11 Mar
News and Analyses, A Foreign Perspective
News and Analyses, A Foreign Perspective
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Mother Jones
A Florida Massage Parlor Owner Has Been Selling Chinese Execs Access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago
The strange, swampy saga of Trump donor Li Yang.
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The latest Trump political donor to draw controversy is Li Yang, a 45-year-old Florida entrepreneur from China who founded a chain of spas and massage parlors that included the one where New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was recently busted for soliciting prostitution. She made the news this week when the Miami Herald reported that last month she had attended a Super Bowl viewing party at Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club and had snapped a selfie with the president during the event. Though Yang no longer owns the spa Kraft allegedly visited, the newspaper noted that other massage parlors her family runs have “gained a reputation for offering sexual services.” (She told the newspaper she has never violated the law.) Beyond this sordid tale, there is another angle to the strange story of Yang: She runs an investment business that has offered to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family. And a website for the business—which includes numerous photos of Yang and her purported clients hobnobbing at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach—suggests she had some success in doing so.
Yang, who goes by Cindy, and her husband, Zubin Gong, started GY US Investments LLC in 2017. The company describes itself on its website, which is mostly in Chinese, as an “international business consulting firm that provides public relations services to assist businesses in America to establish and expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace.” But the firm notes that its services also address clients looking to make high-level connections in the United States. On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its “activities for clients” have included providing them “the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures.” The company boasts it has “arranged taking photos with the President” and suggests it can set up a “White House and Capitol Hill Dinner.” (The same day the Herald story about Yang broke, the website stopped functioning.)
The short bio of Yang on the website, identifying her as the founder and CEO of GY US Investments, shows her in a photo with Trump bearing his signature. It says she has been “settled in the United States for more than 20 years” and is a member of the “Presidential Fundraising Committee.” According to the Herald, Yang is a registered Republican, and since 2017 she and her relatives have donated more than $42,000 to a Trump political action committee and more than $16,000 to Trump’s campaign. Her Facebook page, which was taken offline on Friday, was loaded with photos of her posing with GOP notables: Donald Trump Jr., Rep. Matt Gaetz or Florida, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, among others.
On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its “activities for clients” have included providing them “the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures.”
The GY US Investments website lists upcoming events at Mar-a-Lago at which Yang’s clients presumably can mingle with Trump or members of his family. This includes something called the International Leaders Elite Forum, where Trump’s sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, will supposedly be the featured speaker. Attendees, the site says, will include “Chinese elites from various countries, including the US states, as well as elite leaders from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, Europe and other countries and regions.” Another event for which Yang’s firm says it can provide access is Trump’s annual New Year’s celebration at Mar-a-Lago. Elsewhere on the website, the firm boasts that “GY Company arranged a number of guests to attend the 2019 New Year’s Eve dinner. All the guests took photos with” members of Trump’s family. This page displays photos of Chinese executives and a Chinese movie star with Donald Trump Jr., suggesting that these pics were arranged by the company, and also includes a photo of Yang with Elizabeth Trump Grau.
A flier posted on GY US Investments’ website publicizing an upcoming event at Mar-A-Lago featuring the president’s sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau.
Among the Chinese executives who attended that New Year’s event was Huachu Tang, the owner of an electric car company. Tang told Yahoo Finance that he flew 17 hours from Xi’an, China, with his family and an assistant in hopes of meeting with Trump at the party. Though he reportedly speaks almost no English, Tang said he hoped to use a Trump connection to build up his company’s brand before eventually taking it public on the New York Stock Exchange. Trump, however, canceled his trip to Mar-a-Lago due to the government shutdown. Tang and his wife managed to pose for pictures with Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Trump Grau. Tang told Yahoo that he received admission to the New Year’s party through a package offered by a public relations agency—perhaps Yang’s firm. According to Yahoo, the company Tang used declined to reveal the price of the package, citing the confidentiality of the contract.
The GY US Investments website also posted photos of Yang at a White House celebration of the “Asian New Year” in 2018 and at a Chinese New Year dinner celebration that purportedly included Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Transportation Secretary Chao. The firm says it invited 10 guests to the Chinese New Year event and the website shows several of them posing with Chao.
According to the website, the company has offices in Miami; Washington, DC; and Wuhan, China, and is preparing to open an office in Beijing. But the address of its office in the Washington area matches the location of a UPS store.
Yang and her business partners listed on the GY US Investments’ website could not be reached for comment. No one responded to messages left at the number for GY US Investments. A man who answered a phone number listed for Yang hung up. A man who picked up the phone at a number listed for the company’s Washington-area office said, “My English isn’t good,” and hung up. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders and Trump Grau did not respond to requests for comment.
The overall message conveyed by the GY US Investments website seems clear: hire Yang’s company and she can get you close to Trump and his government—at Mar-a-Lago and in Washington. If the posted photos are authentic, she has been able to get Chinese clients at least into the Trump circle for a quick pic. They are a sign that this Chinese immigrant and Trump donor has used her contacts to go from massaging clients to massaging influence.
Update: Yang has been active in Asian American Republican groups. Since 2017, she has participated in the Broward County, Florida Chapter of the Asian GOP, a national Republican group. The chapter’s web page touts the Mar-a-Lago “Safari Night” promoted by Yang’s company – with Trump Grau listed as the host. Yang also visited the White House last year as part of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Initiative, an advisory group Trump formed by executive order.
Cindy Yang, Community Outreach Director, Asian GOP FL (left); Sue Snowden, Palm Beach County Chair at Donald Trump for President Campaign (middle); Xiaoqi Wang (right).
Reuven Rivlin speaks out after PM said Israel was ‘not a state for all its citizens’
Benjamin Netanyahu wrote: ‘Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.’ Photograph: Gali Tibbon/AP
Israel’s president has hit back at Benjamin Netanyahu after the prime minister said in reference to the country’s Arab minority that Israel was “not a state for all its citizens”.
Less than a month before the 9 April election in which the prime minister hopes to win with the support of far-right politicians and voters, Netanyahu wrote on Instagram that: “Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.”
While not mentioning the prime minister – a long-time political foe – by name, Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, criticised what he said were recent “entirely unacceptable remarks about the Arab citizens of Israel”.
“There are no first-class citizens, and there are no second-class voters. We are all equal in the voting booth. We are all represented at the Knesset [parliament],” said Rivlin, who holds a largely ceremonial role.
Netanyahu’s comments referenced a deeply contentious “nation state” law passed last year declaring that only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country.
Critics of the law have said it amounted to “apartheid” for the 1.8 million Arabs in Israel with citizenship, who make up around a fifth of the total population. They consist of Palestinians who remained on their land following wars surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948. Others either fled or were expelled from their homes.
The head of the Israeli Arab Joint List group of parties, Ayman Odeh, said at the time of the law’s passing that the Knesset had approved a “law of Jewish supremacy and told us that we will always be second-class citizens”.
Netanyahu has been accused of demonising Israeli Arabs in previous elections to boost rightwing turnout. In 2015 on voting day, in a last-ditch attempt to rally support, he said Israeli Arab voters were coming out to vote “in droves”.
In his comments on Sunday, the leader went on to claim he had “no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel. They have equal rights like all of us and the Likud government has invested more in the Arab sector than any other government,” referring to his party.
Yet another golf course on the north-east coast would be a disaster for the environment
Sand dunes at the proposed golf site near Embo in Sutherland, Scotland. Photograph: Alamy
If there were an international beauty pageant for countries, Scotland would win it most years. In January it was voted the most beautiful country on the planet by the travel website Rough Guides.
This follows similar awards by global travel specialists in three of the previous five years, as well as ancillary awards for “best island” (Lewis and Harris) and quality of living (Orkney, Edinburgh). Other countries have spectacular mountains and gorgeous lakes, but nature seems to have chosen Scotland as the location for her best work.
Each year, however, the Scottish government is faced with the challenge of balancing its duty to preserve and nurture Scotland’s natural beauty with ensuring as many of its citizens as possible are provided with the basic requirements for a decent standard of living: homes, jobs, food and health. Scotland may be the world’s most popular museum of natural history – some of its mountains were formed amid the birth pangs of the world itself – but more than five million people live in this museum and the country needs more to help sustain an economy creaking under pressure from an ageing population.
Occasionally, we may be required to hold our noses and concede that beauty can also be found in designs for living. Many of our green spaces have formed a happy synergy with golf tourism, one of the principal drivers of our vital tourist industry. You’ll struggle to find a location where you can’t see mountains or sea, and few are the places where a golf course isn’t close at hand either. We haven’t merely exploited opportunities for golf tourism, we have wrung them dry. Yet, in a place such as Gleneagles in Perthshire, the relationship between commerce and nature brings a glorious communion. However, it’s a fragile relationship and one that requires constant vigilance to ensure that the temptation of easy, corporate money and the untested promises of jobs and investment do not override our moral duty to protect Scotland’s beauty and to pass it intact to future generations.
A public inquiry is underway into the proposed development of a luxury golf course on one of our most fragile and beautiful stretches of coast. The planned 18-hole course at Coul Links near Dornoch in Sutherland is being proposed by the US developers Todd Warnock and the golf course tycoon Mike Keiser, who claim that it will create about 200 jobs and provide £60m of investment into the area over 10 years. The plans were originally passed by Highland council, despite objections from its own planners and just about every environmental and heritage group in Scotland and across the UK. This inquiry was triggered after the Scottish government opted to call in the proposals due to “issues of national importance” related to “natural heritage issues”.
A public inquiry is underway into the proposed development of a luxury golf course on one of our most fragile and beautiful stretches of coast. The planned 18-hole course at Coul Links near Dornoch in Sutherland is being proposed by the US developers Todd Warnock and the golf course tycoon Mike Keiser, who claim that it will create about 200 jobs and provide £60m of investment into the area over 10 years. The plans were originally passed by Highland council, despite objections from its own planners and just about every environmental and heritage group in Scotland and across the UK. This inquiry was triggered after the Scottish government opted to call in the proposals due to “issues of national importance” related to “natural heritage issues”.
Seven years later, the promises of jobs parroted by Trump and well connected local supporters have yet to materialise
You don’t have to be closely acquainted with these issues to understand why there is so much distress at the prospect of another stretch of this wild and vital north-east coastline being sacrificed to the whims of a US billionaire and the exclusive use of golfers with the means to pay top dollar for the privilege. Further along this coastline, Donald Trump’s luxury course at Menie was waved through in the face of objections about damage to the globally unique dune system. Almost seven years later, the promises of jobs and investment parroted by Trump and some well-connected local supporters have yet to materialise.
A remarkable nexus of environmental protections has made Coul one of Scotland’s most fortified locations against marauding corporate interests. It possesses one of the last undefiled dune systems in the country and has a unique triple-lock of designations comprising SSSI status (site of special scientific interest), special protection area (SPA) and is a Ramsar site of international importance. Scottish Natural Heritage lists the loss of 40.5 acres of direct habitat in its objection. Much of this would be excavated and have its natural vegetation stripped to be replaced by artificially manicured greens of negligible conservation value.
A crude manipulation of the land will be required to squeeze a golf course on to this specific site, like trying to fit Oliver Hardy into a Versace. To ensure a high viewpoint for sea and loch, a large area of unique dune heath would need to be quarried out. A remarkable and unique biodiversity would be threatened, including rare lichens, orchids and invertebrates. A rare dune habitat comprising 95 junipers would be moved, along with species such as rock-rose, the food plant of the scarce northern brown argus butterfly.
A couple of very vocal local groups and individuals are supportive of the development and curiously have swallowed the optimistic economic projections of the billionaire developers. Their social media responses suggest that, as locals, their views must carry more weight. Such an attitude betrays a fundamental arrogance. This beautiful coastline has evolved over millions of years. Just because you’ve lived there for a micro-fraction of that time doesn’t give you the right to have it turned into a corporate vanity project in exchange for some woolly future economic windfall of uncertain provenance.
The Scottish government must exercise its sacred duty of protection of our natural heritage and kick this environmentally ruinous proposal out. If it fails to do so, it will open up Scotland’s beauty to the predations of other international corporate raiders. As one objector put it: “The developers claim only a small part of this site will be altered. But that’s like painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa and saying only a small area has been affected.”
• Kevin McKenna is an Observer columnist
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World Politics
United States
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President insults hard-right commentator and former ally
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Official: budget to include request for more wall money
Ann Coulter, seen in October. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
Donald Trump will be making a significant request for border wall funds and seeking money to stand up his “Space Force” as a new branch of the military in the White House budget being released next week, an administration official said on Saturday.
As the official did so, the president was on Twitter calling the hard-right commentator Ann Coulter a “Wacky Nut Job” for questioning his success on the wall.
Coulter, previously a supporter of the president and the author of a book entitled In Trump We Trust, has turned on him over his failure to secure funding for the wall by conventional means.
Late on Saturday, after a day’s golf in Florida, the president tweeted that “Wacky Nut Job Ann Coulter … still hasn’t figured out that, despite all odds and an entire Democrat Party of Far Left Radicals against me (not to mention certain Republicans who are sadly unwilling to fight), I am winning on the Border.
“Major sections of Wall are being built and renovated, with MUCH MORE to follow shortly. Tens of thousands of illegals are being apprehended (captured) at the Border and NOT allowed into our Country. With another President, millions would be pouring in. I am stopping an invasion as the Wall gets built.”
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