Thread: Was “The Apprentice” a Russian Active Measures Campaign?

At the same time Russian operative Felix Sater was infiltrating the Trump Org in 2000, Putin was pitching Mark Burnett on a “Destination Mir” reality show, raising the question of whether the two ops were linked.

In 2000, after Trump had blown his inherited wealth and no banks would touch him, Felix Sater showed up at Trump Tower to pitch him on a scheme to launder Russian blood money through Trump tower deals. Sater was a known member of the Russian mafia with no real estate experience.

In 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to a boiler room scheme run by the Russian mafia together with the Italian mob. As part of his plea, Sater became a CI, helping bring down the *Italian* mob and diverting FBI attention away from organized crime and toward Al-Qaeda. How’d he do that?

Sater claims to have infiltrated Russian military intelligence and tricked them into giving him info about Al-Qaeda, which Sater then funneled to the FBI. This is obvious bullshit. Sater had to have been a Russian military intelligence operative intentionally misleading the FBI.

Keep in mind, the Russian mafia is an arm of Russian military intelligence. They are not distinct entities. Sater being in the Russian mafia means, by definition, he was a Russian military intelligence operative. He wasn’t tricking the Russians, he was tricking the FBI!

This means, when Putin took office in May 2000, Sater was Putin’s number one operative.

Think about it. The guy had the FBI wrapped around his finger. It was an unprecedented coup for Russian military intelligence. Sater was an absolute rock star and was invaluable to Putin.

What did Putin do with this invaluable Russian military intelligence operative as soon as Putin took office in 2000? He sent Sater to Trump Tower to help cultivate Trump as a Russian asset.

And, at the very same time, Putin *himself* was working on Mark Burnett.

In September 2000, NBC announced a new Mark Burnett reality show called “Destination Mir,” where contestants compete to win a trip to the Russian space station. Burnett revealed in interviews he negotiated the deal directly with Putin.

http://movies2.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20010128mag-burnett.html

The show never happened, and it’s ludicrous to think it could have. Putin was playing Burnett, and likely blackmailing or bribing him in the process.

Putin had his top agent (Sater) working on Trump. But to make full use of Trump, he first needed to spruce up Trump’s image.

In May 2002, Burnett pitched Trump on a show to whitewash his image and make him appear to be a successful businessman, just what Trump needed to run for POTUS as a populist strongman.

The Apprentice ran from 2004 through Trump’s announcement of his POTUS run on June 16, 2015.

A mere eight days after Trump announced he was running for POTUS, Burnett announced his latest project: a reality show focusing on...Vladimir Putin! https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mark-burnett-pursuing-vladimir-putin-804454

I know two plus two can be tough, but come on people!