blatantly illegal dealings.
So while there certainly were ties to Italian mafia, his later business and almost all of his political life is awash in russian mob ties. Given that russia is run by mafias-within-mafias that’s not so surprising, is it.
The article goes significantly farther than ready-mix concrete. Trump was in tight with the Gambino family, among other mob affiliates and organizations.
It ties out with a shift in policy from Cold Era Italy being a major bridge between NATO agencies in the West and their informants/operators in the East. Post-collapse, Sicily was old news since you could march your goons directly into St. Petersburg and Moscow to commence the looting.
But Trump's roll as a money launderer and fixer remains consistent during the transition.
His primary ties were to US and German lenders, with black market business interests using his properties to clean their ill-gotten gains. The flood of money and refugees coming out of Eastern Europe following the post-Soviet crash changed the composition of his criminal clients. His roll in legitimizing the looting through financialization did not.
It could be two things! But it isn't lol
Cambridge Analytica is a good place to start. Previously:
Those archive.today links didn’t work for me, but that could just be me. The “studies” are opinions otherwise and if you want to pick one, I’ll kick it apart but I’m not going to go through all of them.