From: Kathy Ruemmler i
Sent: 5/28/2018 10:56:02 PM To: jeevacation@gmail.com Subject: Middle Eastern Monarchs Look at the Trumps and See Themselves — Foreign Policy
Importance: — High
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/28/middle-eastern-monarchs-look-at-the-trumps-and-see-themselves/amp/
Middle Eastern Monarchs Look at the Trumps and See Themselves
America's Arab allies have always wanted to buy direct access to U.S. foreign policy, and they finally found a seller. May 28, 2018
Ivanka Trump andJared Kushner at the presentation of the Order of Abdulaziz al-Saud medal at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh on May 20, 2017..MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Almost 20 years ago when I was a graduate student living in Cairo, I published an article in a Washington-based journal called Middle East Insight. The magazine had a solid reputation, with a knack for scoring interviews with important people. (In the same edition as my piece, titled “Egypt’s Next Generation,” there was an interview with Gamal Mubarak, son of long-term Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had already begun his rise — though not yet his eventual fall — as heir apparent.) A few years later, Middle East Insight disappeared. When I heard the news, I figured the magazine was too niche for an expanding media environment, shrugged my shoulders, and went on with life.
I hadn’t thought about Middle East Insight until its onetime publisher, George Nader, recently exploded into the news as an international man of mystery at the center of an apparent attempt to covertly influence the outcome of the last American presidential election. It seems that in the span of not quite two decades, the guy who ran a small, likely not profitable, but influential policy magazine become a conduit between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of the Abu Dhabi, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Donald Trump’s closest inner circle, both after, and — crucially for special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing criminal investigation — before Trump’s election as U.S. president.
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