Thread by @ElliAdventurer

Wait... did you hear the story about the statue Donald Trump was going to build with Putin's President of the Academy of Arts and gift to Mayor Rudy Giuliani?

This is from 1997.

@JillEHughes @jzikah @karolcummins

newyorker.com/magazine/1997/…

@JillEHughes @jzikah @karolcummins Looks like General Aleksandr Lebed reached out to Trump in 1997 to help get support for his own presidential campaign against Yeltsin. He also visited Clinton's inauguration.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander…

newyorker.com/magazine/1997/…

@JillEHughes @jzikah @karolcummins This is just so crazy. All of it is gonzo bonkers.

Trump "enlisted as an interpreter Inga Bogutska, a receptionist whose father, by coincidence, was a Russian general... "

newyorker.com/magazine/1997/…

@JillEHughes @jzikah @karolcummins Trump told the reporter that
a) Lebed was a dead-eyed killer
b) Lebed liked Trump
c) Trump felt he "did a good job" for America in the meeting.

Trump has always admired psychopaths and dictators. Don't ever forget this.

newyorker.com/magazine/1997/…

@JillEHughes @jzikah @karolcummins Trump's interpreter, Inga Bogutska?

She appears to have been an executive assistant for Lukoil, Goldman Sachs, and now works for Morgan Stanley.

linkedin.com/in/inga-boguts…

@JillEHughes @jzikah @karolcummins Howard Lorber, who visited Moscow with Trump in 1996, is one of the people Don Jr. called when he was setting up the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians.

nymag.com/intelligencer/…

@JillEHughes @jzikah @karolcummins In short:

NONE of today's characters are new.
NONE of the storylines are new.
Everything is a rehash of a late 90s late-Cold War flick.

Lame.