Page 7 - Florida Sentinel 9-1-17

White House and Political News
President And Flotus Arrive In Texas
Trump’s Business Dealings With Russia May Come Back To Haunt Him
According to reports, the boundary between President Trump’s business and politi- cal lives is a new front in the investigation into his ties to Russia.
Even as Trump was run- ning for president in 2015, the Trump Organization was con- tinuing a years-long effort to build a tower in Moscow.
Central to the effort were Felix Sater, a colorful Russ- ian figure who had worked with Trump on Trump Soho, in addition to having done work for the U. S. government and having mob ties and a his- tory of securities fraud; and his childhood friend, Michael Cohen, a Trump attorney.
Four months into his cam- paign for president of the United States, Donald Trump signed a letter of in- tent to pursue a Trump Tower–style building develop- ment in Moscow, according to a statement from the Trump Organization’s then-chief counsel, Michael Cohen.
In January 2016, Cohen attempted to contact Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
The Trump’s chief counsel Michael Cohen and his childhood friend, alleged Russian mobster, Felix Sater shown here with Mr. Trump are at center of investigation of collusion with Russia.
spokesman, to request his as- sistance with the project in Russia, according to the New York Times.
On Monday, The New York Times followed up on the Washington Post report, re- leasing portions of the e-mail exchanges between Sater and Cohen, which the Trump Or- ganization turned over to Con- gressional investigators .
“I arranged for Ivanka [Trump] to sit in Putin’s private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin. I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote in an e-
mail to Cohen on November 3, 2015, the Times reports.
Throughout his campaign for president, Trump repeat- edly denied having anything to do with Russia. He was even more emphatic on Twit- ter. It was obvious, relatively early on, that this wasn’t, strictly speaking, true.
The president’s eldest son, Trump Jr., bragged in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross- section of a lot of our assets. And if the Trump Organiza- tion didn’t have actual invest- ments inside Russia, it’s not because they didn’t try.
Twitter takes Pres. Trump and FLOTUS to task about their clothing. Especially Melania’s hat that says, FLOTUS.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday landed in Texas, meeting with officials on the ground to assess dam- age from Hurricane Harvey, as residents grapple with massive flooding and persistent rain- fall.
Since making landfall on Friday as a category 4 storm, Harvey has dumped more than 40 inches of rain across south- ern Texas and displaced tens of thousands of people, with
some of the worst impacts in Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city.
The president and FLOTUS, Melania Trump made stops in Corpus Christi, near where the storm made landfall, and in Austin ― the site of the storm’s emergency response center. Trump said he would not visit Houston in order to not dis- rupt rescue and recovery ef- forts with the complicated logistics of a presidential visit.
Sec. Of Defense Says Transgenders Will Continue To Serve In Military Until Study Completed
Defense Secretary Jim Mat- tis said Tuesday that transgen- der service members will continue to serve in the mili- tary while the Pentagon con- ducts a study of how to implement President Trump's directive that would ban transgender individuals from serving in the military. A memo signed by President Trump on Friday that rein- stated the policy gave Mattis six months to come up with a plan to implement the ban.
In a statement released Tuesday night, Mattis said he would establish a panel of ex- perts from within the Defense Department and the Depart- ment of Homeland Security "to
Defense Secretary Mattis has established a panel to ad- vise on how to eliminate trans- genders from the military, per Pres. Trump’s ban.
provide advice and recommen- dations on the implementation of the president's direction."
President's Response To Harvey Devastation Criticized
Crises like major weather disasters offer presidents the chance to unify the country and rise above partisan poli- tics. Although a significant amount of aid work is done at the state and local levels, the president still has a major role in coordinating the response and setting the tone for the country.
But for Donald Trump, Hurricane Harvey has been a golden opportunity to promote himself, according to reports. “We want to be looked at in five years, in 10 years from now as, this is the way to do it,” the president said on Tues- day. “We want to do it better than ever before.”
Right now, however, Trump wants to be looked at in a way that makes people say, “I would really like to wear that hat, and I’d be willing to pay that man $40 for it.”
The president has repeat- edly worn his own campaign merchandise, which is on sale
at his website, to Hurricane Harvey events.
Trump also continued to tout how many supporters he has, and the size of his crowds, which he also does at nearly every campaign rally. On Tuesday, he remarked on the crowd size while visiting Cor- pus Christi, saying, “What a crowd, what a turnout.”
He was at a fire station to meet with local officials about the disaster response. It was not a rally.
Reporters at the event heard no mention from the president of the dead, suffer-
ing or displaced Texans, nor did they hear Trump express any sympathy for them, ac- cording to a Dallas Morning News reporter.
Trump seems to be taking a certain amount of satisfac- tion from the attention he and the hurricane are getting on TV, where cable news has nearly non-stop coverage.
On Tuesday, Trump boasted that Federal Emer- gency Management Director Brock Long “has really be- come very famous on televi- sion over the last couple of days.”
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