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A Russian Singer With Ties To Don Jr. Has A New Trump-Themed Music Video You Need To See

by Seth Millstein

Two years after he helped arrange the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting during the 2016 election, Russian pop singer Emin Agalarov released a Trump-themed music video on Tuesday. The video for his single "You Got Me" has a lot going on, but it at one point depicts Donald Trump partying in a hotel room with beauty pageant contestants, lending some to call it the "pee tape music video."

Technically, that's a misnomer, as the video depicts no peeing per se. But it's full of references to various controversial episodes in Trump World, and depicts everyone from Trump to Stormy Daniels and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (all of whom were played by impersonators). Again, there's a lot going on here.

The "plot" of the video, if it could be described as having one, is difficult to decipher. But it depicts, at various points:

  • "Trump" and Emin partying in a hotel room with beauty pageant contestants
  • "Stormy Daniels" entering an elevator at what appears to be Trump Tower and receiving a wad of cash from Emin
  • "Hillary Clinton" taking shots with "Ivanka Trump"
  • Various people surreptitiously passing briefcases and envelopes to one another
  • "Kim" watching all of this from surveillance cameras and deleting "Trump" from the footage

All the while, Emin is smiling and singing into the camera. Lyrically, "You Got Me" is a rather boilerplate love song and doesn't seem to be about any of the events depicted in the video.

It's no coincidence that Emin happened to make a video full of Trump references, because Emin isn't just any old Russian pop star. In addition to being the son of a billionaire oligarch who's close with Vladimir Putin, Emin is buddies with Trump himself, and has been for years. Trump sent Emin a video message for his birthday in 2015, and Emin returned the favor the next year when Trump was elected president.

More to the point, it was Emin who offered to provide the Trump campaign with incriminating information about Clinton in June 2016, according to emails released by Donald Trump Jr. a little over a year later, which makes the video a bizarre kind of historical document in the annals of Trump's presidency.

The backstory of this is convoluted, but here goes. In 2016, Emin's talent agent, a man named Rob Goldstone, emailed Don Jr. with some news: The "crown prosecutor of Russia" was offering to provide Emin's father, Aras, with information "that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia." Goldstone told Don Jr. that the documents in question "would be very useful to your father," and asked the younger Trump how he'd like to handle the situation.

"This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin," Goldstone wrote. "What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?"

Don Jr. replied that he was "on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first." He added that "if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer." A couple of days later, Goldstone wrote Don Jr. again to suggest that he have a meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian attorney and self-identified "informant" for the Russian government.

"Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and The Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow for this Thursday," Goldstone wrote. Don Jr. agreed to the meeting, and he — along with Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, Trump's imprisoned former campaign manager — met with Veselnitskaya on June 9th, 2016. That meeting is now being scrutinized by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who's investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. (Trump has vehemently denied allegations of collusion.)

This isn't the first time Trump has popped up in an Emin music video: He has an in-person cameo in the singer's 2013 "In Another Life" music video, which depicts Trump firing Emin in a boardroom, Apprentice-style.