Not shown: Any actual parts of Jeff Bezos.
So, it seems that a certain richest man on the planet is getting divorced. And since he was wed without a pre-nup way back before he made his boodle, and community property law holds that if there is no other agreement in place, all the couple’s money and property are to be split 50-50, it looks like he’s going to be just half the man he used to be, wealth-wise.
That’s the tidy, public-knowledge part of this particular case. The messy part (and you just know there’s got to be a messy part) is as follows:
Seems that the richest man in the world has himself a married girlfriend. Just when the relationship began, in relation to his legal separation from his own spouse, is bound to be disputed in court. Because it would appear that the relationship is the likely grounds for the divorce in the first place. That’s Messy Bit #1.
Messy Bit #2 is that our middle-aged Romeo has been allegedly sexting the (surprisingly, also middle-aged) girlfriend. He allegedly sent some cringe-worthy love notes via text messaging. One would think, since he got rich as the world’s #1 bookseller, that he might have done better in terms of romantic phraseology, but it seems that he doesn’t take pointers from his own merchandise. And yes, as is implied by the term “sexting”, he also sent explicit photos of himself. Allegedly.
Messy Bit #3? He allegedly did so without minding his cybersecurity. No discretion, no encryption, no secure server, no fig leaves, no eggplants. Also bit surprising, considering that his business has long been a leader in secure online financial transactions, and that he got rich from that.
Messy Bit #4: The girlfriend allegedly shared the intimate messages with her friends. Boastfully. And allegedly, accidentally. How one manages to boast accidentally to one’s friends about such a thing is beyond me, but hey — not my circus, not my monkeys, and certainly not my obscenely rich married boyfriend’s banana.
Messy Bit #5: The whole alleged sexting scandal was broken by the National Enquirer. Whose publisher, David Pecker, is a close friend of Donnie Drumpf. And the aptly named Mr. Pecker did his buddy an as-yet-untold number of favors by the use of “catch and kill” — whereby he would buy up the tell-all stories of Donnie’s old mistresses, and then refuse to publish them, the better to spare Donnie’s reputation on the campaign trail. Had he published them in a timely manner, it’s unlikely that we would be seeing Donnie in the Oval Office, except maybe as a “celebrity” tourist. (Note the quotes, there for a reason.)
Messy Bit #6: Jeff Bezos owns not only the world’s largest online store, but also the Washington Post — Donnie’s nemesis, though just one of many such, and for the reason that it publishes actual journalism, at least from time to time. Much of it unflattering to Donnie. So there might be an additional layer of dirty-favor-doing on the part of David Pecker here, in the form of a “takedown” of Donnie’s perceived nemesis. (Bezos himself swears that he does not hold any editorial control of the paper himself, and there is no compelling reason to doubt him. Nobody has come forward so far to say that he ordered any slanted pieces on Donnie.)
Messy Bit #7: Robert Mueller, investigating Donnie for all manner of campaign irregularities on behalf of the US Department of Justice, allegedly has a lot of previously-hidden dirt on Donnie…possibly including some explicit photos of the private parts that Stormy Daniels famously compared to Toad, the little mushroom-critter from Mario Kart.
Messy Bit #8: Bezos’ banana, so rumor has it, is no Toad. Which may explain his alleged mistress’s alleged need to boast about it.
Messy Bit #9: Donnie has been in a tizzy for months trying to discredit his perceived enemies. He’s made no secret of his own desperation; his flailing has embarrassed everyone except, it would appear, himself. He’s even gone so far as to claim that Robert Mueller and James Comey were “photographed together”, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. That gambit spawned a FOIA request for the alleged pictures, but so far, none have surfaced. Meanwhile, Mueller is still doggedly investigating, and Donnie is still stewing and spinning. Could Donnie have called in yet another favor with the amusingly named Mr. Pecker to try to discredit yet another of his many pet hates, based on prior pattern? Oh, possibly.
Messy Bit #10: Donnie is not exactly a stranger to planting gossipy stories about sex in the tabloids, either. Remember how Marla Maples allegedly bragged to the New York Post that he was “the best sex” she’d ever had, back when she was still Donnie’s mistress during his first marriage? Yeah, she didn’t really say that. But guess who took it upon himself to get it reported that she’d gushed to friends about his amatory prowess? (Which, as Stormy Daniels has made a point of assuring us, is not all that OR a bag of Cheetos.)
So, make of all this what you will. I don’t know whether to hope or fear that this will turn into a literal dick-measuring contest between an actual divorced billionaire with a big banana and an orange-dyed old fool who only plays one on TV. But in any case, I’ve got my eyes peeled, my ears cleaned out…and lots of corn for popping.
PS: Oh look, the Turks are thinking what I’m thinking:
Yup, this might just shape up to be one helluva pissing contest. Brace yourselves!
