Russian Oligarch's Ties to Trump Wedding

For my next question, General, this is breaking news as of this morning.

This was a Pro,

uh, Publica article, and this has to do with the Russian

oligarch

Umar Kremlev. He is the president of the International

Boxing

Association and a close ally of President Putin.

Uh, the connection here with the Russians

or Putin is that

Gazprom is the, the main sponsor of the International

Boxing

Association, so the IBA gets its money through Gazprom,

meaning it's really coming from the Kremlin.

But this oligarch, Kremlev, footed the bill for hundreds of

thousands of dollars of wedding expenses for Donald Trump Jr.

This was his, uh, May wedding in the Bahamas.

This is according to records reviewed by ProPublica in

interviews with three people familiar with the event.

The oligarch paid to rent out the private islands where a reception was held and

where the guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items

like the

fireworks show and helped the team plan the event.

Uh, the wedding payments came from the

IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the Boxing Association

uses for financial transactions.

Kremlev, who's 43, is also involved in an organization called

Healthy Fatherland, run by his 23-year-old wife's

twin sister. The group promotes healthy eating

and youth sports

but is under Ukrainian sanctions for its role in a

program used to abduct Ukrainian children and relocate them to

Russia under the guise of rehabilitation.

So this was in May,

and, uh, Jared Kushner was there. It was only 50 people

on the island, the closest, most intimate family and friends of

the president's son, and this Russian oligarch, who barely

speaks any English, and some of his entourage

were part of those

50 people on this private island in the Bahamas.

Uh, this is just staggering to me that you can prove

that the Kremlin paid for parts of the president's son's wedding

when Donald Trump Jr. also has a drone company and

is getting billions of

dollars in government contracts.

When Trump flew to China, Donald Trump Jr.

flew on Air Force One with the president to get off the plane.

Like, there's just so many conflicts of interest

here.

I'm just blown away that anyone can still defend this, but

w- what are your thoughts and reactions hearing this story?

Yeah. A couple things come to mind right away.

First of all, how embarrassing-- Or if they had any sense

of shame and dignity, uh, the president, who brags

about what a great businessman he is, and he's worth hundreds of millions of

dollars, why did somebody else have to pay for his

son's wedding or

the celebration or whatever? I mean, that's just from a, a class, you

know, sense of class and dignity. Uh, I think this is kind

of, kind of weird. Uh, and then, you know, there's this, uh,

uh, old saying that, uh, if you pay for the band, you get to choose

the music. This, this is not just some gift of, uh,

generosity from this guy saying, "Uh, I love you guys.

Have a great time," and that's it. That's, that's-- Nobody serious

is gonna believe that that's it. And then when you start connecting the

dots the

way you did with, okay, Kushner was at this thing, and then of course,

Kushner

is the, the lead spokesman out there for this, uh,

the team,

the two knuckleheads that are the negotiators with the

Kremlin. And then they come from Moscow to Kyiv

and just word

for word pretty much say whatever Russia's demands are.

And then this, uh, pathetic, uh, cringey, uh,

video that Jared Kushner did, uh, yesterday or the day before kind of

pleading with, "You know, we'd have had a deal if Ukraine would just

accept it." And, um,

this, it, it, it-- When you put in that context, this

whole wedding on the island kind of thing

seems absolutely perfectly, uh,

logical, that it, it fits inside that, that there's no

shame, uh, by the president and his family.

I've heard, and you tell me, because you're, I'm such an old guy,

and you're so

much younger than I am. I have heard that, uh, younger

people, younger voters are increasingly, uh,

disgusted with the corruption.

You know, Epstein is part of it, but just corruption in general

around the president's family. I, maybe that's what I want to believe

is that

p- young people are seeing this and they're sick of it.