Be on lookout for Russians in submarine heading for Trump's Mar-a-Lago
Pictured is Eclipse, a 533-foot private yacht owned by Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, at the Port of Palm Beach in Riviera Beach on Friday. (Andres Leiva / The Palm Beach Post)
Be on the lookout for a submarine this Thanksgiving.
If you are in the vicinity of the Intracoastal Waterway from the Palm Beach Inlet to the Southern Boulevard Bridge, immediately report any unusual wakes, large underwater shadows and surfacing periscopes throughout the week.
Let's hope that nothing comes of this. But better safe than sorry.
As you probably know, President Donald Trump is spending the holiday at his Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, and we've got to maintain a secure perimeter there.
The potential threats from air, land and surface waters are well covered, but there's a Russian-owned submarine that just showed up in the area. And we can't take any chances of infiltration from below.
The submarine arrived aboard the Eclipse, a 533-foot yacht that's so big, it's docked in one of the cruise ship slips at the Port of Palm Beach, just a few miles north of Mar-a-Lago.
The yacht is owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the former governor of Russia's Arctic region, who has parlayed his Kremlin connections into oil and steel businesses that made him a multi-billionaire.
"There's no oligarch among those still accepted in the West who's closer and more trusted by Putin than Abramovich," Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former Russian oil magnate, told Bloomberg news.
Abramovich is not aboard his ship, which is here for maintenance, his spokesman said. But you've got to be careful with official explanations from Russia. Next thing you know some Kremlin cutout might be taking the sub to Mar-a-Lago to talk with an assortment of Trump kids about "child adoptions" or whatever the new code word is for ending the sanctions that hold plundered Russian loot here.
At least we know for certain that President Trump has nothing to do with Russia. Or Putin — other than attesting to his honesty and sense of being falsely maligned by the U.S. intelligence services.
"You know every time Russia is brought up, they say, 'Oh, Trump.'" Trump said at a campaign rally in Florida last year. "What do I have to do with it? I have nothing to do with Russia, folks. They tie me into Russia all the time, and they say such bad things about Putin."
Trump doesn't play footsie with Russians. Period. Except for the shady ones he partnered with in business ventures after six bankruptcies ruptured his credit with American banks. Oh yeah, and then there was the Russian fertilizer magnate, Dmitri Rybolovlev, who paid Trump $53.6 million more than Trump paid four years earlier for a waterfront Palm Beach estate.
But other than that, there's noth … OK, except for all the Russian contacts with his campaign. And the meeting with the Kremlin representatives in Trump Tower over easing U.S. sanctions on Russian oligarchs connected to human rights abuses. Maybe that too.
But certainly nothing more … well, unless we're counting the troll farm in Russia that employed 90 workers to churn out social-media misinformation to American voters in support of Trump before the election. Are we counting that? No, let's not.
That's because Trump has nothing to do with Russians.
And he certainly has nothing to do with the Putin-chummy Russian oligarch with the mega-yacht that just docked in the Port of Palm Beach … um,er … other than the longstanding friendship Abramovich and his wife, Dasha Zhukova, have had with Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner.
But it's not like Ivanka and Jared ever traveled to Russia to be entertained by that Russian oligarch and his wife. OK, except for the four-day trip three years ago. But it's not like the Russian couple ever came to America to hang out with … OK, yes, there's that photo of Ivanka sitting next to Dasha at last year's U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York. Probably fake news.
The point is, President Trump knows about as much about Russia as Alabama's Judge Roy Moore knows about women his age, and it's really unfair that people keep making Russian connections with Trump, who has nothing to do with Russians.
So it would be really terrible for a Russian oligarch's submarine to suddenly to go up-periscope for a little Thanksgiving pop in at Mar-a-Lago.
People might get the wrong idea.
Which is why in the interest of national security, we all need to keep an eye out for submarine traffic in the Intracoastal Waterway. And if you do see one heading for Mar-a-Lago, report it to the Coast Guard so it can be stopped from reaching Trump.
It's important. President Trump needs to preserve his flawless record of having nothing to do with Russians.
No comments:
Post a Comment