Once America’s free media latches on to a topic it doesn’t pull its punches. That is the difference between what Najib likes to describe as ‘free speech’ in his ‘perfect democracy’ of Malaysia and the reality of a democracy.
So, whilst the controlled Malaysian press and TV have fawned and crawled in their praise over Najib’s disastrous five minutes at the White House, US scribes have been unrelentingly critical of their President for having invited a “crook” to Washington to pay homage and put up at the Trump Hotel.
“From a pure public relations point of view, it’s a meeting the White House should avoid. . . . Even a photo op with Kim Jong-un would be better”. [Newsweek]
As had been widely predicted, all Najib has achieved with his visit (apart from promising billions of dollars he doesn’t have to a super-power that doesn’t need them) is to draw further attention to his scandalous connections regarding 1MDB and give Americans another reason to criticise their own mistrusted president.
He and his advisors must judge whether all this was worth the photo-opportunity back home. However most Malaysians are perfectly capable of finding out how differently the whole story is being reported outside of their own government-controlled media.
Messaging Is About Impressions
Did Najib realise that his trembling promises, made with hands clenched as Trump swaggered cross-armed across the table, would be televised, for example? He had dodged the press conference, but Trump clearly wanted his offering of tribute (scores of aircraft purchases and billions of investment) recorded for all to see. That humiliating encounter can be viewed online and Malaysians have cringed to see it.
Bottom of this article are links to some of the many shaming reports in the US media about Najib’s ill-judged visit (in international eyes at least). But, for now Newsweek’s Op Ed (belos) by one of America’s most respected senior statesmen, Paul Wolfowitz takes the biscuit.
In the course of slamming the visit the veteran Washington insider devastatingly points out that Najib’s history of lobbying in the US has involved paying millions of taxpayers’ money to a series of dubious operators, who epitomise the so-called Washington Swamp that Trump claims to be seeking to clear.
These agents have been tasked by Najib not only with arranging golf games and meetings with presidents on his behalf, but have also conducted a series of dirty media operations against his political enemies. Wolfowitz singles out the FBC Media and Josh Trevino scandals which were first uncovered by Sarawak Report, who also alerted the Guardian Newspaper to Trevino’s unreported extra-curricular activities on behalf of Najib:
TRUMP’S MEETING WITH MALAYSIAN CROOK NAJIB REEKS OF THE SWAMP
This article first appeared on the American Enterprise Institute site.
President Trump met yesterday with Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia, a visit the Wall Street Journal in an editorial last week characterized appropriately as “Trump’s Malaysia Swamp.”
As an Australian expert on Southeast Asia quoted in the New York Times said, “From a pure public relations point of view, it’s a meeting the White House should avoid. . . . Even a photo op with Kim Jong-un would be better.”
The Washington Post in an editorial yesterday said that the visit “sets a new low. Not only is Mr. Najib known for imprisoning peaceful opponents, silencing critical media and reversing Malaysia’s progress toward democracy. He also is a subject of the largest foreign kleptocracy investigation ever launched by the US Justice Department.”
The Justice Department suit in question seeks recovery and forfeiture of over $1 billion in assets alleged to have been purchased with funds “misappropriated” from Malaysia’s One Malaysia Development Bank (or 1MDB), which the suit alleges is largely controlled and managed by someone identified as “Malaysian Official 1” — and who is widely known to be Najib.
In addition to his overall responsibility for the more than $4 billion of misappropriated funds, some $1 billion of which were laundered in the United States, “Malaysian Official 1” personally received $731 million, of which $620 million was supposedly returned, netting him a tidy $111 million.
Did President Trump know about any of this when the Malaysian Prime Minister was added to his schedule?
One fact not mentioned by any of those three major papers seems to provide a clue as to how this meeting was arranged. In May, a former Trump campaign aide — Healy E. Baumgardner-Nardone of the “45 Group” — registered as a foreign agent to represent the Office of the Prime Minister of Malaysia. She reported receiving $250,000 for her services.
The Malaysian government has paid lavishly in the past for Washington “swamp dwellers” to purchase influence and disparage its opponents and critics.
As the Journal editorial points out, during President Obama’s second term the Malaysians rewarded a major Democratic Party fundraiser handsomely for representing them, just before Najib secured an Obama state visit to Malaysia (the first by a US president in sixty years), and then received an even more unprecedented invitation from Obama to join him in Hawaii for a game of golf.
Back during George W. Bush’s first term, Malaysian business interests hired Belle Haven Consultants for fees in excess of $1 million over two years to promote Malaysian interests in the US.
Some of that money was reportedly used to influence the views of a prominent conservative think tank, through the intermediary of the Alexander Strategy Group, associated with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and the notorious Jack Abramoff.
During Obama’s first term, the Najib government paid millions to APCO Worldwide of Washington, a portion of which went to the London-based “Fact Based Communications, Ltd.” to hire an individual named Josh Trevino, to organize a network of bloggers to write blog posts disparaging opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim — whose coalition was growing in strength heading into the 2013 elections.
That game blew up when Trevino was fired by The Guardian of London for failing to disclose that he was on the Malaysian payroll while writing a supposedly independent column. That forced Trevino to file a belated foreign agent registration exposing the whole scheme.
Back in Malaysia, the government does more than merely disparage its critics. Just last week, in the latest development in the 1MDB case, FBI special agent Robert Heuchling asserted in a filing in court in Los Angeles that “identifying witnesses [in the case] could result in intimidation or threaten their safety,” citing “reports of local officials and politicians who have been arrested for purportedly disclosing information linked to 1MDB.”
He also cited Malaysian press reports from August 30 that said “the driver of former Malaysian Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail was shot in public as a possible warning against assisting the US government in the case.”
If President Trump were serious about “draining the swamp” in Washington, he should have found a diplomatic excuse to postpone this embarrassing meeting. Doing so would have sent a strong signal to other lobbyists attempting to sell access to the President.
Having failed to do that, at a minimum he should find out who was responsible for inviting the Malaysian swamp to the White House. And if they did not properly inform him of the scandal surrounding Najib, someone needs to be disciplined.
Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Before joining AEI, he spent more than three decades in public service and higher education, working in the administrations of seven different presidents. Most recently, he served as president of the World Bank and deputy secretary of defense. At the World Bank he focused on the problem of corruption and the challenges of sub-Saharan Africa. As ambassador to Indonesia and assistant secretary of state for East Asia in the Reagan administration, Mr. Wolfowitz was an advocate of reform and political openness. He was involved in Persian Gulf security for almost 30 years during three different tours at the Department of Defense.
SEE ALSO:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/us/politics/trump-najib-razak-malaysia-white-house.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-meets-another-scandal-ridden-160010708.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/malaysian-leader-plays-up-aircraft-deals-investments-during-u-s-visit-1505244903
http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2110905/trump-meets-scandal-hit-malaysian-pm-najib-razak
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/from-trump-hotel-lobby-to-white-house-malaysian-prime-minister-gets-vip-treatment/2017/09/12/1b296f54-97d1-11e7-87fc-c3f7ee4035c9_story.html?utm_term=.de418f69743b
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-meeting-the-malaysian-leader-was-anything-normal
http://nypost.com/2017/09/12/trump-praises-scandal-scarred-malaysian-prime-minister/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/world/asia/trump-najib-razak-malaysia-white-house.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/09/11/heres-what-president-trump-should-tell-malaysias-prime-minister/?utm_term=.6746b8a88b5a
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/12/trump-hotel-malaysian-prime-minister-stay-242604
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-malaysia-swamp-1504738781
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/world/asia/malaysia-najib-razak-1mdb.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/12/politics/trump-malaysia-prime-minister/index.htmlhttps://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/On-US-visit-Najib-dances-to-Trump-s-tune
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-11/trump-to-meet-favorite-premier-as-malaysian-fund-probe-deepens