Donald Trump has a proven track record of being a serial flip-flopper. First, he tried to do business with Libyan dictator Qaddafi in 2009. Then, he went along with NATO’s war to take him out. Now that he is running against Hillary Clinton, he says the whole thing was a catastrophic mistake. Expect him to try to break out the Benghazi issue on Hillary like he tried to make an issue out of Obama’s citizenship and religion in 2012.
This Sunday, when asked about the U.S.’s Libya policy on CBS News’ Face the Nation, Trump brought up an incident many had forgotten: that time in 2009 when Qaddafi rented Trump’s opulent Westchester estate to erect a huge traditional tent where the Libyan leader would stay — and sacrifice a live lamb — while in New York for a United Nations assembly.
The despised tyrant had been turned down by many other venues.
The dictator, who was overthrown and killed while resisting a bloody revolution by the Libyan people in 2011, never slept at the estate. After a storm of publicity stoked outrage, the town of Bedford yanked permission for the tent, scuttling the Libyans’ plans and forcing their leader to stay in Manhattan, indoors. Qaddafi, Trump said on Face the Nation, “paid me a fortune, never got to stay there. And it became sort of a big joke.”
This is part of Trump’s proven track record of courting foreign dictators like Putin and sucking up to the likes of Saddam. There was a reason for that as Buzzfeed notes.Donald Trump had trouble getting credit from normal channels. I guess after four different bankruptcies, one develops a reputation for being difficult to deal with and a person who would game the system. This explains why Mr. Trump wanted access to Col. Qaddafi.
Trump’s uneven access to loans from mainstream banks may have motivated his quest for overseas investments. Trump has no lending relationships with the biggest U.S. banks, including Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, according to his financial disclosures. Instead, he often leans on smaller firms such as Ladder Capital that have less money on hand, the New York Times reported.
So, there is an explanation for Trump’s cozying up with Putin — he wants to get his hands on Putin’s money and oil, and he wants to get some good deals for exporting oil and natural gas from what he thinks will be a powerhouse economy. It’s too bad that demand for fossil fuels is plummeting thanks to the reality of climate change and other countries turning to cleaner forms of energy. The question is, when Trump loses by a landslide to Hillary Clinton, where is he going to turn to get credit since more and more people refuse to do business with him due to his racist and inflammatory remarks?
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