How Russia Won: Why a New Book is Urgently Required Reading

subbasement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington, D.C. and from other undisclosed locations across America and around the world.

“Hello and welcome to DSR, I'm David Ross Coffee, your host and this week is every week”

we're going to look at something that's in the news. Frankly, this week we're going to

look at something that's in the news a little bit this week, but should always be in the

news. And we are having more attention brought to it, both by headlines and by a new book that's out by one of our two guests. Today our friend David Corn, who has a book called How Rush of One, Donald Trump Vladimir Putin and the fight for America and of course David is Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief and a regular on-air analyst for MS. Now, how are you doing, David? Well, you've been in this position, David, when you have a new

book out, my book came out yesterday, you really want to do as many media hits and as you can to get the word out, but you also, as you walk down the street and I'm in New York City

“right now, you want to grab people by the lapel and say, I have a book, you should buy it,”

you got to read this book, it's really, really quite important. And I have managed so far, he's just doing that, but I am making this circuit and the headlines, the recent news have been a fishery to me, been a fish on to me. And you know, it's put a lot of time and effort into these things while grinding as Ed knows as well as a solitary pursuit many long period of time. And then you have this book come out and you have a brief window

to get the rest of the world to pay attention when there are so many other things to pay attention to. Well, yes, but I think you've hit this one right on the nose and I'm sure our other guests, our friend, our regular, the dependable and wise, edless of the financial times, agrees, and I suspect you don't have to be grabbed by the lapel ed to say, oh, what David's doing here

is important? No, it's not just the history of this, which is absolutely sort of critical to

explaining the rise of Trump, but it's also, as you mentioned, David Rothkoff, the current situation with Russia and why Trump yet again is rolling over and doing its bidding. So this is a supremely relevant, relatively timed book. Yeah, and so that's where I would personally like to start. And it's going to take just a bit of a pream. Well, maybe a 90 second preamble for me, David, and then you can get into your response to this. But of course, I've known you've been

“working on this book for a while. I followed your other writing on this. I think it's real important.”

I also feel it's really, really essential that people understand that the Russia-Russian

Russia story never went away. And that in fact, it's absolutely critical to understanding not just this moment in our history, but also the president. And that was hammered home again, not just because Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner, the real estate developers turned diplomats extraordinary for the U.S., went off to Russia and said to Vladimir Putin, you know, after this is all over, we're going to look back and cherish these moments we spent with you, Uncle Vlad,

because you know, you're such a special guy. But there was another story this week, broken by pro-publica, about Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding, me might say, "Well, that's a pretty extraneous who cares, presidents, what is this more hot or Biden stuff." But then it turns out that Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding in the Bahamas had a couple of days during which the bulk of the activities were underwritten by someone who Trump Jr.'s wife later referred to as a dear friend.

A Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin, close to Vladimir Putin, who paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fireworks displays and trips to private islands and appeared in a lot of photos that were not publicly released with a bunch of other Russians. Now you may remember Donald

at it and I said, "Gee, this is kind of interesting," because this guy is the head of the

“international boxing Federation, and Trump has always had these ties to boxing, and I started”

doing a little bit of digging. And what I started digging into is stuff that David Corn knows, and I'm halfway through my preamble here. But but I went back further and further into the roots of Donald Trump, to the core of Donald Trump. Who was it that was Donald Trump's original mentor? It was a guy named Roy Cohen, and Roy Cohen was a mob lawyer with a sort of checkered history advising people in Washington, but also interestingly was involved in the boxing business.

Roy Cohen's father was involved in the boxing business, and Roy Cohen helped young Donald Trump,

as he was getting set up by connecting him, not just to the Republican Party, but to the mob

“and to boxing promoters. And as Donald Trump got started in the 80s, if you read the work of”

sort of predecessors of the work of David Corn, like Wayne Barrett, of the village voice, you would have found out that Donald Trump was building his real estate empire by leasing out apartments, to or selling apartments, to Russians who were essentially money laundering by buying apartments in his buildings. And he was also getting deeper and deeper into bed with boxing promoters, Don King, and others, including a bunch of Russians who were boxing promoters,

including one who was a direct predecessor of this guy, who was at Don Junior's wedding, who operated a for-profit illegal bedding operation out of Trump tower, and where are we today? Well, we have Don Junior advocating Donald Trump ties to the prediction markets to calcium, urging that we expand the ability to do sports bedding

“in the United States, and this is where I wrap up my little thing. All you have to do is go back”

45, 50 years, read Wayne Barrett, read Jack Newfield, and you see that David Corn's brilliant work on all of this in this new book, was out there in plain sight to everybody for 50 years, the Russian mob ties to the Kremlin money laundering ties to the dark dememond of international boxing and MMA that led to an event for July 4th out on the south lawn of the White House. What David's writing about here isn't an extraneous foreign policy story. He's writing about the

core, the essence of the corruption that is Donald Trump. So, that was by long credits, because I've just been immersed in this all this week, because I just find this so fascinating that it was all out there, and I read the Wayne Barrett stories, and I was like, "As any New Yorker, you're New York, not David. How the hell would all the people in the United States, would you ever elect a guy with this kind of background?" You detail it well,

so I congratulate you on your timing, but I was just wondering how you connect these stories.

Well, first of all, thank you for comparing my work to that of Wayne Barrett and Jack Newfield.

We did a lot of that work for the village voice in the '80s and '90s, and even afterward, say, "We're a journalist, a keros of mine, and I knew Wayne, and I'm sorry he's no longer with us." This is also true for Jack. I set out in this book, David, to try to knit together, a lot of things that have happened over the last 10 years that people don't see in terms of pattern recognition, right? The three of us are in the news business. Every day when Barb

bartered with different stories, different outages, different pieces of stories, things coming go so quickly. There are 20 scandals a day. People who are consuming the work that we do feel totally overwhelmed, and for the last 10 years or so, we've been arguing over what happened in 2016, whether Russia attacked the election to help Trump. The evidence is clear that it did, and the evidence is clear whether you want to get into conclusion or not, that Trump

ate it and abetted that attack by denying it was happening. He echoed Putin's denials,

with assaulting American democracy. That should have been the kind of the end of the Trump

Russia scandal, but he got complicated for a lot of different reasons. But the key thing is,

whatever happened in 2016 was not the end of it. If for the years afterwards, in 2018, in 2020, in 2024, Russia continued to mount intelligence, influence, disinformation operations against the United States against our elections to so discord, to exacerbate the political conflicts that we have bred here ourselves and to help Donald Trump. And throughout that whole period, Donald Trump kept saying, Russia, Russia, Russia, it's a hoax, it's a deep state conspiracy against

me, it's a witch hunt, and deny not only what happened in 2016, he denied everything that has

“happened ever since. And so, you know, if you want to talk about collusion, we can get to that,”

but to me, the key word has been complicity. And it's happened again and again, there's a strong

pattern of Vladimir Putin maintaining mounting this campaign, this Twilight War against the United States, National Security experts like you, called Grey Zone Warfare, and they're doing against other countries of the West and in Europe. And it's part of his strategic ambition to weaken the West, to weaken the Western Alliance. And all throughout this, Trump has been essentially doing his bidding and aiding in a betting that ongoing assault on American, we see it up until happening

up until even now when there are new indications of disinformation operations that are right about

in the book, in happening in 2024, are being revved up again by the Russians to metal in the

“midterm elections. And this is happening, wow, you know, this guy, Oma Kremlev, who you just gave”

a great, you know, analysis of this box guy ran a corrupt boxing organization is hobbed out being with with with Donald Trump's son, but it's not just he's an oligarch, that makes it sound like he's one of these big business guys who have to bend the knee to Putin to keep their money in their businesses, right? He in his younger days was it was it was convicted of extortion and assault, and he led a motorcycle gang called the night wolves. Now that these are not weakened hobbyists,

they worked with Russian militias and Ukraine and elsewhere to do security operations and intelligence operations and because of that he was brought into Putin's inner circle into his security apparatus. This is not it's got an oligarch on the outside of Putin's inner circle. He's in the middle of it because of his intelligence and security operations. So he comes to, you know, in certain self into the Trump family, it's not just this outside jet-setting Russian, it's someone right

at the elbow of Vladimir Putin and his sister law is actually running the program that's kidnapping, Ukrainian children, and bringing them to Russia. So this doesn't pass the smell test. Putin is meddling yet again in our election and one of his intimates is burrowing into the Trump family. So my book gives this whole long landscape the horizon and if, you know, for those who read it,

“well, they'll quickly understand, this is all part of the same operation. I think perhaps the most”

successful covert operation in modern history that Putin has been running. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I really have to tell you about our sub-stack. The DSR network of sub-stack is the absolute best way to follow deep state radio. The DSR daily, words matter, need to know, silicaciousness, AI energy and climate and the daily blast. Sign up to get notified every time a new episode drops and stay up to date on the latest news and expert analysis. You can also support us

by becoming a paid member, paid members, get an ad-free listing experience, select episodes, two days early, access to live streamed episodes and 50% off of David's need to know sub-stack. Please consider joining us at DSR network.substack.com. That's DSR network.substack.com. Thank you and back to the show. Totally great with that assessment. Actually, on an earlier podcast today, I characterized it exactly as you did. The most successful intelligence operation

in modern history. But, you know, one of the things that I find strange about all of this is that

a line of political attack. When in fact, the ties of Russia to Trump are historical,

“they're deep, they're to Trump, they're to Trump's family, they're to Trump's allies,”

they're to Jared Kushner, they're to Steve Whitkuff, Steve Whitkuff, as a real estate developer, had Russian oligarch partners in his projects. Russia, he was an investor in world liberty financial, this whole crypto biz, and there have been Russians involved in all of that. And of course, as you know, there has been a central connection to U.S. foreign policy under Trump, which has deviated dramatically from American foreign policy historically,

whereas historically Russia was seen as an adversary, Trump has embraced Putin,

whereas historically the United States put our chips in with our allies, Trump has decided to blow up the alliances, whereas historically the U.S. backed Ukraine, Trump cut off the aid to Ukraine. And even in this past week said, you know, the price of diesel is going up, not because of his war in Iran, but because of Ukraine attacks on Russian refineries, which should stop, Trump is actively eating Russia. Russia is actively eating Trump. Russia is closely tied to the roots of Trump,

and many of the people in his cabinet, and the Republican Party, and the NRA, and other

backers in this government, and yet for too many people, it seems like an extraneous story.

“How does that happen? So I mean, I think when we talk about, you know, the big lie we're talking”

about, January 6th, but I've described that the Stone Election myth is big lie 2.0, because big lie 1.0 was that all this Russia stuff was a hoax, and that of course pertains to the previous presidential election, and it is remarkable to, you know, sort of go back on the extent and breadth, not just of the Mueller report, which is an extraordinary document. I've, you know, I've read it to at least two times, I think, three. It's absolutely banked to rights,

packed with a full of investigative findings that demonstrate the benefit that Trump derived from Russia's assistance from GRU operatives from this internet research, so called organization in St. Petersburg, and the fact that a lot of Republicans signed up to this and believe this, that were bipartisan reports produced by the Senate and the House, that added to what the Mueller reported had found. So the success with which Trump has made Russia hoax a sort of

common term in Republican circles, and to some degree beyond, is quite something. It's almost up there, I'd say, with the big lie, over January 6th, and so the answer to your question

“about where it sort of stems from, where it's going, I think, actually prompts a question”

from me to David, which is anybody who looks at the evidence, which is compendious, and you're sure, but, you know, I believe when I will read, does a very, very good job of bringing us up to date on all of this, is that there's no doubt that there is a Trump-Russia relationship going back decades. My question to you is, as a personal, I think help break the steel dossier's story, is what do you see as the origin of this, because it's still a mystery, above and beyond Trump's

sort of desire for contracts is a admiration of initially the Soviet Union, then Russia, and particularly of Putin, as somebody he envies, beyond that sort of broader context of Trump's envy, is there something specific here that can explain the depth and the endurance through thick and thin of Trump's, of Trump's service to Russia? The book begins with a scene that a lot of people have forgotten about, that you guys haven't. That was a little over a year ago when Trump welcomed

Vladimir Putin to America, to Alaska, for what was supposed to be a negotiating session that would bring about the end to the war in Ukraine. And if you go back and look at the video there, you see Vladimir Putin descend from his presidential airplane onto the tarmac at an American Air Force base, and there is a red carpet that's been rolled out by American surface men and women who are

about this, and Trump is waiting. He is waiting for Vladimir Putin at the end of the red carpet,

and this is a guy who does a smile a lot. He is basically jumping up and down with joy.

He has this big grin on, he's clapping his hands, and Vladimir Putin comes down, walks on the red carpet, he grabs down with Putin's hand, he puts his hand on his shoulder, and gives him sort of a broish type of hug, they walk to the podium that says, "Making pre-piece, pursuing peace." And he does the same thing, reporters are shouting questions, "How can you trust a war criminal ?" And neither he nor Putin responds to that, they go off, and he invites Putin to come into his

limousine, the beast, the reinforced catalog, without anybody else with him, and they write off to where they're going to have the talks on the other side of the air base, and Putin has smile that you can see through the window that you can only call dialogue. And these few minutes demonstrate that there is a psychological component to this. Throughout the book, I try to get

at the core of the Trump Putin relationship, and I talked to people who worked in the first

Trump White House like Fiona Hill and others who worked with her on this issue, and a lot of them are still left puzzled by this. They all say, "Ed, kind of what you said," that he has an affinity, an affection for Putin, he admires Putin, he wants to emulate Putin, he clearly wants to rule the world with Putin. The warning that Ukraine is a nuisance for him, not because he's not upset that Putin invaded and is destroying ally in a democracy, it's getting in the way of him doing business

“with Vladimir Putin, and that's why he wants it off the table. And this goes back years, in 2013,”

after, you know, you mentioned this earlier, David. He's spent years trying to do business deals in Russia, the development deals, and Trump vodka, and all these other silly things. But in 2013, he finally got a real deal. He had missed the universe that he owned at the time, hold its pageant in Moscow. And when he got there, he was there for 36, 40 hours. The only thing he asked his handlers and the people around him, "When do I meet Putin?" Before he got there, he tweeted,

"Well, Putin become my new best friend." And now he's just obsessed about meeting with Putin. The meeting doesn't happen because of logistical difficulties. But this is a man who's been entrenched by Vladimir Putin. I mean, you all watch him a lot. He'll say nasty things about everyone, even the people he's endorsing. Ken packs it. God, he's ugly and dresses badly, but, you know,

“you should vote for him. You know, he'll call Kim Jong-un, rocketman, and even take, you know,”

throw darts at him once and a while. There's only one person in public life I can think of

of which he's never said anything negative. And that's Vladimir Putin. And again and again,

he, like, he goes to the G7 meeting and he goes, "Why isn't Vladimir Putin here?" Well, he's been kicked out because of the invaded Ukraine last week or two weeks ago. Now, whenever it was, he invited the Russian Finance Minister to the G20 meeting and asked for North Carolina. Without telling anybody, Russia had been ostracized from the G20 because of what's happening and Ukraine. He keeps trying to legitimize Vladimir Putin, not meeting in Alaska.

There was an, there was an honor guard. They had flights overhead. They made it, he, he, he, he, he just embraced him. He honored him. There were times when American presidents meet with

“tyrants for diplomatic purposes, but this went for beyond that. So I think part of it is deeply”

psychological. He wants to rule the world the way he thinks Putin does. He wants to have as much money as Putin has. And he's probably on his way to doing that. And, you know, people keep asking if the Russians have anything on him that has, you know, led to this. And there was a great Senate Intelligence Committee report that came out in 2020 that you kind of just referred to that looked at this question. And we do know that he traveled a lot to Russia in the 1980s,

1990s, the early 2000s. And any prominent American businessman or person who went to Moscow on those years would have been surveilled and recorded with 100% certainty. And we do know from the Senate Intelligence Committee report and from things that he said publicly that he was, let's be kind about it, playboying around in Russia on those trips. He has told people this and they are, you know, and the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation bipartisan said the same thing. So they obviously

had something on him about his social activity when he was there putting aside all the talk about

The Trump does what he does to help Putin for all these other reasons that I talked about. He's on the

side of Putin in the war and Ukraine because he wants the war over. He appreciates what, you know, Putin has done for him in terms of disinformation operations here and certainly going back to the Donald Trump Jr thing. You know, this is a guy from Putin's inner circle who supports a war in which they're attacking civilians kidnapping to children and committing more crimes in torture. I mean, you can't separate Umar Kremlin from what's going on in Ukraine and yet

didn't bother Donald Trump Jr or his bright to be or wherever organized the wedding. So there's there are some deep roots here and it remains a bit of a puzzle meant, you know, it's a bit of a,

“you know, a guessing game. But I think we've seen a lot of indications that Trump has this tremendous”

man-trush in Vladimir Putin. I have to say, you're your de-expert here, you've written multiple books on this kind of thing. But I want to say I have an adjacent theory. And my adjacent theory is that it goes back a long time. It may have to do with what it was like growing up in Queens as a

not so bright real estate developer of a second rate real estate developer father and trying to

get involved in Manhattan. And what happened was that the people in Manhattan wanted nothing to do with Donald Trump. They didn't want to finance him. They thought he was a marginal character. And so he started looking for people with who he could do business from whom money would flow. And when he did, there's a bright and beach mob that was a Russian mobsters who started buying apartments in Trump's building. One of the guys who bought, I think, five apartments in one of his

early buildings was a Russian mobster who is directly the predecessor in the Russian boxing superstructure of Kremlin 40 years ago in the same superstructure. And I think what happened was

“the Donald Trump wanted to be a big shot. And the only way he could be a big shot was getting money”

out of the shadows. That included Don King, that included the Gambino crime family and work who did work on some of his buildings. But it also included on a regular basis and an increasing

basis, the Russians. His first wife's father was involved with the KGB. He would make these trips.

He saw the Russians as embracing him in a way that the New York financial community did not. And they gave him the cloud that he needed. And that then tied into Atlantic City and the casinos. And later real estate transactions in Florida and New York and so on and so forth. And so it's not just that, you know, Vladimir Putin was playing him. That was Putin's job. It's that Russia offered

“him a kind of acceptance that no place else did. And it's been a part of his whole life.”

But as I go to you with the final question and you can answer my question and ask it one of David as well. You wrote the definitive book on one of the definitive anti-Russia strategists in American history, uh, Spignev Prishinsky. And Prishinsky, who came out of Poland and and and and put you to sort of the post World War II era in the middle of the Cold War era saw Russia as a threat and fought throughout his life to try to contain the Russians and defeat the Russians

and defeat their influence in the United States. I can only imagine how he viewed Trump and Russia. Maybe you talk a little bit about how this shift from the United States, it used to be that the one qualification American president had to have was tough on Russia and we went from that to this, this, this, this plaything of the Kremlin and I'm just wondering how the, how this fits with all the work you did around Prishinsky. Yeah, I mean Prishinsky, you know,

Prishinsky went through relationships with every sort of president from, from JFK through to Obama. He didn't get to know Trump, but, you know, he advised JFK's campaign. He was, like, writing a lot of the captive nations speeches in 1960 about Poland and and others and using

Catholic American immigrants, right up to Obama. He was always slightly disappointed with

president, the big exception of being Jimmy Carter, who he kind of bludgeoned around to his world view during the Carter presidency. But he had this sort of great predictive analytical sort of

“skill, which I think is lacking in today's Washington and not just inside a grifting administration.”

And that is the ability to cut through the noise and get through to the core of a core of things. Now, he was too second to old, really, to judge Trump properly. He died in May 2017, Trump had only been in office four months. He had had a stroke a year or two before. So,

unfortunately, we didn't get the benefit of Prishinsky's, what would have been

incisive, non-bullshitting, getting straight to the point. But I have no doubt that if we had had the benefit of that, there would have been absolutely no ambiguity in his diagnosis of what Trump represents, which is maybe not a fifth column for sort of Russian nationalism, but essentially the same thing, a grifter who is compromised and who's being used with great skill by a foreign power. In this case, Russia, but actually other foreign powers as well, Russia's just foremost,

to bend American foreign policy, and to bend American approach to international business

and commerce to their ends and to his own personal enrichment. This would have been seen

“by, I think, Reginski, as it is, by us, as the apotheosis of an America that is in deep moral spiral,”

downwards, and a profound national crisis that is no less great because we're so accustomed to it, because there's a drip drip every day. I mean, this cram left thing. And the guy was, like, as David mentioned, as David, as both of you, in fact, sort of set out, he was a security guard. He was one of these tattooed thugs. He was a rotviler for Putin and Putin made him an oligarch because he likes to keep people close to him who rely upon him, who owe him nothing but gratitude and none to anybody else, but also

people who have no limits to what they will do. The fact that it is unacceptable, that the wedding of the president of the United States son is underwritten by this thud, by this rotviler of the orocrat in the cramden. This is just another storm that will pass, and most Americans weren't hair about it. That in a way is this sort of deepest crisis of all. It's like, we are not seeing what's in front of us. So I'm very grateful for books like David. David, a question, will we ever find

out the actual sort of depth of this? Will there at some point be a big commission, a big inquiry, that post-Trump, that will get to the bottom of this unique scandal in the annals of American diplomacy and Empanetical history? That's really a good question. There's a lot, a lot of stuff happening that's important within the Trump world that we don't know about. A lot of the money coming into the crypto is coming in from Russia, from the Middle East, from from

from mob bosses, transnational crime organizations. We just don't know, and that's something that may be a congressional investigation could get at. Getting to the bottom of his interactions and relationship with Russia and particularly with Vladimir Putin might remain a mystery for some time. He certainly not going to tell us, and if he did, it won't be truthful. One purpose I had with the book was try to reclaim the Trump Russia narrative, right? Because

as you all have mentioned, Trump's done a great job in the Middle East and a poor job of dismissing this and putting it off to the side, it's a side issue, it's a hoax, it's Russia, Russia, Russia, and it's not a big thing. And even this wedding story, which is getting a couple days of news, which is pretty good in the world we live in these days, it will probably eventually fade and not bring people enough people to think about the bigger picture that we're talking about

“and that I've written about. And so I think getting the truth out today is an uphill battle.”

There's a lot of headwind against talking about Trump and Russia. And then in the future, well, Ed, David, your historians, I'm a historian, we'll just have to see what degree we have

getting the present truth out these days is a hard enough task and I hope I've been able to do a

little bit of that with this book. There is no question in my mind, but that you have done that with this book, as you have done with prior books, as you have done with your reporting.

“It is so essential to put this front and center in front of people when I see the Kremlin of”

story and then I see the Attorney General of the United States saying, "Oh, why should I even care

about that?" When in any prior administration, it would have been a scandal that brought Washington

to a halt. When I see the ahead of the FBI talking about, you know, who's about to make another sort of trip to Russia and bend it knee, talking about, you know, what he sees as priorities when he has shut down the parts of the FBI, the track, the foreign interference here. As DHS has shut

“down the parts of foreign interference here. What it does do, and I think this is crucially important”

and folks, if you're listening and you've listened to our part, we've been doing these podcasts for 12 years, we do 15, 16 podcasts a week. If you're listening and you take one thing away from all of it, it's the title of David's book. It's how Russia won. Russia won. We were in a cold war. We thought we won the cold war, but NATO's of the rocks. NATO's falling apart. We're war with Canada. We are helping Russia in Ukraine. We are taking their side on economic issues. We are taking

“their side on military issues. We are pulling back our own military capabilities. We have stopped”

tracking their illegal activities in the United States, whether it's the Treasury Department tracking Russian mobsters or whether it's the FBI or DHS tracking foreign interference in these elections. The President of the United States has said more than once that he listens to the Kremlin and believes Putin more than he believes our own intelligence people. Russia is the priority of the President of the United States. Russian foreign policy is what he advances. U.S. interests

are what fall to the side here and are suffer and you gotta understand it because it is the biggest story that exists in 85 years of U.S. foreign policy. So, David Corn has written a book called How Russia won Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and the fight for America. It came out yesterday. It is time for you to get it today. Read it. We'll keep talking about it. All of you know, David's been here before. We'll get David back because the stories will keep coming forward.

Of course, ads here every week and is wise and has framed the Cold War story.

Better than anybody I know. And yet, here is the twist ending that Brazinski never expected.

And that's where we are as a country. So, get David's book. Thank you David, Mosul Tov. Congratulations, David, on your book. Thank you, Ed, for coming to join us for this conversation. And we'll see you all just as we do each and every day here throughout the podcast at YouTube that where you get your podcast at Instagram, at TikTok. On Substack at the DSR network and need to know. Until next time, I'm David Rothko. Thanks a lot.