Month: March 2018

He wants to declare that he won victory over ISIS so he can have his stupid parade

by digby

Going for the Vic-to-ry:

The Trump administration has frozen more than $200 million allocated for recovery efforts in Syria, it was reported Friday, a day after President Donald Trump announced he wants U.S. troops out of the country “very soon.”

The administration’s actions, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, send more mixed signals on a highly sensitive issue: Suspending the funds could alarm Saudi Arabia, Israel and others worried about growing Iranian influence in the restive region.

The White House ordered the freeze to the State Department funding following a news report the president read noting the U.S. had committed an additional $200 million to support earlier recovery efforts in Syria, a State Department official confirmed to POLITICO.

The additional funds were pledged by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in February during a meeting in Kuwait with the coalition to defeat ISIS.

Tillerson, who was fired by Trump on March 13, earlier this year introduced a strategy for the ongoing war in Syria that called for U.S. troops to stay in the country for the foreseeable future to ward off ISIS resurgence and Iran’s influence.

Trump’s declaration he wanted to soon end the U.S. presence in Syria was just the latest instance in which the president has publicly undercut or defied his foreign policy team, to the frustration and confusion of U.S. officials and America’s allies.

Apparently, he’s been on this for a while:

President Donald Trump’s unscripted remark this week about pulling out of Syria “very soon,” while at odds with his own policy, was not a one-off: For weeks, top advisers have been fretting about an overly hasty withdrawal as the president has increasingly told them privately he wants out, U.S. officials said.

Only two months ago, Trump’s aides thought they’d persuaded him that the U.S. needed to keep its presence in Syria open-ended — not only because the Islamic State group has yet to be entirely defeated, but also because the resulting power vacuum could be filled by other extremist groups or by Iran. Trump signed off on major speech in January in which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid out the new strategy and declared “it is vital for the United States to remain engaged in Syria.”

But by mid-February, Trump was telling his top aides in meetings that as soon as victory can be declared against IS, he wanted American troops out of Syria, said the officials. Alarm bells went off at the State Department and the Pentagon, where officials have been planning for a gradual, methodical shift from a military-led operation to a diplomatic mission to start rebuilding basic infrastructure like roads and sewers in the war-wracked country.

I would guess that it’s mostly because he wants to have his parade and to do that he needs to be able to declare victory somewhere.

But it could also be because he has made a deal:

If President Donald Trump makes good on his promise to get out of Syria “very soon,” one of the biggest winners will be Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government.

Although the Kremlin has tried to cast its involvement in Syria as primarily an air campaign, there are extensive Russian boots on the ground through military contractors, and a US withdrawal would make their job of combating forces hostile to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad considerably easier…

And most foreign policy experts believe that vacuum would likely be further filled by Russia.
Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University, told CNN on Friday that “if the US were to withdraw, it seems to me the Russians would have a free hand” in Syria and the forces “fighting Assad would be weakened.”
Additionally, Stent said, a US withdrawal would help Iran, a country whose forces are fighting alongside Russians in Syria.

“I do wonder if that is something the President thought about when he made that announcement,” Stent said, noting that any departure would elevate Russia’s status to make it “the main power broker in that area.”

I don’t know what he has in mind but he almost certainly wants to pretend that he’s won a war somewhere. It is very likely nothing more than that. If someone else benefits from his puerile egomania well, that’s the fallout we’ll all have to face.

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Trademark FSB

by digby

Richard Engel of NBC reported this chilling story last night. I highly recommend that you watch the whole video:

The former Russian double agent got a terrifying message on his birthday: He was on a Kremlin hit list along with Sergei Skripal, another ex-spy who weeks later was poisoned with a nerve agent in a case Britain blames on Vladimir Putin’s government.

“Be careful, look around, something is probably going to happen,'” the former agent, Boris Karpichkov, says an old friend told him on the telephone in mid-February. “It’s very serious, and you are not alone.” Boris Karpichkov. NBC News

Among the names on the list was that of Skripal, whom Karpichkov didn’t know at the time but whose poisoning alongside his daughter, Yulia, on March 4 on British soil inflamed tensions between the Kremlin and the West and triggered international condemnation. The two are in a hospital in Britain, where Skripal is in critical condition. Yulia is “improving rapidly” and is no longer in critical condition, the hospital treating the pair said Thursday.

Also on the Kremlin’s list, he says, were several other ex-KGB agents, as well as Christopher Steele, author of a 35-page dossier alleging collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Bill Browder, the driving force behind a set of U.S. sanctions against Russian individuals known as the Magnitsky Act, was there as well, he adds.

Karpichkov, 59, says that at first he thought the call was a joke rather than a threat — typically dark Russian humor. But Skripal’s poisoning has put him on high alert. “Trademark FSB,” he says, referring to Russia’s security agency, the Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB. NBC News interviewed Karpichkov over the weekend at a rented studio in London; he refused to say where he lives in the U.K.

I’m sure Trump’s reaction was “well, we have a lot of assassins who kill our critics with signature nerve gas too. You think we’re so innocent?” In case you were wondering that was an allusion to this:

What in the world is she talking about?

Huh?

Think Progress explains:

The idea that the mainstream media is ignoring Trump’s quiet efforts to effectively counter sex trafficking rings has been roundly debunked. The Trump administration is not making any particularly notable progress in this area.

As noted by Will Sommer in a thorough rundown published on Medium, this belief about Trump is actually a hallmark of a fringe conspiracy theory with similarities to “Pizzagate” — the fake news stoked by right-wing corners of the internet that reached a fever pitch in 2016, when a man fired a rifle in a D.C. pizzeria.

Comet employee on life during ‘Pizzagate’: ‘If this doesn’t stop someone is going to get killed’

The “QAnon” theory — also sometimes referred to broadly as “the Storm” — involves an anonymous 4chan user claiming to have high-level government information who leaves cryptic clues across the internet for followers to “decode.” The convoluted messages don’t seem to have much meaning on their face, but followers claim they signal credible predictions.

For instance, “QAnon” claims that the major Democratic operatives and celebrities who currently have the most power over the country are pedophiles, and will soon be arrested for their role in facilitating sex trafficking rings.

Over the past several months, “the Storm” theories have gradually made their wayout of the depths of 4chan and into more mainstream online platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter — including Roseanne Barr’s Twitter account.

Sommer notes that Barr has a long history of interest in “QAnon,” and has tweeted questions about “Q” to her followers several times. The Daily Beast published on Friday a detailed report of Barr’s interactions with “QAnon” fans over the past several months (including a breakdown of a convoluted theory that Barr herself helps provide proof of the “QAnon” theory, after her internet presence went dark following her public request to be put in touch with “Q”).

Perhaps tellingly, the heightened scrutiny on Barr’s connection to the conspiracy theory has recently incited some pushback in right-wing media circles. Rush Limbaugh defended Barr this week from ongoing criticism in the media regarding her elevation of “QAnon” theories.

Barr has long been a fan of Trump (as is her character on her show), and the feeling appears to be mutual. The president called Barr to congratulate her this week after ABC’s premiere of “Roseanne” drew big ratings.

It’s very sweet of “liberal Hollywood” to promote the idea of the salt of the earth Trump voter who just cares about “jobs” on the new Roseanne show.

But the real Roseanne is the real thing. She obviously spends her days immersed in right wing media propaganda. As do Trump voters. And this is the kind of nonsense they believe.

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Trump favorite courtier

by digby

It looks like King Donald has a new “gentleman of the stool”:

President Donald Trump has wondered aloud over the past weeks — to pretty much anyone listening — who would occupy the singular role of confidant and conspirator that longtime top aide Hope Hicks was leaving behind.

The answer, at least in some capacity, will be Dan Scavino, the social media director who this week moved into the minuscule office a pace or two from Trump’s desk that Hicks spent the past week packing up. Described by aides as Trump’s “mini me,” who can channel his moods and voice as few others can, Scavino is the last remaining staffer from the launch of Trump’s presidential campaign still posted by the President’s side.

That’s left West Wing officials, most with shorter and more distant relationships with the President, eying Scavino as Hicks’ natural successor — not as communications director, but as the White House aide Trump calls upon when he wants to vent, plot, confide, boast or reminisce.

If Hicks was able to occasionally act as a taming force on the President, however, there’s little expectation that Scavino will follow suit. When the President has come under fire in the past, Scavino has doubled down on the controversy of the moment, at times defending Trump from his own personal Twitter account.

Scavino is viewed by colleagues with a mix of reverence, for his uncanny ability to mimic the President’s moods and whims, and puzzlement, for his unlikely rise from Trump’s golf caddy to his club manager to gatekeeper of the most powerful Twitter account in the world.
“It’s beyond loyalty,” a source familiar with their relationship said.
In a White House that is becoming increasingly full of aides the President either doesn’t know or doesn’t trust, Scavino is one person the President is confident has his back entirely, people familiar with their relationship say. Scavino, one source noted, has dedicated his entire adult life to Trump.

Look for Scavino to be promoted to Secretary of Defense when Mattis is inevitably fired. That’s how feudal kings work.

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The F.M. is on a roll today

by digby

I’ll just leave this story by Phillip Bump right here:

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump escalated his assault on Amazon.com on Saturday, accusing the online retail giant of a “Post Office scam” and falsely stating that The Washington Post operates as a lobbyist for Amazon.

In a pair of morning tweets sent during his drive from his Mar-a-Lago estate to the nearby Trump International Golf Club, the president argued that Amazon costs the U.S. Postal Service billions of dollars in potential revenue.

Trump has repeatedly advanced this theory, even though officials have explained to him that Amazon’s contracts with the Postal Service are profitable for the agency.

[Fact Checker: Trump’s bundle of faulty claims about Amazon’s cost to taxpayers]

The president also incorrectly conflated Amazon with The Post and made clear that his attacks on the retailer were inspired by his disdain for the newspaper’s coverage. He labeled the newspaper “the Fake Washington Post” and demanded it register as a lobbyist for Amazon. The Post operates independently of Amazon, though the news organization is personally owned by Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon.

In Trump’s first of two Amazon tweets, sent at 8:45 a.m., he wrote: “While we are on the subject, it is reported that the U.S. Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon. That amounts to Billions of Dollars. The Failing N.Y. Times reports that ‘the size of the company’s lobbying staff has ballooned,’ and that…”

While we are on the subject, it is reported that the U.S. Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon. That amounts to Billions of Dollars. The Failing N.Y. Times reports that “the size of the company’s lobbying staff has ballooned,” and that…— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 31, 2018

The president continued with a second tweet sent seven minutes later: “…does not include the Fake Washington Post, which is used as a ‘lobbyist’ and should so REGISTER. If the P.O. ‘increased its parcel rates, Amazon’s shipping costs would rise by $2.6 Billion.’ This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now!”

Trump also criticized California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) for pardoning five ex-convicts facing deportation. He tagged Fox News Channel in his tweet, indicating his comment was inspired by a segment he watched on the network.

Trump tweeted, “Governor Jerry ‘Moonbeam’ Brown pardoned 5 criminal illegal aliens whose crimes include (1) Kidnapping and Robbery (2) Badly beating wife and threatening a crime with intent to terrorize (3) Dealing drugs. Is this really what the great people of California want? @FoxNews.”

Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown pardoned 5 criminal illegal aliens whose crimes include (1) Kidnapping and Robbery (2) Badly beating wife and threatening a crime with intent to terrorize (3) Dealing drugs. Is this really what the great people of California want? @FoxNews— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 31, 2018

Trump is typically motivated to lash out at Amazon because of The Post’s coverage of him, officials have said. One person who has discussed the matter repeatedly with the president explained that a negative story in The Post is almost always the catalyst for one of his Amazon rants.

The Post on Friday afternoon published online an exhaustive account of the Trump Organization’s finances “under unprecedented assault” because of three different legal inquiries: Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation; the $130,000 payment to secure the silence of adult-film actress Stormy Daniels after her alleged sexual encounter with Trump; and lawsuits alleging that Trump is improperly accepting gifts, or “emoluments,” from foreign or state governments through his businesses.

Trump is known to react especially sensitively to news stories about his personal and business affairs.

Saturday marked the second time in three days that Trump has attacked Amazon. On Thursday, the president tweeted that “they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!”

In fact, Amazon does collect taxes on products it sells to customers in the 45 states that have a sales tax, although items sold by third-party vendors may have different arrangements.

Beyond Trump’s use of his bully pulpit to single out Amazon, the White House has indicated it there are no plans to take action against the behemoth.

Lindsay Walters, a White House spokeswoman, told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One on Thursday, “The president has expressed his concerns with Amazon. We have no actions at this time.”

But White House officials have struggled to back up Trump’s theories about the retailer. Asked why Trump believes Amazon is hurting the Postal Service when experts say it ships so many packages it helps keep the Postal Service in business, Walters offered no explanation.

Still, Trump’s attacks, irrespective of their factual accuracy, could impact public confidence in the company. After Axios reported Wednesday that Trump was “obsessed” with Amazon, shares fell more than 4 percent. They continued their tumble on Thursday, when Trump tweeted, falling more than 3.8 percent in morning trading.

The share price recovered once Walters said there were “no actions at this time,” and it was up 1.1 percent for the day by the close of trading.

Trump has discovered that he can destroy billions of dollars in company value with a tweet so I think we can expect more of it. You know what that means:

I think what gets me about this is that he thinks Amazon is taking advantage of the Post Office when, in fact, the Post Office making a ton of money shipping Amazon products. They try to tell him it’s not true but he doesn’t care. He’s just that stupid. And dangerous.

Here’s a link to the story that set him off this morning:From Mueller to Stormy to ‘emoluments,’ Trump’s business is under siege

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download
by Tom Sullivan

Political campaigns are not just contests of ideas. They are contests of skills.

Experienced county committees as well as new, hair-on-fire activists face a daunting task in 2018. More Democrats have filed for office than ever. From school board to the state House to the U.S. Senate, you need them to win. They need your help.

For The Win is a primer for helping county committees (particularly under-resourced ones) mount a countywide Get Out The Vote effort. It’s free. This is the nuts and bolts of organizing a months-long coordination effort with little money and minimal computer skills.

No theory. If it’s in there, we’ve done it here.

Within 48 hours of sending links to Texas counties last year, over 50 downloaded For The Win. Seventeen more previously unorganized Texas counties have popped up on the radar since mid-December. Things are moving in Texas; 221 (of just over 250) received updates Thursday night. Whether or not they download and deploy its recommendations is on them. This is a lead-a-horse effort, true, but there are some thirsty horses out there.

In January, I wrote about the first Democratic Candidates Conference. Asked how much field support they could expect from the county committees in their districts, all but one candidate I asked gave some variation of the same answer: a pregnant pause, a sigh, or an eye roll. Maybe all three.

A woman wrote in late January to say she went from getting involved on November 9, 2016 to being the new chair of her rural Democratic committee. But her predecessors left her nothing to work with. Her state party had been difficult to reach either by email or phone, and her District Chair was unreachable. “Your email and GOTV Platform,” she wrote, “is the FIRST communication I have received that gives me any help at all.”

Which is exactly why For The Win exists. If you’re not in a swing state, especially if you’re in a more rural county in not-a-swing-state, Barack Obama isn’t parachuting in a team from Michigan Avenue to show you how to assemble a high-energy, months-long, countywide Get Out The Vote and electioneering effort. The governor’s race doesn’t show up out there. The U.S. Senate race doesn’t set up out there. That’s why many local Democratic committees don’t do more … because they don’t know what more looks like.

Here’s more. The beyond-thirtysomething single woman who assembled this portable call center has no money, no financial backers, and 30 laptops with headsets and a phone-banking interface customized by a freshman at Stanford. Between campaign gigs, she keeps a roof over her head by house sitting. She didn’t write a grant proposal or start a nonprofit. She just started.

Bridget McCurry’s call-center-in-a-trunk. If you’re not Goliath, fine. Be David.

Look, state parties and the campaign arms of state and national legislative caucuses are focused on large cities and targeted races that will put warm butts in seats on their party’s side of the aisle ASAP. Occupying the countryside is too long-term a goal and too much bother.

And so, in the fullness of time, Republicans controlled 32 state legislatures, voter suppression legislation, and 2020 redistricting. Maybe we should do something about that?

This year is a real as it gets. So let’s get real.

If you previously requested our countywide Get Out The Vote planner via this blog, or if you are a Democratic county committee officer in one of the red-shaded states below (and your contact info was public), watch your in-box for the link to the For The Win update. If you would like a copy yourself, request the download link at the address below, and in addition to your name, please provide your city, state, and a very brief statement about how you are engaged. I’m building out my map.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail. (If you are already on my email list, check your in-box.)

Friday Night Soother: TGIF

by digby

Here is a bonus adorable baby rhino playing and practicing his awesome charge.

Enjoy:

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Big, Beautiful Boondoggle

by digby

These pictures are of a repair on existing fencing from 2009

How much time and money does he waste on nonsense like this?

When it comes to who’s going to foot the bill for his “big, beautiful” border wall, President Donald Trump is trying to change the M from “Mexico” to the “military,” asking the Pentagon to redirect a couple of billion dollars so that he can keep one of his central campaign pledges.

Few in Trump’s cabinet think using defense dollars to pay for the wall is a good idea, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, according to a Trump administration official who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions. But that doesn’t mean the idea is dead on arrival. Mattis feels that, at the very least, he owes Trump some options, but all of them are fraught with political and legal problems, the official said.

And none of them get the White House even close to the $25 billion Trump’s seeking. That’s because, perhaps to Trump’s surprise, Congress holds the power of the purse, meaning it gets to decide how taxpayers’ dollars are spent. And Congress did this just last week, when it passed a $1.3 trillion spending bill to fund the government through September. In that bill, which Trump reluctantly signed, lawmakers appropriated only $1.6 billion for a border wall. Meanwhile, Congress gave the Defense Department about $700 billion, which clearly got Trump thinking: Maybe some of that money can go toward the wall, as the Washington Post reported earlier this week. Since then, he has cryptically tweeted (and retweeted): “Build WALL through M!”

On Thursday, the Pentagon acknowledged that Mattis has had conversations with Trump on this topic, but would not provide any further details.

My favorite thing about this lunacy is that Trump is telling the whole country that the military is swimming in so much money it doesn’t really need that it has 25 billion to spare. It’s actually true! Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t get to just move money from one account to the other for his pet projects. Congress is pretty useless right now but it does still have that prerogative.

And then there’s that stupid parade …

God.

There is such a thing as straight up bribery

by digby

I’ve been wondering about this:

Much of the news coverage has focused on whether offering pardons to induce a witness not to cooperate in the special counsel’s investigation could constitute obstruction of justice. But there is another potential charge that could apply more directly and that prosecutors might have reason to favor: conspiracy to commit bribery.

Federal bribery requires that a public official agree to receive and accept something of value in exchange for being influenced in the performance of an official act. In this scenario, the official act would be granting a pardon. While the Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in the case of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell dramatically narrowed the definition of “official act,” there’s no question that a president granting a pardon would be an exercise of government power under the McDonnell v. United States standard.

“Thing of value” is also fairly easily met: It would be the agreement not to cooperate against the president. The thing of value in bribery law is not limited to envelopes stuffed with cash. It can include anything of subjective value to the public official, whether tangible or intangible. Such intangibles as offers of future employment and personal companionship have been found to be things of value for purposes of bribery. A promise not to cooperate in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe could readily serve as the quid in this quid pro quo.

The public official, of course, is the president. Dowd is not a public official and cannot be bribed himself, but he could conspire with a public official to arrange bribes on the official’s behalf. The theory would be that Dowd and the president engaged in a conspiracy to accept bribes by agreeing that Dowd would make the offer. This, of course, would require proof that Dowd was acting with the president’s approval and not merely freelancing.

It seems obvious to me that if Dowd mentioned pardons to witnesses who were being pressed to cooperate with the authorities in the Russia probe it was an offer of a quid pro quo. Why else would he bring it up?

And somehow I doubt these are the only quid pro quos being bandied about in Trump’s white house these days. He’s turned the whole place into a toxic sewer of corruption, mostly to pay back his friends and enrich himself and his family.

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Your grotesque presidential corruption story of the day

by digby

This one features The National Enquirer, aka Trump’s enforcer. The New York Times reports:

In July, David J. Pecker, the chairman of the company that owns The National Enquirer, visited his old friend President Trump at the White House.

The tabloid publisher took along a special guest, Kacy Grine, a French businessman who advises one of Saudi Arabia’s richest men and sometimes acts as an intermediary between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Western businesses.

The two men and other Pecker associates chatted with the president in the Oval Office and briefly met with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner. Before moving on to dinner with the group, the president had a photographer snap pictures of the guests standing with him behind his desk.

Mr. Pecker has long used his media empire to protect Mr. Trump’s image. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Pecker’s company, American Media Inc., suppressed the story of a former Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Mr. Trump.

The night of the dinner, Mr. Pecker got something from Mr. Trump: an unofficial seal of approval from the White House.

It was an opportune moment for Mr. Pecker to showcase his White House connections. He was considering expanding his media and events businesses into Saudi Arabia and also was hunting for moneyed partners in acquisitions.

Mr. Pecker’s company, American Media Inc., published a glossy magazine that is essentially a promotional brochure for Saudi Arabia and the crown prince.
The intersection of the tabloid publisher with the Saudis, enhanced by the White House visit, is a previously untold chapter in the long, symbiotic relationship between the president and Mr. Pecker, which was forged in the 1990s. At the time, Mr. Trump was celebrating a real estate comeback after his casino bankruptcies and was both the subject and the source of much gossip in New York.

Mr. Pecker, who had known Mr. Grine only for a few months, invited him to the dinner to thank him for advice he had provided about investing in the Middle East, according to someone who knew of the invitation.

Word soon traveled back to Saudi Arabia about the dinner: It signaled Mr. Pecker’s powerful status in Washington.

Two months later, he was in Saudi Arabia, meeting with Mr. Grine and the crown prince about business opportunities there, according to A.M.I.

And by January, Mr. Pecker was confident enough about his growing rapport with Saudi investors that he sought their help bankrolling a possible acquisition of Time magazine, which he had long coveted, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks. A.M.I. disputed that.

There’s more. It will make you nauseous. Trump is paying back his sleazy pals for all the underhanded help they’ve given him over the years by letting them literally sell influence with the president to foreign investors right in the White House.

But it gets weirder:

The outcome of Mr. Pecker’s efforts to do business with the Saudis remains unclear. But he is still working to cultivate ties. This week, he and Mr. Grine both attended events in New York featuring Prince Mohammed, who is on a tour across the United States.

Ahead of that visit, A.M.I. published a 97-page glossy magazine that is essentially a promotional brochure for Saudi Arabia and the crown prince. It makes no mention of anything troubling, like the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, human rights concerns or the crown prince’s arrest last fall of many extended royals, including Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, an influential client of Mr. Grine’s.

The magazine — which refers to Saudi Arabia throughout as “the Magic Kingdom” — includes an interview with Mr. Grine, accompanied by a photo of him posing with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, taken during his visit with Mr. Pecker. It talks up the relationship between Mr. Trump and the Saudis, noting that Mr. Trump “endorsed the crown prince’s high profile anticorruption” crackdown.

A.M.I. has said it produced the magazine to “capitalize” on interest in the crown prince, who is next in line to the throne, and has been careful to say it received no input or guidance from Saudi officials. That carries important legal implications: Foreign direction or control of such a purely promotional publication may require disclosure to the Justice Department. The Saudi government did not respond to a request for comment.

The magazine — 200,000 copies distributed in Walmart and other outlets, with a cover price of $13.99 and no advertising — provided a unique welcome mat for the prince, whose visit comes as the Trump administration is trying to establish tighter ties with the kingdom. Both countries are touting cross-border investment opportunities, including a pledge by the Saudi government to put $20 billion into a fund that will invest in American infrastructure projects. The kingdom is also nearing a deal to buy American-made missiles and other military equipment.

It’s just the president of the United States paying back the friend who paid hush money on his behalf to keep his Playboy Playmate mistress quiet by letting him sell access to he White House to his potential Saudi Arabian backers. And hey, they offer up some slick propaganda for the new authoritarian Saudi monarch and military contractors get some big profits. What’s the problem?

So much winning. I’m begging to stop with all the winning.

Seriously, this is full-on kleptocratic oligarch behavior that Putin and his cronies like the Agalarovs and  Deripaska have to be toasting Trump with a long pull of ice cold vodka. Well done, sir!

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