Post by the Scribe on Feb 25, 2023 2:46:14 GMT
Donald Trump's Links to George Soros
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The former president once received millions of dollars from the billionaire for a real estate project and gave senior positions in his White House to people mentored by and connected to Soros.
Pedro L. Gonzalez
Feb 17
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, George Soros, that billionaire bête noire of the right, delivered wide-ranging remarks on world affairs as he sees them. He pegged former President Donald Trump as “a pitiful figure continually bemoaning his loss in 2020 . . . whose narcissism has turned into a disease.” Of Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, the presumed primary challenger to Trump for the 2024 presidential election, Soros warned that he is “shrewd, ruthless and ambitious.”
Soros hopes the two “will slug it out for the Republican nomination” because, he believes, Trump would lose to DeSantis and then run as a third-party candidate, thus splitting the Republican vote and effectively guaranteeing “a Democratic landslide.” Soros expects this scenario would “force the Republican party to reform itself” and is, very clearly, rooting against both Trump and DeSantis—he just thinks DeSantis is the more dangerous of the two at this point, based on the latter’s ability to effectively wield power. Soros is many things: corrupt, megalomaniacal, even evil. He is not stupid, however, and his assessment is concerning and astute.
Unfortunately, some people tried to turn these critical remarks of both men specifically and the GOP in general into an endorsement of DeSantis. Some even circulated a badly photoshopped image of Christina Pushaw, an aide to DeSantis, that appeared to show her with Soros. No reasonable person would fall for this spin, of course, but it did remind me of the real social, financial, and policy connections between Soros and Trump. Not only did Trump take millions from the billionaire in the past for a real estate project, but he also staffed his administration with people intimately connected to Soros.
Roger Stone subsequently deleted the above tweet.
Start with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior advisor who was the virtual prime minister in the White House. While Trump tweeted, it was often Kushner who ran policy. Trump did not build the wall, but Kushner did implement ideas derived from Soros’ initiatives with little difficulty—ideas Trump proudly touted.
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Indeed, it is curious how Kushner’s ties to Soros went largely unnoticed, considering their visibility. Well after Trump took office, Kushner and Ivanka Trump were spotted with Soros at a party in the Southampton home of Lally Weymouth, whose brother is the former publisher of The Washington Post. But there were red flags before that.
In May 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that then-Senior Advisor to the President Kushner had undisclosed business ties with Soros through Cadre, a real estate startup co-founded by Kushner in 2014 with his brother, Joshua Kushner, and Ryan Williams, a friend and former employee of Kushner Companies, the family-controlled business. According to the Journal, Cadre secured a $250 million line of credit from the family office of Soros. Those on the right paying attention were furious at the revelation.
“This is a company that not only is Jared Kushner an investor in, he co-founded in 2014,” Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer said on a podcast in May 2017. “So this is not some passive investment that one of his advisers said to put money into, and was forgotten about. He co-founded it. It’s a real estate tech startup. Obviously it has a lot of ambitions. He’s got a lot of money in it, and he failed to disclose it on his financial forms.”
“That’s a massive, massive problem,” Schweizer added. “The whole purpose of disclosures—whether you are asking the Clintons to do it, Barack Obama to do it, Jared Kushner to do it, or Mitch McConnell to do it—is so the American people can know: who are they financially dependent on, who do they have ties to, who might have leverage over them?”
Why Kushner would avoid disclosing his connection to Soros should be obvious. As Inverse put it:
Kushner might be a little self-conscious about this Soros association since he’s become something of a liberal boogeyman for those on the right. Some of Trump’s diehard supporters likely won’t be happy at this revelation, especially when the president sold himself and his family partly on their independence from such (perceived) shady associations. And it’s not a loose connection, either. A $250 million investment is far from chump change.
Kushner initially moved to sell his stake in Cadre in early 2020 after it came under scrutiny for acquiring properties that stood to benefit from the Opportunity Zones program that he helped craft. Formally, the program encourages development in low-income areas, but it’s actually a subsidy for the wealthy that enables them to build luxurious developments. Had Kushner divested from Cadre, he likely would have been able to defer paying income taxes on any gain on his investment in the firm.
But by August 2020, Kushner decided to hold on to his stake in the Soros-backed startup while serving as a White House senior advisor. It was also around this time, in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots, that Kushner gleaned a thing or two from the Open Society Foundations, the grantmaking network founded and chaired by Soros.
CONTRA is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
In July 2020, the Open Society Foundations unveiled its plan to invest “$220 million in emerging organizations and leaders building power in Black communities across the country” in order to “advance racial justice.” In a statement, Alex Soros, the billionaire’s son and the deputy chair of his foundation, provided a concise summary of the plan’s goals.
“This is the time for urgent and bold action to address racial injustice in America,” he said. “These investments will empower proven leaders in the Black community to reimagine policing, end mass incarceration, and eliminate the barriers to opportunity that have been the source of inequity for too long.”
So, “opportunity” through race-based initiatives, criminal justice reform, and a cash infusion for the black community. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the Platinum Plan—the brainchild of Kushner—unveiled by the Trump White House in September 2020, just two months after Soros’ “Building Power in Black Communities” program launched, offered the exact same thing.
The similarities between these two initiatives could not have been a coincidence. Kushner was also the de facto campaign manager of Trump’s re-election bid, and the Platinum Plan became a centerpiece of that effort. It was, in some ways, even more generous than what Soros had proposed: whereas the Open Societies Foundation announced investments for the black community totaling $220 million, the Platinum Plan offered $500 billion.
Kushner was not the only high-level member of the Trump administration with connections to the sinister billionaire.
Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s secretary of the Treasury, was mentored by Soros. The Times of Israel noted that after leaving Goldman Sachs in 2002, “Mnuchin spent a brief period working for Soros, who then helped him set up Duke Capital Management.” According to Bloomberg, Mnuchin worked at Soros Fund Management and SFM Capital Management, which is reportedly backed by Soros. A Center for Public Integrity analysis also found that “more than half of Mnuchin’s federal-level political contributions have benefited Democrats,” including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Trump himself gladly took $160 million from Soros in 2004 for the construction of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago. The two have had an interesting relationship throughout the years, which might be why, until recently, Trump has been relatively mum on directly addressing Soros compared to his supporters. He even refused to criticize him in the past. At a 2011 Tea Party rally, when an attendee yelled Soros’ name at him, Trump replied: “Oh, forget Soros, leave him alone, he’s got enough problems.”
“He goes, ‘What about Soros!’” Trump added. “Let’s talk about somebody else.”
In contrast to all the above, DeSantis suspended a Soros-backed prosecutor for refusing to enforce several state laws. “We are suspending Soros-backed 13th circuit state attorney Andrew Warren for neglecting his duties as he pledges not to uphold the laws of the state,” DeSantis said in a press conference. “The constitution of Florida has vested the veto power in the governor, not in state attorneys.”
DeSantis did not mince words about Soros and his efforts. “We are not going to allow this pathogen of ignoring the law get a foothold in the state of Florida,” he said.
The governor also used his pulpit to fight Soros’ influence operations ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, warning Floridians against his propaganda. He has explicitly and repeatedly named Soros as an enemy of the people, including on Tucker Carlson Tonight, for millions of Americans to see and hear. But DeSantis has not merely yelped about Soros—he used the power of his office to punish his minions. That is why Alex Soros despises DeSantis.
It’s also why George Soros considers DeSantis “ruthless,” unlike Trump, who took money from Soros, filled his administration with people connected to Soros, proposed policies derived from Soros’ own initiatives through them, entrusted his campaign to them, and then wondered why it all fell apart in the end. That is, indeed, pitiful.
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The former president once received millions of dollars from the billionaire for a real estate project and gave senior positions in his White House to people mentored by and connected to Soros.
Pedro L. Gonzalez
Feb 17
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, George Soros, that billionaire bête noire of the right, delivered wide-ranging remarks on world affairs as he sees them. He pegged former President Donald Trump as “a pitiful figure continually bemoaning his loss in 2020 . . . whose narcissism has turned into a disease.” Of Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, the presumed primary challenger to Trump for the 2024 presidential election, Soros warned that he is “shrewd, ruthless and ambitious.”
Soros hopes the two “will slug it out for the Republican nomination” because, he believes, Trump would lose to DeSantis and then run as a third-party candidate, thus splitting the Republican vote and effectively guaranteeing “a Democratic landslide.” Soros expects this scenario would “force the Republican party to reform itself” and is, very clearly, rooting against both Trump and DeSantis—he just thinks DeSantis is the more dangerous of the two at this point, based on the latter’s ability to effectively wield power. Soros is many things: corrupt, megalomaniacal, even evil. He is not stupid, however, and his assessment is concerning and astute.
Unfortunately, some people tried to turn these critical remarks of both men specifically and the GOP in general into an endorsement of DeSantis. Some even circulated a badly photoshopped image of Christina Pushaw, an aide to DeSantis, that appeared to show her with Soros. No reasonable person would fall for this spin, of course, but it did remind me of the real social, financial, and policy connections between Soros and Trump. Not only did Trump take millions from the billionaire in the past for a real estate project, but he also staffed his administration with people intimately connected to Soros.
Roger Stone subsequently deleted the above tweet.
Start with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior advisor who was the virtual prime minister in the White House. While Trump tweeted, it was often Kushner who ran policy. Trump did not build the wall, but Kushner did implement ideas derived from Soros’ initiatives with little difficulty—ideas Trump proudly touted.
CONTRA is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Indeed, it is curious how Kushner’s ties to Soros went largely unnoticed, considering their visibility. Well after Trump took office, Kushner and Ivanka Trump were spotted with Soros at a party in the Southampton home of Lally Weymouth, whose brother is the former publisher of The Washington Post. But there were red flags before that.
In May 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that then-Senior Advisor to the President Kushner had undisclosed business ties with Soros through Cadre, a real estate startup co-founded by Kushner in 2014 with his brother, Joshua Kushner, and Ryan Williams, a friend and former employee of Kushner Companies, the family-controlled business. According to the Journal, Cadre secured a $250 million line of credit from the family office of Soros. Those on the right paying attention were furious at the revelation.
“This is a company that not only is Jared Kushner an investor in, he co-founded in 2014,” Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer said on a podcast in May 2017. “So this is not some passive investment that one of his advisers said to put money into, and was forgotten about. He co-founded it. It’s a real estate tech startup. Obviously it has a lot of ambitions. He’s got a lot of money in it, and he failed to disclose it on his financial forms.”
“That’s a massive, massive problem,” Schweizer added. “The whole purpose of disclosures—whether you are asking the Clintons to do it, Barack Obama to do it, Jared Kushner to do it, or Mitch McConnell to do it—is so the American people can know: who are they financially dependent on, who do they have ties to, who might have leverage over them?”
Why Kushner would avoid disclosing his connection to Soros should be obvious. As Inverse put it:
Kushner might be a little self-conscious about this Soros association since he’s become something of a liberal boogeyman for those on the right. Some of Trump’s diehard supporters likely won’t be happy at this revelation, especially when the president sold himself and his family partly on their independence from such (perceived) shady associations. And it’s not a loose connection, either. A $250 million investment is far from chump change.
Kushner initially moved to sell his stake in Cadre in early 2020 after it came under scrutiny for acquiring properties that stood to benefit from the Opportunity Zones program that he helped craft. Formally, the program encourages development in low-income areas, but it’s actually a subsidy for the wealthy that enables them to build luxurious developments. Had Kushner divested from Cadre, he likely would have been able to defer paying income taxes on any gain on his investment in the firm.
But by August 2020, Kushner decided to hold on to his stake in the Soros-backed startup while serving as a White House senior advisor. It was also around this time, in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots, that Kushner gleaned a thing or two from the Open Society Foundations, the grantmaking network founded and chaired by Soros.
CONTRA is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
In July 2020, the Open Society Foundations unveiled its plan to invest “$220 million in emerging organizations and leaders building power in Black communities across the country” in order to “advance racial justice.” In a statement, Alex Soros, the billionaire’s son and the deputy chair of his foundation, provided a concise summary of the plan’s goals.
“This is the time for urgent and bold action to address racial injustice in America,” he said. “These investments will empower proven leaders in the Black community to reimagine policing, end mass incarceration, and eliminate the barriers to opportunity that have been the source of inequity for too long.”
So, “opportunity” through race-based initiatives, criminal justice reform, and a cash infusion for the black community. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the Platinum Plan—the brainchild of Kushner—unveiled by the Trump White House in September 2020, just two months after Soros’ “Building Power in Black Communities” program launched, offered the exact same thing.
The similarities between these two initiatives could not have been a coincidence. Kushner was also the de facto campaign manager of Trump’s re-election bid, and the Platinum Plan became a centerpiece of that effort. It was, in some ways, even more generous than what Soros had proposed: whereas the Open Societies Foundation announced investments for the black community totaling $220 million, the Platinum Plan offered $500 billion.
Kushner was not the only high-level member of the Trump administration with connections to the sinister billionaire.
Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s secretary of the Treasury, was mentored by Soros. The Times of Israel noted that after leaving Goldman Sachs in 2002, “Mnuchin spent a brief period working for Soros, who then helped him set up Duke Capital Management.” According to Bloomberg, Mnuchin worked at Soros Fund Management and SFM Capital Management, which is reportedly backed by Soros. A Center for Public Integrity analysis also found that “more than half of Mnuchin’s federal-level political contributions have benefited Democrats,” including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Trump himself gladly took $160 million from Soros in 2004 for the construction of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago. The two have had an interesting relationship throughout the years, which might be why, until recently, Trump has been relatively mum on directly addressing Soros compared to his supporters. He even refused to criticize him in the past. At a 2011 Tea Party rally, when an attendee yelled Soros’ name at him, Trump replied: “Oh, forget Soros, leave him alone, he’s got enough problems.”
“He goes, ‘What about Soros!’” Trump added. “Let’s talk about somebody else.”
In contrast to all the above, DeSantis suspended a Soros-backed prosecutor for refusing to enforce several state laws. “We are suspending Soros-backed 13th circuit state attorney Andrew Warren for neglecting his duties as he pledges not to uphold the laws of the state,” DeSantis said in a press conference. “The constitution of Florida has vested the veto power in the governor, not in state attorneys.”
DeSantis did not mince words about Soros and his efforts. “We are not going to allow this pathogen of ignoring the law get a foothold in the state of Florida,” he said.
The governor also used his pulpit to fight Soros’ influence operations ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, warning Floridians against his propaganda. He has explicitly and repeatedly named Soros as an enemy of the people, including on Tucker Carlson Tonight, for millions of Americans to see and hear. But DeSantis has not merely yelped about Soros—he used the power of his office to punish his minions. That is why Alex Soros despises DeSantis.
It’s also why George Soros considers DeSantis “ruthless,” unlike Trump, who took money from Soros, filled his administration with people connected to Soros, proposed policies derived from Soros’ own initiatives through them, entrusted his campaign to them, and then wondered why it all fell apart in the end. That is, indeed, pitiful.