The liberal media has a new cause. The treasonous communists want you, the American public, to think it’s shady and corrupt to have a friend shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for your three-day wedding celebration on a couple of private islands in the Bahamas. Simply because you are Donald Trump Jr., the son of the president of the United States, and the friend is a Russian oligarch closely tied to Vladimir Putin. Then suddenly it’s a whole thing.
It’s like, oh, so it’s unethical to enjoy your wedding with friends now??? Pffft. Liberal media Hunter Biden Burisma something something.
ProPublica on Monday published a story alleging that Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding in May to socialite Bettina Anderson was financed by Umar Kremlev, a businessman and alleged philanthropist who has been a part of Vladimir Putin’s circle since around 2010. He got into Putin’s orbit by becoming the head of a government-backed biker gang, which is apparently a thing, so expect the Trump administration to announce subsidies for the Hell’s Angels soon.
Kremlev is now the head of the International Boxing Association, which is allegedly so corrupt that in 2023 the International Olympics Committee (no stranger to corruption, the IOC) stripped it of its role organizing boxing for the Summer Olympics. It is reportedly financed by Gazprom, the Russian gas company that over the years has popped up more than once in stories somewhere near words like “Trump” and “Russia.”
Kremlev allegedly footed hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses for the wedding, including renting the island where the reception was held on the second night, along with the fireworks show that went along with it. (The company that puts on the show charges around $70,000 for such shows.)
This is all a very nice thing to do for a powerful friend you just met a couple of years ago and with whom you and your autocrat-led government could not possibly have any business or geopolitical interests!
Kremlev was at the wedding with some Russian associates, which we suppose is only fair, given that he paid for it. That just made their presence “all the more conspicuous. ‘What are they doing here?’ one person recalled thinking.” Meanwhile, longtime friends of Junior were reportedly miffed to have not been invited.
Sorry, longtime friends! Put up for a fireworks display and helicopters to transport all the guests to and from the islands next time. This is Junior’s second marriage and third engagement, so the odds of there being another wedding at some point would seem pretty good.
Conceptually this is no different than the infamous Trump Tower meeting at the height of the 2016 election, when Don Jr. thought representatives of the Russian government were going to pass dirt about Hillary Clinton to him. That meeting became part of Robert Mueller’s investigation, which famously concluded Junior shouldn’t be charged with a crime for taking it because he was too stupid to be worth the effort.
Junior read that conclusion as total exoneration, because again, he is that stupid.
Like his father, Junior is legendarily cheap. Back in 2004, after he got engaged to his first wife, Vanessa, the two restaged the proposal outside a jewelry store in a New Jersey mall, in front of paparazzi and TV crews, in exchange for the store giving them the $100,000 ring for free.
Trump Sr. supposedly got mad at Junior for that stunt for some reason. You’d think he would love the tackiness, given how he’ll attach his name to any cheap piece of shit or fly-by-night outfit so long as he gets something for it. But he told Larry King, “You have a name that’s hot as a pistol. You have to be careful with things like this.”
Of course, that was years before someone offered him money to shill Bibles and memecoins and cheap watches.
So it’s no surprise Junior would jump at an offer from someone to pay for his wedding, but he’s supposedly worth $300 million personally and his family is worth billions.
The president famously skipped Junior’s wedding in May because he was too busy with presidential duties. Or that was supposedly the reason. We had thought maybe he was in a snit that the couple didn’t get married at Mar-a-Lago, for which you know damn well he would have charged them. (And if a Russian oligarch was footing that bill, we are guessing he would have charged way more than usual.)
Or possibly Junior told him he couldn’t bring Natalie Harp and Trump threw a fit at the thought of spending his weekend without his human printer feeding him a steady stream of weird memes she printed off Twitter.
But maybe it was something else. Maybe even Donald Trump — Donald Trump! — recognized how bad it would look to attend his son’s intimate wedding with the Russian oligarch who paid for it. Or at least his advisers recognized it and talked him into not going.
We know that’s hard to believe. Really, the Mar-a-Lago thing is much more likely.
Whatever the reason, imagine you are Umar Kremlev. You shell out big bucks for this wedding for the president’s benefit, thinking you can get plenty of facetime that weekend. Only then he announces he’s not going. But you still must keep up appearances by showing up and spending the weekend with the rest of the Trumps.
We suppose Putin sending you to a Siberian penal colony would be a worse punishment, but not by much.
The wedding does sound fun, though. Doesn’t it?
The atmosphere was Monte Carlo meets frat party — helicopters in and out, a beachside DJ set, beer pong tournaments. One day, the men went spearfishing.
Beer pong tournaments? At your wedding? What, Kremlev was too cheap to shell out for quarters?
ProPublica also reported that Junior underwent “treatment to better define his jawline for the occasion.” Jesus, man, you have a beard covering it already. Besides, you are now middle-aged, just accept the jowliness that accompanies it like the rest of us do.
Well, the Trumps have already committed the sin of vanity a gazillion times, we guess one more won’t totally throw off their cosmic ledger. It’s not as if the Good Place and the Bad Place were going to be fighting over them anyway.
After ProPublica published its story, the latest Mrs. Trump took to Instagram to defend herself and her idiot failson of a husband:
The weekend that followed had actually been planned well in advance as a fun weekend with friends. It was never intended to be our wedding weekend. When our original wedding plans changed, we simply decided to get married before it and arrived at an already planned weekend as newlyweds.
Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding. It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful.
We cannot tell you how much it pleases us that she seems to think her post in any way clears up all the ethical questions here. Literally nothing about what she wrote changes the basic fact that her wedding celebration was hosted and paid for by a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin. If it hadn’t been their wedding weekend, if Kremlev had just been hosting the weekend for fun, there would still be red flags the size of Siberia here.
She continued:
It’s unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from. Friendship doesn’t require a political motive. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.
HA HA HA HA HA, oh Lord, please stop, the world doesn’t have enough stitches to sew up the gut we just busted from laughing.
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Tell me you used your kid's wedding as a money-laundering opportunity without telling me you used your kid's wedding as a money-laundering opportunity.
That reminds me of my daughter's wedding.
I cried, as did my wife. It was very emotional for everyone.
Even the cake was in tiers.