Exclusive: Leaked meeting notes show Boris Johnson said Trump was 'making America great again'

Authored by telegraph.co.uk and submitted by baioeilish

The president had been a prominent supporter of Brexit and appeared eager to understand better the origins of the referendum. “What about Brexit? Did Cameron make a mistake?” he asked Mrs May, according to the notes.

“Look, it’s Conservative Party politics”, she is quoted responding, urging Nick Timothy, her joint chief of staff who was present, to explain how Mr Cameron felt forced to call a vote because of Tory splits on the issue.

“Why isn’t Boris Johnson the prime minister? Didn’t he want the job?” Mr Trump then asked, according to the notes, probing about the political career of the man who headed up the Leave campaign and would ultimately play a part in toppling Mrs May.

When Mrs May explained how the Tory leadership race played out - which saw Mr Johnson withdraw after losing the support of Michael Gove - Mr Trump is quoted responding: “Oh, so you were drafted like in baseball. But really I think you were plotting this all along.”

Then came a discussion about how immigration impacted the Brexit vote. Mrs May said it was a factor but “part of a larger issue about borders and sovereignty”.

Once again, the US president picked up a theme and ran with it. “We are going to get tough on immigration,” Mr Trump said, according to the notes. “The Europeans have opened their doors to bad people. We will not have a Paris."

That line appears to be a reference to past terror attacks in the French capital. “Crime is way up in Germany. Women are getting raped all over the place,” Mr Trump is quoted continuing, singling out Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, for criticism. “Merkel will lose her next election.” Mrs May disagreed.

“No, I don’t think she will. She’s the best politician in Europe right now,” the British leader said, according to the notes. Later that year Mrs May was proved right. Mrs Merkel was re-elected.

At one point during the lunch Mr Trump wanted to know about Northern Ireland. How it would fare after Brexit, given its position inside the UK but sharing a land border with Ireland, an EU member, was a critical issue in talks.

“What about Northern Ireland?” Mr Trump asked, according to the notes. “There’s such hatred there. I just don’t understand where it comes from." Mr Trump is quoted then jumping to Scotland and calling Alex Salmond a “loser”.

He had a long-running feud with the former Scottish first minister over wind farms construction near one of his golf Scottish courses. As the lunch neared its end the conversation turned to relations with Russia, an issue that hung over Mr Trump’s early presidency given the FBI investigation into Kremlin interference in the election he won.

Mr Trump asked his national security adviser Michael Flynn why he had not been informed of a call from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president - a fact mentioned briefly in the notes but which others present have since called a heated exchange.

Mrs May, a critic of the Russian leader, then offered the US president a warning. “You have to engage with Putin but beware,” she said, according to the notes. “He only respects strength. You have to be tough.” Offering a different opinion that foreshadowed future tensions, Mr Trump waved away her concerns.

“I have to talk to this guy,” the president said. “He has a thousand nukes. This isn’t the Congo.”

The Telegraph read out the notes to two people in the room for the lunch who confirmed their accuracy. A third person who did not attend but is familiar with the US record of the meeting said likewise.

One of the most testing times in UK-US relations under Mr Trump came after Sergei Skripal, the former Russian spy who defected to Britain, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury.

Mrs May publicly accused the Russian government of being behind the attack and spent much of March 2018, the month of the attack, rallying Western allies to jointly expel Russian spies in retaliation. It was a major test for the new UK-US relationship.

AnotherScoutTrooper on September 6th, 2020 at 02:24 UTC »

Stuff like this is why I always liked the theory that Trump’s campaign was a publicity stunt gone wrong.

Thisam on September 6th, 2020 at 01:52 UTC »

Everybody works for somebody; we all know who Donald works for now. There is no benefit for him in this behavior because it doesn’t help his base or his donors, so he must owe Putin big time for something else. He’s been funded by Russian money since 1984:

Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.

► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.

► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)

► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.

► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.

► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.

► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.

► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."

► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower

► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”

► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.

► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. that is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.

► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties tot he Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.

► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnel got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.

► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."

► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.

Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:

► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. "I don't care, I believe Putin"

► Trump met in secret with Putin the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.

► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.

► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.

► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.

► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7

► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.

► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty

► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.

► Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)

► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.

baioeilish on September 6th, 2020 at 00:41 UTC »

This is a very detailed article that covers notes taken by Boris Johnson and aides, regarding many topics. Here's the part about Russia/Skripal:

Mrs May was seeking solidarity from the White House over a chemical attack on British soil. But leaked notes from one call between Mr Trump and Mrs May reveal how hard he pushed back. “We really need your leadership on this”, Mrs May said, according to the notes. “No, I would rather follow than lead,” Mr Trump is quoted responding.

The call was in March, though the exact date is unclear. They talked more than once that month. The president is quoted carrying on: “Angela [Merkel] is doing nothing. She is feeding the beast. I have done stuff and the EU has to do something. We are paying for their defence.” Mrs May tried again.

“Three children fell ill after feeding ducks there”, she is quoted saying, referring to the hospitalisation of children who had been in the park where Mr Skripal was found. “Yes, it’s horrible and disgusting”, Mr Trump agreed. “The US and the UK must stand together on this”, Mrs May said, according to the notes.

Mr Trump is quoted countering: “No, all of us have to be together. Germany has to do something. You have to put together a coalition.” According to the notes he went on: “I’m not willing for the US to go first and then have others not to do anything. Germany has to do something.”