Fiddling while the world burns

The NYT recently published an expose about Orange Julius's finances which was extremely important and extremely ignored, like most important stuff. One reason it was ignored is that it was long and complicated and tedious to read, so Nancy LeTourneau tries to make it accessible for you.

The first thing you need to know is that he has lied about his business acumen his entire life. He did not, as he claims, build a fortune out of what he calls a "small" million dollar loan from his father. In fact, his father started transferring assets to him when he was just learning to walk and eventually gave him a total of $413 million. Which he squandered. In 2004 he was broke.

Then he suddenly mysteriously started spending millions of dollars to buy money-losing golf courses and overpay for other real estate assets with $400 million of mysterious provenance. Well, we actually do have a  guess about where it came from -- laundering money for Vladimir Putin's gangster buddies. Vlad doesn't need to have video of him with prostitutes (though he certainly might) because Vlad owns him. And made him president. As LeTourneau concludes:

Of course, that raises the question of where the $400 million in cash came from. I’m pretty sure Robert Mueller is interested in the answer. You might remember that when James Dodson asked Eric Trump about that, he said, “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
This demonstrates that Donald Trump might be the worst businessmen in America. He squandered his father’s entire fortune and might very well have gotten a Russian bailout about a decade before deciding to run for president. Even the most financially-challenged among us should be able to understand that sorry tale.

So this tool holds state power while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- an apolitical body consisting of the leading scientists who study the earth's climate -- tells us we have 12 years to avert global catastrophe. This while a Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful hurricane ever to make landfall in the Florida panhandle, threatens to kill and render homeless a whole lot of reliably Republican voters. And what does the self-made man have to say about it? Absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile, if the Turkish government is to be believed, Julius's buddy Mohammed Bin Salman murdered a Saudi dissident the Saudi embassy in Turkey, and there are indications U.S. intelligence may have had advance knowledge of the plot and did not warn him. As Josh Marshall concludes:

The final, most important part of the puzzle is the relationship between the head of the current Saudi government and the Trump family. MBS has developed close ties to President Trump, even closer ties to Jared Kushner and financial ties with both. The Saudis even play a significant role in one part of the Russia investigation. They were one of the government’s most thrilled with Trump’s election. The relationship between the Crown Prince and the Trumps is deep and has geopolitical and personal financial dimensions.
These are all extraordinarily corrupt ties. They bring together young and headstrong princelings like MBS and Jared Kushner who are capable of all manner or willful and dangerous actions. Thus far we have only very limited information. But there’s a distinct possibility that Trump administration dirtied its hand in this affair. This bears very close scrutiny.

The point is, while Trump cultists think he's Making America Great Again, he's actually a  tool of foreign powers who most certainly do not share our values or align with our interests. He's been insulting allies, wrecking alliances, and praising and buddying up to the the most loathsome tyrants on earth, while enabling mass destruction. And this is just fine with the Republicans in congress. 

It is terrifying.