Tuesday Open Thread

4 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. Josh Marshall on Besties MBS & JK: "Princelings and War Crimes"

   This is a must read, implicating Saudi Arabia aligned with the Trump Family against the United States. Why indeed was Jared Kushner unable to get a security clearance?!.

   As it was described to me at each of these events, or just about every one, there was Jared Kushner, seated right next to MBS.

   Now I want to be clear that my interlocutor here didn’t have a perfect visual memory of the precise seating layout in every case. I didn’t get into the nitty gritty details. It wasn’t that kind of chat. But the gist was clear. My interlocutor had never seen anything like it. Seating next to the ruler on a single night would be a career maker even for your average billionaire. But there Jared was every night, even for the private few attendees dinner apparently. The message seemed crystal clear and bold: Jared is my guy. In fact, he’s my number one, number two and number three guy.

   What struck my interlocutor was not just the tightness and openness of the bond but the fact that this is during Joe Biden’s presidency. In US politics, Kushner equals Trump. And Trump is no ordinary ex-President. He is not only the US domestic political opposition. But people in and around the White House consider him an existential threat to America’s core political institutions. MBS seemed totally unconcerned about any of that. He might as well have been holding a GOP fundraiser. You might have expected him to at least downplay his bond with Jared in the interests of managing his relationship with the White House. But apparently not even close.

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   1. In each of these ways the US-Saudi alliance, which goes all the way back to the 1940s, seems to have been replaced by a Saudi-Trump alliance. (The oil price bonanza is funding a manic building and spending spree in Saudi Arabia which is the backdrop to these billionaire confabs I describe above.) Or perhaps we can see it more broadly as a transnational layer of authoritarian or authoritarian-friendly billionaires and princelings running the show separate from the actions and decisions of elected governments.

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2. I'm still waiting for someone to lecture JQA about voting on principle…

   ..and calling him a "Jilliot".

   😉

    

    

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   1. Oh, just tell Adams: “Vote Blue, no matter who.”

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