Earlier this week, we saw former Don Jr. fiancé Kimberly Guilfoyle summarily canned because she became a scandal lightning rod, in a particularly pitiful way, right when Donald Trump doesn’t need any scandal headlines — not just going into the midterms in a couple weeks but also into 2027 when it seems highly likely that at least the House will be in Democratic hands. Then yesterday, we had this new MAGA war break into the open which pits Alina Habba and her new Turkish oligarch boy-toy husband against Trump fixer Ric Grenell. Habba claims that Grenell either pocketed or misdirected a $6 million check her now-husband wrote as a contribution to the Kennedy Center. I suspect that Habba may be out over her skis on this one. Grenell is the worst. But he’s not stupid. I’m skeptical he’d try something quite that reckless.
In any case, today we have yet another new story just kind of breaking out into the open out of nowhere.
This morning Politico ran a bizarre and hilarious story about a yearlong email war between Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and State Department Special Envoy for Arts and Culture Paolo Zampolli. It’s hard to know how to concisely summarize this story. You should read it because it’s one of the most hilarious and boffo things I’ve ever read. Basically, Landau seems like a semi-normal guy. Yes, serving under Trump, but more or less recognizable as the kind of guy who might have worked at State in earlier administrations. Zampolli saw his sinecure as a kind of roving Ambassador of Grift and Partying. He was sticking his head into every kind of business deal, international politics and whatever else caught his fancy. In one email exchange in which Landau told him to stick to his brief, Zampolli replied: “Arts and culture? What do you want me to talk about arts and culture? You want me to do the ribbon cuttings at museums?”
Landau was constantly telling Zampolli to stand the F down and cut it out. But Zampolli didn’t care. Because he knew, and he said, that he was Trump’s guy. He didn’t report to Landau, who — of course, at least in a formal sense — he very much did report to. And here’s where we get down to brass tacks. The original Politico story identifies Zampolli as “a former modeling agent” who “represented Trump’s wife Melania Trump in New York City in the 1990s and introduced Melania to Trump at a party.” Many people think that the “introduced” part is a cover because it was Jeff Epstein who introduced the two. But that’s not really the point. Zampolli was one of the guys who was thick with Trump back in the golden party days, when each of them had a hand in “the modeling business,” which seems to have amounted to the commerce in young women either for their own personal benefit or to stock as feeder fish for the parties they threw. Indeed, you’ll remember back in the spring it came out that Zampolli had sicced ICE on the mother of his child, Amanda Ungaro, and got her deported. Ungaro was then threatening to spill the beans about Melania’s past. She’d been tight with Melania and Trump for years as Zampolli’s girlfriend. Did she have beans to spill? Probably, but who knows. In any case, Zampolli came out of that story unscathed or at least undisciplined. Because remember, he’s Trump’s guy.
But here’s the key. That Politico story came out this morning. By mid-afternoon, Zampolli was out at State. He screwed with Landau for a year and a half because he knew he was golden and untouchable. Until today. Zampolli probably didn’t see it coming, though he told Politico in a brief follow-up interview that his canning was “absolute zero surprise.” He and Trump talked about it and Trump was actually doing him a huge favor firing him. “Why do you want to work in government when you can close all these deals?” Zampolli said Trump told him.
So let’s track back to yesterday’s Backchannel. A lot of people who used to be golden are no longer golden. Or they’re letting their hijinx and dirty laundry go public. And Donald Trump doesn’t like that. But a lot more dirty laundry seems to be going public all of a sudden, doesn’t it?
I think what we have here is something like what happens when the mob boss finds out the FBI is trying to build a case against him. And suddenly the more reckless and stupid members of the Family start ending up dead because they’re liabilities. They’re the kind of people who are going to bring the boss down. And he needs to batten down the hatches and protect himself from the folks who are going to get him into trouble.
I know this sounds like a rather lush and cinematic analogy. But I think something broadly like it is what is happening. Trump knows he’s going to be under a lot of scrutiny starting next year. And he doesn’t need other people who are too stupid not to get caught or stay out of headlines causing him more problems when he’ll have enough of his own to deal with.
I suspect we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this.