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epollaert.bsky.social
@epollaert.bsky.social
5.2K followers 3.6K following 1.6K posts
Former M&A and project finance lawyer, current photographer and Germanic linguist. London and Utrecht. No DMs. I block
condescending jerks and stupid ppl. Apparently that needs to be said.
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epollaert.bsky.social
Vast fortune? Just how much do you think lawyers make? But he should run in a more competitive district. He might be able to turn a few GOP voters, since he used to be one so knows their language.
December 31, 2025 at 6:32 PM
Reposted
just-jack-1.bsky.social
He decimated our soft power around the world, replacing it with transactional schemes rife with corruption and cronyism.

Despite all of this and more, his campaign to drown us in despair and break our collective spirit did not work.

…
December 31, 2025 at 4:11 PM
epollaert.bsky.social
They were first generation Americans. Their parents were immigrants. They were the children of immigrants. They were raised by immigrants, yes, but ppl born in the US, even to immigrants, are Americans, period.
December 31, 2025 at 11:45 AM
Reposted
emptywheel.bsky.social
Also, more generally, why do none of these reports examine Nikolai Patrushev's claim that Trump had obligations to the forces that helped him win?

It is a fact that Russia helped Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Why is that EVER forgotten?

tass.com/politics/187...
MOSCOW, November 11. /TASS/. In his future policies, including those on the Russian track US President-elect Donald Trump will rely on the commitments to the forces that brought him to power, rather than on election pledges, Russian presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev told the daily Kommersant in an interview. "The election campaign is over," Patrushev noted. "To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them." He agreed that Trump, when he was still a candidate, "made many statements critical of the destructive foreign and domestic policies pursued by the current administration." "But very often election pledges in the United States can iverge from subsequent actions," he recalled. Republican Donald Trump outperformed the candidate from the ruling Democratic Party, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the US elections held on November 5. Trump will take office on January 20, 2025. During the election campaign Trump mentioned his peace-oriented, pragmatic intentions, including in relations with Russia.
December 31, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Reposted
emptywheel.bsky.social
Second, how do you repeat this bullshit abt 2016 w/o noting that it is either a deliberate lie and/or deliberate cope?

Want to explain why Trump (needs to) believe Russian lies, you start there.
Mr. Trump’s aides knew he was eager to get started, but they were also aware of the shadow that outreach to Russia had cast over his first term. Then, several aides’ undisclosed contacts with the Russians before the inauguration had become part of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump took to bitterly calling it “the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.” There would be much tortured back story to contend with. During his first term, Mr. Trump had come to blame Ukraine, not the Kremlin, for the 2016 election interference that spawned the Russia investigation. And it was his effort to have Ukraine investigate the Bidens that led to his first impeachment. In meetings, according to five aides, Mr. Trump would sometimes say of Mr. Zelensky, “He’s a motherfucker.”
December 31, 2025 at 11:20 AM
epollaert.bsky.social
Trump didn’t “fall”
for anything. He has been a Russian asset for decades.
December 30, 2025 at 1:53 AM