I wanted to bring this story by Josh Kovensky to your attention.
We started out wanting to talk to Middle East experts about the new charges against Tom Barrack and how it influenced their views on various Trump administration moves in the region. Did, for example, previously inexplicable events, make more sense in light of this alleged backchannel from the UAE to the Trump White House?
The upshot of their response, which is telling, was that the alleged misdealings by Barrack were part and parcel of an entire foreign policy construct rooted in transactional consideration. So Barrack wasn’t some one-off rogue operating on the margins, but represented a whole new way of doing business.
As one expert told us, “[T]here was no effort to hide the fact that the national interest was being willfully, preternaturally subordinated to Trump’s domestic politics, his business interests, and his own sense of personal vanity.”
It almost goes without saying that other countries caught on quickly to the new way of doing business.
