Latest / DEEP INSIGHT / 'The corruption is so rife' REACTION to Don Jr.'s wedding and Kushner profiting off diplomacy

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'The corruption is so rife' REACTION to Don Jr.'s wedding and Kushner profiting off diplomacy · DEEP INSIGHT

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: OK, we are tracking the fallout from ProPublica reporting that
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin bankrolled
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: a huge chunk of Donald Trump Jr. 's private island
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: wedding in May. According to this report, Umar Kremlev paid
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent out one of
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the private islands for the three day extravaganza, paid for
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: fireworks while his team helped plan.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: The whole thing.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: One retired FBI official told ProPublica, if I am paying
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: for your wedding at some point, you are going to
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  Speaker 1: owe me something. This should be unthinkable for the son
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: of a president. Don Jr. 's wife defended the, quote,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: generous wedding gift on Instagram, saying this. It is unfortunate
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: that something so personal and happy can be recast as
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: something political or sinister. Sometimes a wedding gift is just
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a wedding gift. Maybe I just give someone a vacuum
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: cleaner for their wedding. The group chat is still here.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I know you talked to a former CIA officer about
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: this story. What's he telling you?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's our colleague, Mark Polymeropoulos.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: He's a he had a long career in the CIA
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: and he my phone's been exploding with messages from him.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: He's a contributor here to MSNOW. He called this totally insane.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: And he told me this morning, this kind of setup
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  Speaker 3: where you have you give, you know, one hundred thousand
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: dollars or more at a wedding and you're schmoozing with
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  Speaker 3: all these people. He called it intelligence case officer porn.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: In a post on X. So it's on X.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: So I don't know if we can say it here
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: or not, but. He said that it's like a dream
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: to be able to schmooze with all these rich people
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: and there's booze around and all this kind of stuff.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: And look, everyone's going to say Russia, Russia, Russia. There's
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: another concept here. I don't know exactly what the relationship
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: is between the Trump family or even Don Jr. and
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: this person, but this person is a boxing promoter. You
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: mentioned other things, but there's also a term and I'm
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: just putting this out there of like a useful idiot.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: And as an intelligence operative, you just want to kind
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  Speaker 3: of buddy up with someone, give them booze and money
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  Speaker 3: and kind of influence their thinking.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And who's the useful idiot, Umar or Don Jr.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: The guests at the wedding. And I don't have any
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: proof of this. It's just this goes way back.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: It's like the biggest room ever of useful idiots.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to be fair in that, like, I believe
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: in all these institutions and Robert Mueller's investigation. And there
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: wasn't like clear, concrete evidence that Trump was somehow involved.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: intentionally working with the Russians all these years. He's a
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: secret spy for the Russians. That has never been proven.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: I don't buy that. But this is how you influence
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: people and say, hey, Russia's not so bad and Putin's
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: not so bad. And, you know, there's lots of oil and,
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: you know, wealth, minerals that you guys, if we could
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: just have a good relationship with Russia.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: And that's all an intelligence operation.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I want to share how Todd Blanch reacted to this news.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Watch this.
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  Speaker 4: The president doesn't know who this person is. I think
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: other members of the family don't know who this person is.
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: The president's son has said that he's a very close
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: friend and that he accepted a gift in the weekend
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  Speaker 4: of his wedding. I'm not so I don't I'm not
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: sure what when you say, am I investigating? Am I
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: investigating what?
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Democrats obviously care. The general public cares. But if that's
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Todd Blanche and he runs the DOJ, does anything happen? No.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: He's there to make sure nothing happens.
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: And I think the most important part is our enemies
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: are celebrating, not just the Russians, but the Chinese and
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: anybody who wants to do harm. I mean, this is
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: open season. The White House is clearly for sale and
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: they're all playing. And this is a room full of
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: the most plentiful, plentiful room of useful idiots we've ever seen.
• 3:42
  Speaker 5: I mean, you've got everybody from Kash Patel to Don Jr.
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: who are an intelligence dream. But I think there's also
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: the bigger point. They're getting rich. You're getting screwed. They're
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: partying in the Bahamas. Your kids are on the USS Lincoln.
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: I think that there is a populist streak in this country, especially.
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  Speaker 2: That's sick of this.
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  Speaker 5: That's had enough of them partying and acting like rich
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: people and actually profiting while we continue to see gas
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: prices go up and our kids die in the Middle East.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: And Russia is providing intelligence to Iran to help them
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: kill Americans.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: It's you're at risk.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: That's the country's top law enforcement official saying, oh, I
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: don't need to investigate this. You know, and that's that's extraordinary.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: And that's incredibly alarming to me in terms of national security.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: And, Jacob, our country's top negotiator, Jared Kushner, is the
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: one supposedly negotiating in terms of Iran as well as Gaza.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: And while he's there, he's out there raising $ 5 billion
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: additional from the region.
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  Speaker 6: I mean, the corruption is so rife.
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  Speaker 2: It's like wallpaper and carpeting. It's ubiquitous.
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  Speaker 6: And with Kushner, you know, it's the idea that someone
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  Speaker 6: is a public servant or does the job of a
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  Speaker 6: public servant is so completely dissolved into self-interest that when
• 4:51
  Speaker 6: you kind of try to pick apart conflicts of interest—
• 4:54
  Speaker 6: it becomes preposterous. But what I really savor here is
• 4:57
  Speaker 6: the family dynamic. You know, the president didn't go to
• 5:00
  Speaker 6: his son's wedding. He sort of couldn't be bothered. It
• 5:02
  Speaker 6: was too far. It was going to be a small,
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  Speaker 6: small wedding. It's always looked like he thinks Don Jr.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Is an idiot.
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  Speaker 6: And why does he think Don Jr.
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  Speaker 1: Is an idiot?
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  Speaker 5: Because Don Jr.
• 5:11
  Speaker 6: Is an idiot. But there's this dynamic in the family,
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: I think, I wrote a piece about this years ago,
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  Speaker 6: about the split between the grifters and the grafters in
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  Speaker 6: Trump world. And the grifters are pull elaborate cons. The
• 5:24
  Speaker 6: grafters are just on the take. And Donald Trump, the president,
• 5:29
  Speaker 6: is a grifter. And I think he doesn't admire the grafters.
• 5:32
  Speaker 6: His son is just a grafter. He's kind of a dimwit. And,
• 5:36
  Speaker 6: you know, I don't think he wanted to be there.
• 5:37
  Speaker 6: He didn't skip the wedding because he was worried about
• 5:40
  Speaker 6: Russians buying the naming rights or sponsoring the drinks. He
• 5:43
  Speaker 6: was just like, I'm not hanging out with those idiots.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Well, it was very rare.
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  Speaker 1: But Melania, the first lady into the New York Times,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: made it clear. I don't know who this person is.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I did not go to the wedding. And we very,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: very rarely hear from her.
• 5:55
  Speaker 7: I mean, my favorite part of the statement from Don Jr.
• 5:58
  Speaker 7: 's wife was how she was very pointedly saying this
• 6:00
  Speaker 7: occurred after our wedding. Like, that's what people care about. Oh,
• 6:02
  Speaker 7: as long as it wasn't the wedding.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: The actual ceremony was Friday night.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: That's right. You're all confused here.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: The giant, multi-hundred-thousand-dollar parties Saturday, Sunday were just post-party celebrations.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: That's what the base cares about. I do want to say, look.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Don Jr.
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  Speaker 7: Is the one who in 2016, a Russian actor reached
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  Speaker 7: out to him and said, hey, I've got dirt on
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  Speaker 7: Hillary Clinton.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: And Don Jr.
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  Speaker 7: Said, if it is what you tell me it is,
• 6:26
  Speaker 7: I love it, especially later in the summer. Let's set
• 6:28
  Speaker 7: up a meeting. Like, yes, I get it's very easy
• 6:31
  Speaker 7: to fall into the hey, what's happening with Russia thing here?
• 6:33
  Speaker 7: Don Jr. And this is one of the stories I
• 6:35
  Speaker 7: always regret not having been able to chase down the
• 6:37
  Speaker 7: Washington Post was there was a social media post in
• 6:39
  Speaker 7: 2011 where someone's like, why is Don Jr. 's picture
• 6:42
  Speaker 7: up signed at the Russian consulate in New York? I
• 6:44
  Speaker 7: was never able to figure out why that was there.
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  Speaker 7: I never got a comment on it. It is absolutely
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  Speaker 7: fair to say, what is this relationship? How deep does
• 6:51
  Speaker 7: it go and how long has.
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  Speaker 2: It been lasting?
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  Speaker 1: I certainly want to know. David Rode, thank you. The
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: rest of you, true. Not leaving just yet.
• 6:59
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• 7:01
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