It’s been an interesting few days for Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, the Washington Post, and (for now) the title of world’s richest person.

Given that he reportedly never signed a prenup with ex-wife-to-be MacKenzie Bezos, his fortune could soon be slashed in half to a miserly $68,5 billion.

Oh, the shame.

The world’s richest person and the world’s least mature president have butted heads plenty of times in the past, but a new report by the Washington Post, which alleges that Trump went to great lengths to conceal details of his face-to-face encounters with Vladimir Putin, is the latest issue to rile the Tweeter-In-Chief.

First, let’s start with the Washington Post story:

President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said…

The constraints that Trump imposed are part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.

As a result, U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years. Such a gap would be unusual in any presidency, let alone one that Russia sought to install through what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as an unprecedented campaign of election interference.

Strange that he wouldn’t want anybody to know what was said between him and Vlad, right?

As mentioned before, Bezos owns the Washington Post, which means Donnie is fond of the odd critical tweet.

This time, he added his own nickname, presumably sourced from his 12-year-old son Barron, and made mention of the National Enquirer story on Bezos, with photos of his alleged affair:

The National Enquirer is owned by Trump’s mate, David Pecker, and is the paper that bought the rights to ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about her affair with Trump, and then buried the story.

When Donald was asked about the Washington Post report, as well as the New York Times report that the FBI investigated whether Trump was working for Russia, on Fox News (where else?) by Jeanine Pirro, he went off one another one of those waffling answers:

JEANINE PIRRO: “Are you now or have you ever worked for Russia?”
TRUMP: [spends two minutes tossing an alphabet salad that doesn’t include the word “no”] pic.twitter.com/KJGVLgYgYk

— shauna (@goldengateblond) January 13, 2019

Pretty sure I didn’t hear a no in there.

Here’s something pretty amusing – because of the lack of information on Trump’s meetings with Putin, US officials have, at times, “had to rely on reports by U.S. intelligence agencies tracking the reaction in the Kremlin”.

There’s just one big problem with that:

Previous presidents and senior advisers have often studied such reports to assess whether they had accomplished their objectives in meetings as well as to gain insights for future conversations.

U.S. intelligence agencies have been reluctant to call attention to such reports during Trump’s presidency because they have at times included comments by foreign officials disparaging the president or his advisers, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner [below], a former senior administration official said.

“There was more of a reticence in the intelligence community going after those kinds of communications and reporting them,” said a former administration official who worked in the White House. “The feedback tended not to be positive.”

Putin and his buddies must be in hysterics every time he wraps up another meeting or call with Donald, because never has a US president been so easily manipulated.

[source:washpost]