Why Trump hates Obama

From the new book by David Corn and Michael Isikoff:

...Back in the United States[in 2013], Trump tweeted out the good news: “I just got back from Russia—learned lots & lots. Moscow is a very interesting and amazing place!” The next day he tweeted at Aras Agalarov, “I had a great weekend with you and your family. You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. EMIN was WOW!”

The project moved further along than publicly known. A letter of intent to build the new Trump Tower was signed by the Trump Organization and Agalarov’s company. Donald Trump Jr. was placed in charge of the project.

Trump was finally on his way in Russia. And shortly after the Miss Universe event, Agalarov’s daughter showed up at the Miss Universe office in New York City bearing a gift for Trump from Putin. It was a black lacquered box. Inside was a sealed letter from the Russian autocrat. What the letter said has never been revealed.

In February 2014, Ivanka Trump flew to Moscow to scout potential sites for the Trump Tower project with Emin Agalarov. “We thought that building a Trump Tower next to an Agalarov tower—having the two big names—could be a really cool project to execute,” Emin later said.

But international events would quickly intervene. Weeks after Ivanka’s visit, the Obama administration and the European Union imposed tough sanctions on Russia in response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his military intervention in Ukraine. It would be a kick to Russia’s faltering economy, already struggling because of the plummeting price of oil. 

And one round of sanctions imposed by the European Union targeted Russian banks in which the Russia government held a majority interest—that included Sberbank, which had agreed to finance the Trump deal. Its access to capital was now hindered.

In this environment, the plans for the Trump Tower in Moscow crumbled. According to the Trump Organization, Ivanka Trump, after touring Moscow with Emin, killed the deal for business reasons. But Rob Goldstone suspected the demise of Trump’s project with the Agalarovs influenced Trump’s view of sanctions: “They had interrupted a business deal that Trump was keenly interested in.”

That deal was dead. But Trump’s involvement with Russia and Putin was not done. He still had a close bond with an influential oligarch, Aras Agalarov, who was wired into the Kremlin. And he stayed in touch with his Miss Universe pals, Emin and Goldstone. In January 2015, nearly a year after Putin’s invasion in Ukraine, Trump had Emin and Goldstone as guests to his office in Trump Tower—a meeting that was never publicly revealed during the investigations that followed the 2016 election...

Seventeen months later, in June 2016, Goldstone would return to Trump Tower—this time escorting a Russian-led delegation dispatched by the Agalarovs, offering potentially derogatory information on Hillary Clinton, courtesy of the Kremlin, to the top officials of Trump’s presidential campaign.