It seems like every journalist in America is covering Trump and the ever-increasing crew of shady people who orbit him. Like everyone, I'm struck by Trump's connection to Russians in New York. His dad owned brutalist, high-rise apartment buildings in Brighton Beach. Felix Sater and his own dad were some sort of Russian gangsters in south Brooklyn. A relative of Michael Cohen owned El Caribe, which many say was a mobbed-up restaurant (the restaurant even figured as a key backdrop in a 2007 Mark Wahlberg movie, "We Own the Night"). A remarkable amount of Russians reside in Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan. And then there's Lev Parnas, a Brooklyn raised Ukrainian American businessman who, apparently, was working with Rudy Giuliani doing *something* in Kiev, with Igor Fruman.
I don't have anything remotely new say about this. But all the same, I want to highlight a short video showing Giuliani, Parnas, and Fruman seated at a table, smiles wrapped around their faces, making a toast to... Anatevka.
That might sound familiar to you if you've ever seen, "Fiddler on the Roof." Anatevka. The fictional village where it all takes place. There's been this quixotic attempt in the last few years to renew the shetl world of Ukraine. I first read about in Le Monde two years ago, and now Giuliani and his (ex) partners are involved. This raises giant question marks in my head. Something about it just doesn't add up, and I'm going to investigate further.
I recently stumbled on a newsletter covering the Trump Hotel in DC: 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue. The reporter has taken to covering this location full-time: https://1100pennsylvania.substack.com/. Activities like this are a real public service and help us make sense of what's really going on, and all the money changing hands behind the scenes of power.