It's enough of a safe bet that Trump and other major GOP figures are actively sabotaging American diplomats seeking a hostage release that it should be treated as certainty. https://t.co/BPD9cIGwvk
— zeddy (@Zeddary) April 9, 2024
Are a bear’s sanitary arrangements convenient to its woodland home? Of course he is. Is the GOP happily abetting the crime cartel, ‘patriotism’ be damned? After Nixon, Reagan, and Bush… of course they are.
Will Bunch, at the Philadelphia Inquirer — “Trump’s family takes Saudi cash and deals with MBS and Netanyahu. That’s troublesome.”:
It’s now been seven years since one of the most iconic political moments of the Donald Trump era: the 2017 photo of the then-newly elected 45th president surrounded by Saudi Arabian royals and oligarchs dressed in traditional garb, all fondling a mysterious, glowing orb.
But for Trump and his family, the afterglow from that encounter — and the beginning of what fictional American emigree-to-the-Arab-world Rick Blaine would have called “a beautiful friendship” with the Saudis — has never dimmed.
This weekend, the endless gusher of petrodollars from Riyadh left their oily mark on the dim jewel of Trump’s fast-fading empire, the Trump National Doral course outside of Miami. There, the Saudi-funded LIV Golf tour brought yet another televised and star-studded tournament to a resort owned by the 45th president’s business arm.
We don’t how much the LIV tour — largely a creation of the massive sovereign wealth fund controlled by the Saudi dictator Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) — paid the Trump Organization for the three-day event. The LIV people insist the money is nominal, but no one would argue that the widely seen tournaments are propping up Trump’s coffers at a time when his hotel brand is in the loo, and the established PGA golf tour is avoiding the ex-POTUS and his 88 felony charges.
The New York Times, in a deep dive this weekend into Trump’s business world and its ties to the MBS regime, reported that Trump’s 15 golf resorts from California to Scotland — including one under construction in Oman in partnership with (surprise!) Saudi business interests — are his last remaining profit center, as the LIV events draw fans and also boost the cache of his private clubs that can charge as much as $400,000 for an individual membership…
It all looks like textbook corruption, since the Saudis didn’t start doing substantial business with the Trump family until after his presidency — when, among other things, his administration whitewashed any real probe into MBS’ involvement in the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — and before his current campaign, which has him in a dead heat with President Joe Biden. But in a world on fire, there are even bigger geopolitical reasons to be alarmed over Team Trump’s close ties…
…[W]hat if the current leaders in Jerusalem and Riyadh thought they could get better deals by waiting nine months and seeing if Trump becomes 47th president? What if Netanyahu, increasingly unpopular and, like Trump, facing criminal charges, thinks that another term for Trump — whose policies were rabidly pro-Israel, even if his personal friendship with the Israeli prime minister cooled after the 2020 election — is his best hope for staying in power?…
GOP Venality Open Thread: Is Trump Trying to Set Up Another ‘October Surprise’?Post + Comments (119)