***Bette members will find the registration links below the paywall. To join our community events and to help support independent investigative journalism in a time of grave peril, please upgrade to a paid membership.***
Hello Bette members!
Thank you to all new and renewing subscribers. Hope you join our community events — a membership perk!
Paying members are invited to register for our latest Bette’s Book Club event with New York Times-bestselling author Craig Unger as he discusses the findings in his first book on Trump-Russia, House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia (Random House, 2018).
This event is scheduled for Sunday, 4 October, at 11 am Pacific, 2 pm Eastern.
Registration can be found by scrolling all the way to the end of this post, below the paywall.
I asked Craig to offer us his insights on why this book he wrote nearly a decade ago is so important to revisit now to better our understanding of current events, and he told me:
“Putin’s greatest ambition is to destroy NATO, which over the last eighty years, has built powerful democratic institutions, strong market economies, and rich trade relations in more than 30 countries — not to mention the most potent military alliance in the history of the world. But thanks to Donald Trump, the United States is no longer a reliable partner. What makes this time so dangerous is that both Trump and Putin are now facing existential crises — Trump from the midterms, Putin, from Ukraine. The world order we’ve all known and lived with is hanging by a thread.”—Craig Unger for Bette Dangerous
Breaking news reported by Politico that the Trump regime has excluded several major NATO allies, including the UK, France and the Baltic states, from an October meeting in Poland about the alliance’s future only buttresses Craig’s point.
And the NATO slide from seven years ago that I include in this report, shows just how rapidly Trump is working to achieve Russian aims.
More about House of Trump/House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia — available here:
'A bombshell.' Daily Mail
'Damning, terrifying and enraging.' The Spectator
'The story Unger weaves with his original reporting is fresh, illuminating and more alarming than the intelligence channel described in the Steele dossier.' The Washington Post
House of Trump, House of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House.
It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s, when Trump made his first splash in the booming, money-drenched world of New York real estate, and ends with Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putin’s long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that he and his hand-selected group of oligarchs and associates had ensnared Trump in, starting more than twenty years ago with the massive bailout of a string of sensational Trump hotel and casino failures in Atlantic City. This book confirms the most incredible American paranoias about Russian malevolence.
To most, it will be a hair-raising revelation that the Cold War did not end in 1991―that it merely evolved, with Trump’s apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union. In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trump’s sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world. He traces Russia’s phoenixlike rise from the ashes of the post–Cold War Soviet Union as well as its ceaseless covert efforts to retaliate against the West and reclaim its status as a global superpower.
Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. This essential book is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today’s world.
More about Craig Unger’s body of work here:
Craig Unger is the New York Times bestselling author of six books on the Republican Party’s assault on democracy, including House of Bush, House of Saud; House of Trump, House of Putin, American Kompromat, and now Den of Spies, a real life political thriller about how master spy William Casey put together a treasonous covert operation in 1980 that hijacked American foreign policy and stole the election for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
A graduate of Harvard University, Craig began his career in journalism as an undergraduate editor of The Harvard Crimson. In 1976, he moved to France as co-owner/editor of The Paris Metro, a celebrated biweekly English-language city magazine in the French capital. In the Eighties, as senior editor at New York Magazine, Craig wrote and edited major features on subjects ranging from medicine to pop culture, architecture, and politics. Over the years, his work has appeared in The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, The Independent, and many other publications. He also served as a contributing editor for Vanity Fair where he covered national security and foreign affairs for more than 15 years.
You can check out his collection of investigative reporting on Trump-Russia and the Republican party’s war on democracy here by ordering his books here:
In addition, learn more about the Trump-Russia Timeline and Jeffrey Epstein’s Russian ties on Craig Unger’s own substack here:
And please read and share this Q&A from one of my long-form interviews with him:
That interview was cited in the new book, “American Overthrow,” by Keir Giles, who was our first Bette’s Book Club guest and who will be coming back around shortly once more members have had a chance to read his book.
And also note additional upcoming authors in our book series: French historian and disinformation analyst David Colon on Tuesday, 13 October; and intellectual historian Marci Shore offering a lecture on Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt on Tuesday, 27 October. More details to come.
Please keep scrolling below the paywall for the registration link for our Craig Unger event. It’s not too late to become a member!
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