In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump confused the Kurds with the Iranian Al-Quds Force, couldn’t tell the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas, and couldn’t recognize the name of the leader of ISIS. "We want top-of-the-line professionals.” As the primaries unfolded, it became increasingly obvious that Trump would need all the top-of-the-line help he could get when it came to foreign policy. “I’m going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people," Trump famously told a Post reporter last summer about how he would staff his campaign. This has been a concern swirling around the outsider candidate since he began, a real-estate developer with almost no serious Washington connections to tap for advice. The story resurfaced the name of a character who’d all but vanished from the campaign, and reawakened questions about who, exactly, Trump was surrounding himself with. intelligence for purported back-channel ties to Russian leaders. Someone, apparently, has heard of him: On Friday, Yahoo News reported that Page was being probed by U.S. “It's odd, because I've heard of every other financier who was a player on Moscow at the time.” He was one of the biggest Western players in the Russian market until President Vladimir Putin turned on him and Browder became his fierce critic. “Strangely, I've never heard of Carter Page until this Trump connection,” Bill Browder responded to me in an email. “But I am getting a lot of emails from friends asking, ‘Have you heard of this guy?’” “I had not heard of Carter Page before it came out in the media,” says another prominent Western businessman who has worked in the former Soviet Union for more than two decades. “What’s this guy’s name?” says one former Western energy CEO who spent years in Russia, and would have overlapped there with Page. And yet, despite the tightly knit nature of the expat business community in Russia, no one I spoke to had ever heard of Carter Page. This piqued my interest: I have been a Russia wonk for most of my adult life, I spent years living and reporting from Moscow, still go there regularly for reporting trips, and am in touch with lots of friends there. As for his connection to Trump, when Page was reached for comment by the New York Times the day after Trump’s big reveal, he said he had been sending policy memos to the campaign and the paper said he “will be advising Mr. Earlier this month, it hired essayist and former GQ contributor Walter Kirn as national correspondent.Reporters quickly Googling found that Page is the founder and managing partner of an investment fund called Global Energy Capital, and that he claims to have years of experience investing in Russia and the energy sector. It also hired Washington City Paper editor Michael Schaffer as editorial director, as well as City Paper reporter Lydia DePillis. Last week, the magazine hired Greg Veis, a former New Republic web editor, from The New York Times Magazine, as executive editor. Since coming under new ownership and reinstating former editor Frank Foer, the magazine has set out on a mission to become The New Yorker of Washington, D.C., and the first step on that mission is bulking up staff. These are just the latest in a string of new hires for TNR. Goldstein, also based in New York, will be tasked with enhancing the magazine's literary journalism. Ioffe, who is based in Moscow, will move to Washington at the end of the year to cover politics, et al. Tracy, who won a National Magazine Award for his work at the online Jewish interest magazine, will remain in New York City where he will write about media, politics and the city's intelligentsia. Julia Ioffe, a contributor to The New Yorker and Foreign Policy, and Tablet's Marc Tracy will both join the magazine as staff writers, POLITICO has learned. Sarah Goldstein, who recently left GQ, has been hired as features editor. The New Republic is continuing ts hiring spree with three new hires, including a marquee steal from The New Yorker. TNR hires Julia Ioffe, Tablet's Marc Tracy
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