Yeah, the disturbing thing about that story is that if someone rich/important/connected enough to be contemplating a business deal with Putin has some prostitutes in a Russian hotel I’d seriously question whether the women were in a position to say no.
That was my first thought too… Though my second thought is that someone should be going to prison over this. I get how American protection of the press works and why the Enquirer might have a legal theory of why they could print the photos. But that doesn’t mean you can threaten to print them in an attempt to intimidate someone into doing something for you.
To us. To the average Right-winger the disturbing thing would be it coming out that a public figure solicited sex workers. After all, this is a country where a man credibly accused of rape sits on the highest court in the land. To social “conservatives”, consent is manifestly of no great concern.
I haven’t read Bezos’ “description” that he preemptively gave of his dick pic, but I’m sincerely hoping that there are no comparisons to characters from Mario games or to fungi that grow in dark places.
Extortion
I wonder why Bezo’s team of all world lawyers didn’t suggest a sting in coordination with the FBI?
Maybe they already have the proof… tune in to episode 2!
Yup. While this is common for AMI, this is where the First Amendment protection ends and the “you fucked up now” begins. Publishing those pictures might fall under protected speech, but extortion does not.
Where they really fucked up was thinking that they could intimidate the richest man in the world, without first doing the basic check to see how badly he cares if the world sees his dick.
This pretty much sums up the situation:
AMI didn’t get that the mere existence of the pictures is not necessarily a problem in Bezos’ circle. They misjudged badly who to play their game with.
I’m not sure that’ll be the case. There’s been little to no erosion in support for him among evangelicals. Little bit among Catholics and Mormons though. The thing that we’re starting to see is that the religious right kind of doesn’t care about any of the shit they claim to. Morals and what have. They care about Abortion. And hating people. So long as Trump follows through on those two things, which are pretty much the only things he has followed through on. They’re good. We’ve got major moralist evangelical leaders arguing that Trumps various scandals aren’t even moral failings. They’re proof god loves him! Not sins, but holy acts of grace.
Discounting Evangelicals your core Trump voter celebrates Trump’s sexual history, including all the sketchy fucked up and non-consensual bits. Because it makes him manly, important, and it’s what they’d like to do. Its awesome high five territory.
But Trump’s base is not particularly big, and its in those non Dear Leader GOP voters that his support appears to be eroding. Like the suburban whites that blinked in the midterms. And the less extreme regular GOP voters, the business and rich fuckers set. For them the pee-pee pow wow would probably drive them off. But I don’t think they would particularly care about the morality of it, cause they don’t seem to give a shit so far. I think that an undeniable confirmation of the Steel Dossier’s most salacious, and least likely to be true, accusation would just blow up the whole witch hunts and smears deniability of it. You can’t cognitive dissonance your way out of that sort of thing. Cause if that video is real, then everything else in that document is for sure true.
Given Eastern Europe’s central roll in the human trafficking trade I think it safe to say no wouldn’t be an option regardless of Putin connections.
That’s what I don’t get here. What exactly did they think this would have over Bezos other than raw embarrassment?
His divorce is already happening, that he cheated is already out there. So there’s likely no impact on the divorce settlement.
Guy probably owns too much Amazon stock to be fired.
And he consensually sent sexy pics back and forth with his age appropriate girlfriend. So there isn’t even anything to get him fired. Or pressure him to resign.
If he did step down he’s still the richest man in the world. THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD.
I understand why this is newsworthy and I’m quite sick of the National Enquirer too, but can we stop with the Tabloid articles? It’s turning this place into one slowly.
I always thought this place was better than that, but then again what do I know…
Aye. As much as I loathe the National Enquirer and particularly its Trumpkin owners, if they published nekkid pictures of Bezos and he sued them out of existence the way Thiel bankrolled Hogan doing to Gawker, that would be a disturbing continuation of erosion of the free press. But Bezos suing them for trying to extort him for saying or publishing negative things about them? May their bankruptcy be painful and personal.
Innocent school children bombed into smithereens in Yemen pics - no problem.
Dick/tit/cleavage/cocksubstitutecigarsucking - bad! bad! bad! bad!
Unchristian! Unholy! Evangelical outrage! Morass side of the swamp - Shocked! Offended! Scandal!, Appalling! Desecration! Profane! Violated! Raped! Ravished! Assaulted! Dishonored! Assailed! Disgusted! Nauseating! Revolting! Sickening!
Overthrow of a democratically elected government in Venezuela? I don’t care! Did you see these dickpics?!? The Bezos bush?
On a more serious side, the little fella in the hopeless house promised to take out the Warshington Puss owner. Because distraction and fake society. Preparing to invade above mentioned sovereign Nation for oil.
OVOL - Operation Venezuelan Oil Liberation.
Ovoltine - the preferred hot drink in Warshington!
And Bezos, the guy without Mini-Me? May he get an employee owned co-op online shopping competition.
at least these photos weren’t leaked off an unsecured S3 Bucket
the illegal extortion/blackmail is the real story, we all knew jeff had parts.
they need to be investigated asap as people who engage in that sort of behaviour are often repeat offenders and extorting others.
isn’t human nature and hormones great? who hasn’t had their risk/reward analysis circuits shorted once or twice in one way or another?
I agree and in that sense my comment above was mostly sarcastic. This would just further an already awful precedent set by the Gawker ruling.
Yup, that’s blackmail pure and simple.
Gawker published excerpts of a sex tape and told the plaintiff’s lawyers to go pound sand. They got sued and lost everything (and I think most of us here can agree that the punitive damages here were beyond ridiculous and the billionaire bankrolling the suit to just to get revenge was shady AF).
AMI saying “we have your dick pics, now do our bidding” is not the same thing at all and they deserve to get reamed over this.
I never read those and yeah I’d be just as happy if they went away. It would be cute if the rag wasn’t such an abysmal hole. This, however, is one time that the NE is actually newsworthy. Or, rather, it’s newsworthy that they might have finally overstepped with some one who can make them face consequences.
