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Just before the onset of the pandemic, I’d started researching a longer project about the personalization of global politics which was accelerated by but not started by Trump. In a way, personalization is the inevitable companion of authoritarianism and autocracy. If there’s one guy who runs the show in each country, then the affairs of that state inherently become indistinguishable from that of the autocrat and his personal checkbook. Relationships between states become those of individual people.
Early in Biden’s presidency, I spoke to one of the very high-end hedge funders who are in the class of people who get invited to the dinners and shindigs with Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh. This was around the time that Jared Kushner got that huge $2 billion investment in his new post-White House fund. This source described one of those dinners to me that had occurred not long before that investment. Kushner was seated to MBS’s right or left. I can’t remember which, but same difference. Given how much power MBS wields and his near unilateral control over hundreds of billions of dollars, people would probably literally kill for that level of preferment and proximity. But as it was conveyed to me, everything about that weekend or series of days suggested that Jared was just MBS’s guy. As in, MBS just loved Jared. And remember, Trump was out of power. And in early 2022 or possibly late 2021, it was by no means an obvious bet that he’d be returning to power. The relationship seemed to go far beyond a bet on the Trump family returning to power.