Frat Boys, Eurotrash, Quasi-Fascism, and Maybe I'm Just Jealous


 I am not now and never will be in this picture. 


By Michael Jay Tucker



Here’s a wild one. Do you remember Richard Grenell? Okay, to be truthful with you, I didn’t either. But he was Trump’s ambassador to Germany. Then, after that, he was the acting director of National Intelligence. Or, to put it another way, he was one of America’s top spy chiefs.


But, here’s the thing. Jeff Stein, writing in the Daily Beast, has revealed that Grenell has long had a close relationship with Serbian government officials (see “Spy Talk: Ex-Trump Spy Chief Cozies Up to Serbia’s Pro-Moscow Strongman”) and, by extension, to Serbia’s populist autocrat, Aleksandar Vučić, who is not exactly a big fan of stuff like Democracy and the United States.(1)


Okay, but things get weirder still. Stein says that Grenell also has connections to Hungary’s populist authoritarian president, Victor Orban, who is the current darling of the American Right. Most famously, Fox host Tucker Carlson visited Orban recently and then broadcast an extremely complimentary interview with him. This in spite of the fact that Orban has based his power on nationalism, thinly disguised anti-Semitism, and frankly overt xenophobia. 


This moves Stein to note: “Eight months out of office now, Grenell, 55, remains close to Serbian officials—which raises the question of what he and Carlson are really up to: Are they courting Serbia and Hungary, along with other far-right European nationalists, in a bid to fashion a transatlantic alliance of extremists that would help return Trump to the White House as the titular head of a new authoritarian world order?”


Well, maybe. Though that seems a little extreme. But who knows? Stranger things have happened recently. 


And here’s the kicker. Stein adds that Grenell has posted a video of himself partying hardily in Hungary with a nationalist crowd (I've embedded the video below).(2) There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But it is a bit eerie to see a man who is supposed to be a dignified diplomat, and/or a highly placed official in the American intelligence community, looking like a frat boy at his first kegger…in the company of individuals who may or may not be friends of our own country.


Ah well.


Maybe I’m just jealous.  


I mean, heck, I never got to dance with live fire works in an extremely crowded room without obvious exits and many flammables in the company of a mob of wildly inebriated European right-wingers and maybe the occasional KGB agent while disco balls and strobe lights and overly amplified bad music provide a restful background ambiance. And I probably never will.


So, clearly, it’s like what the libertarians say when I complain about billionaires. It’s all just envy.


You betcha.


~mjt



Please visit my webpage: https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/



Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker













Sources: 


  1. “Ex-Trump Spy Chief Cozies Up to Serbia’s Pro-Moscow Strongman: Are the ex-president’s acolytes cultivating European autocrats and extremists for Trump’s White House return as head of a transatlantic Axis of Evil?” By Jeff Stein, SpyTalk, Daily Beast, Updated Aug. 25, 2021 7:54PM ET / Published Aug. 25, 2021 5:29PM ET, https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-spy-chief-richard-grenell-cozies-up-to-serbias-pro-moscow-strongman?utm_source=pocket_mylist

        2. https://www.instagram.com/tv/CSBSEO8Ae2S/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link 



#Richard_Grenell #Spytalk #Aleksandar_Vučić #Jeff_Stein #Victor_Orban

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