Or so the fake news industry wants you to think.
Latest exhibit in a vast museum: This Reuters “investigation” of the share of Russian ownership in Trump properties in southern Florida.
A Reuters review has found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida, according to public documents, interviews and corporate records…
The tally of investors from Russia may be conservative. The analysis found that at least 703 – or about one-third – of the owners of the 2044 units in the seven Trump buildings are limited liability companies, or LLCs, which have the ability to hide the identity of a property’s true owner. …
In an interview, Gil Dezer said the project generated $2 billion in initial sales, from which Trump took a commission.
Assuming the average Russian bought between one and two Trump properties, that means they 63*2/2044 = 3.1%-6.2% of them.
$98.4 million / $2 billion = 4.9% of Trump properties by value.
Note that Miami is by far the most favored destination in the US for Russian offshore kleptocrats, which is presumably why Reuters chose to focus on it for its investigation.
Russia’s share of world billionaires = 77/1,826 = 4.2%.
There are two possible explanations for this:
- All these dozens of people answer to ROG (Russian Occupation Government) and have been tasked to finance Trump by… buying his towers instead of having some Arab sheikh do it for them.
- The Russian share in Trump property ownership is in fact commensurate with the number of Russians financially capable of this as a percentage of the global total.
The media, of course, would very much rather you take away the impression that it’s the former, but like all good propaganda, it doesn’t quite spell it outright.
Especially since Occam’s Razor and basic sanity would indicate the latter.
Otherwise, if property ownership determined political allegiance, London would basically be a Saudi fiefdom. (Okay, come to think of it, perhaps that’s not the best example).
Who exactly are these kind of news stories trying to cater to ? Those that are against Trump need no convincing at all. So this is trying to target those that voted Trump, however those that voted for him clearly are not buying anything the fake mainstream media is peddling anymore. There could still be those sitting on the fence, but I don’t think there are very many of those left, the endless attacks the media has been doing against Trump has made it close to impossible for anyone not have picked one side or the other by now.
Almost nobody in the MSM talks to Trump / Le Pen / AfD supporters, they talk about them. Those news stories simply are feel-good articles for Trump enemies. They play to pretend investigative journalism, and people like to read it.
Typo – Occam’s Razor and basic sanity would indicate the xxx former xxx latter.
But great piece.
basic sanity would indicate the former
Should be “latter” here, I think.
AK: Thanks.
When I lived in NYC, I lived in a Trump building. Now I live in Russia. It would only make me happy if I somehow, albeit unwittingly, participated in the conspiracy that got him elected.
The anti-Trump people are trying to attract patriotic Americans to their cause with this ROG idea. The most striking piece of that kind of propaganda I’ve seen is this:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/37/91/88/37918837b37902ae67de08e1953c7fa7.jpg
But there’s a problem: patriotic Americans hate mass immigration. The Dems are claiming to defend America from Putin, but they don’t want to defend it from Mexicans or the Allahu Akbar team. The negative sides of immigration are easily seen while the Putin threat has to be imagined.
So the chance of Dems peeling patriotic voters from Trump is small. They’re stuck with their traditional electorate, which is motivated by snobbery and class aspirations, not by patriotism. Everyone who’s motivated by patriotism is pro-wall, and there’s a guy in the White House who wants to build it.
It would probably be smarter for the Dems to put all their efforts into the “Trump and Putin are peasants” message and to stop wasting resources on the “Trump is a traitor” message. Maybe they’ll figure this out eventually.
Good idea, but there’s one big problem with that – while Trump can (and has) been painted as a… drumpf, Putin’s brand is insulated from that by 17 years of portraying him as the conniving ROG mastermind.
Ironically, this is something that Russia’s less PDS-afflicted liberals and especially the Sputnik i Pogrom crowd have managed to do (Putin as Leningrad hoodlum turned small Chekist bureaucrat, Sobchak yesman, President). However, this would involve the Dems adopting modes of thought that are utterly alien to them.