June 26, 2018

The Russian Pop Star Behind the Trump Tower Meeting Has a New Music Video Trolling America

It isn’t the pee tape, but for now it will have to do.

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Emin Agalarov, the middling pop star who helped orchestrate the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between a Russian emissary, Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and the now-imprisoned Paul Manafort put out a new music video today that is…something else. 

It features impersonators playing Donald Trump, Ivanka, Jared Kushner, Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg, and Stormy Daniels, a series of briefcase handoffs, surreptitious meetings, and bikini-clad Miss Universe contestants trashing a hotel bed in an over-the-top trolling of the Trump-Russia investigation. You can watch the whole thing here: 

Emin is the son of Aras Agalarov—a Russian construction oligarch and Putin ally who has built a number of complex projects commissioned by the Russian government (including two World Cup stadiums) and who was Trump’s business partner in Russia. Emin and Aras Agalarov allied with Trump to bring the Miss Universe contest to Moscow in 2013, and afterward the Trump and Agalarov families collaborated on a Trump tower project in Moscow before Trump abandoned the venture. (Emin and Trump established a bro-ish friendship, and the real-life Trump appeared in a 2013 Emin video.) 

In June 2016, the Agalarovs helped orchestrate the Trump Tower meeting between top Trump campaign officials and a small group led by Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-linked lawyer. The meeting took place after the elder Agalarov heard from Russia’s prosecutor general that the Kremlin had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Emin’s business manager promptly emailed Trump Jr. to set up a way to pass this material to the Trump campaign, noting that this “is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. responded in an email: “If it’s what you say I love it.” 

The video for the new song “Got Me Good” shows Emin orchestrating and monitoring, Big-Brother style, the spy-like actions of impersonators playing Trump, Clinton, Daniels, Ivanka, Kushner, and Zuckerberg. At one point, he erases Trump from video footage of a party in a hotel room—a clear reference to the notorious pee tape. Prior to the Trump character entering that hotel room, Emin sings to him, “I wish you at least would be honest. I wish that you told me the truth.” Whatever that means. And the video ends with Emin at a poker table, playing with Trump, Clinton, Zuckerberg, Daniels, and Ivanka. And guess what? Emin wins the huge pot. He’s the victor and the ultimate manipulator. 

With this epic troll, Emin is making fun of the Russian attack on the US election and his own role in possible collusion between the Trump camp and the Kremlin. His aim seems to be to delegitimize the Russia scandal and the investigation. And in Russia at least, where the investigation has been widely mocked as little more than Russophobic hysteria, this video will probably go over well.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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