General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSome background on Trump and Manafort, who've known each other for 40 years.
They were introduced by Roy Cohn.
Slate article from April 2016:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/04/paul_manafort_isn_t_a_gop_retread_he_s_made_a_career_of_reinventing_tyrants.html
The genesis of Donald Trumps relationship with Paul Manafort begins with Roy Cohn. That Roy Cohn: Joe McCarthys heavy-lidded henchman, lawyer to the Genovese family. During the 70s, Trump and his father hired Cohn as their lawyer to defend the family against a housing discrimination suit. (Cohn accused the Feds of using Gestapo-like tactics.) But Cohn and Trump became genuine pals, lunching at the Four Seasons and clubbing together at Studio 54. It was Roy Cohn who introduced Stone and Manafort to Trump.
During those disco years, Stone and Manafort were tethered together. They were both kids from Connecticut, attending colleges in Washington, though they couldnt have been more different. Stone loved attention and garnered it with theatrical flair. He was a bad boy, soi-disant. As a student at George Washington University, Stone moonlighted for the Nixon campaign and gravitated to Jeb Magruder, deputy director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Dirty tricks came naturally to Stone. He assumed a pseudonym and made contributions on behalf of the Young Socialist Alliance to one of Nixons potential challengers. He hired spies to infiltrate the McGovern campaign. Stone wasnt shy about his handiwork. In fact, he wasnt shy about anything. He loved to sit for interviews and vamp. Stone is a bodybuilding fanatic who posed shirtless in the New Yorker. The photo captured his implanted hair, but not the tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back.
Manafort had a very different mentor. He studied under the future secretary of state, James A. Baker III, who wielded his knife with the discipline of a Marine and the polish of a Princetonian. It was a good fit for Manafort, who shared his mentors pragmatic conservatism and his thirst for politics. (His father spent six years as the mayor of New Britain, Connecticut, a Republican who flourished in Democratic terrain.) Baker, an avid collector of young talent, had managed Gerald Fords re-election campaign. Thats where he spotted Manafort and anointed him aide de camp. When Baker needed his own manager for his 1978 campaign to become attorney general of Texas, he tapped Manafort. The experience of whispering in Bakers ear left a lasting impression. Paul modeled himself after Baker, one of his friends told me.
Despite his Yankee stock, Manafort ran Reagans Southern operation, the racially tinged appeal that infamously began in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the hamlet where civil rights activists were murdered in 1964. The success of the 1980 campaign gave Stone and Manafort cachet. More important, they helped run Reagans transition to power. They stocked the administration, distributing jobs across the agencies and accumulating owed favors that would provide the basis for their new lobbying business. They opened their doors in 1981.
Manafort and Stone pioneered a new style of firm, what K Street would come to call a double-breasted operation. One wing of the shop managed campaigns, electing a generation of Republicans, from Phil Gramm to Arlen Spector. The other wing lobbied the officials they helped to victory on behalf of its corporate clients. Over the course of their early years, they amassed a raft of blue-chip benefactors, including Salomon Brothers and Rupert Murdochs News Corp.
Another early client was Donald J. Trump. What Trump wanted was help fending off potential rivals to his Atlantic City casino business. He especially feared the rise of Indian gaming. As the 2016 campaign has graphically illustrated, Trump doesnt treat rivals gently. Testifying before a congressional committee in 1993, he began with his rote protestations of friendship. Nobody likes Indians as much as Donald Trump. He then proceeded to worry that the tribes would prove unable to fend off gangsters. There is no way Indians are going to protect themselves from the mob ... It will be the biggest scandal ever, the biggest since Al Capone An Indian chief is going to tell Joey Killer to please get off his reservation? Its unbelievable to me.
Trump poured money into a shell group called the New York Institute for Law and Society. The group existed solely to publish ads smearing his potential Indian competition. Under dark photos of needles and other junkie paraphernalia, the group asserted, The St. Regis Mohawk Indian record of criminal activity is well documented. (It wasnt.) Are these the new neighbors we want? We know that Trump and Stone were behind the New York Institute because Gov. George Pataki investigated its doings. He slapped Trump and Stone with a $250,000 fine and required them to publicly apologize for running the ads.
Manafort didnt own the Trump account at the firm. But one of his former partners told me that he would dispense advice and pitch in, winning Trumps trust. When Manafort took an apartment in Trump Towers in 2006, he would kibitz with his old client when theyd run into one another on the elevator. Trump knew this guy was top drawer, says one Republican operative.
emulatorloo
(44,182 posts)I remembered that they've known each other for a long time, but have forgotten the details. Thanks for posting this article.
bronxiteforever
(9,287 posts)superpatriotman
(6,252 posts)It was Roy Cohn who introduced Stone and Manafort to Trump
It was Roy Cohn who introduced Stone and Manafort to Trump
It was Roy Cohn who introduced Stone and Manafort to Trump
It was Roy Cohn who introduced Stone and Manafort to Trump
It was Roy Cohn who introduced Stone and Manafort to Trump
It was Roy Cohn who introduced Stone and Manafort to Trump
It was Roy Cohn who introduced Stone and Manafort to Trump
It was Roy Cohn who introduced Stone and Manafort to Trump
It was Roy Cohn who introduced Stone and Manafort to Trump
highplainsdem
(49,034 posts)superpatriotman
(6,252 posts)Shame on us for not repeating it as I did in the above post.
Lots of shaming earned here.
librechik
(30,676 posts)pervert/swinger sex club member/recruiter. So Trump had nothing to do with any of that of course. In between wives while he was merely pussy grabbing. Or while married.
TRUMP HAS KNOWN MANAFORT FOR 40 YEARS.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Vinca
(50,303 posts)The one where Trump made millions in profit, but the Russian purchaser mysteriously never moved in.