This Russian Pop Video About Donald Trump Has Everything
Remember when, two years ago this month, Donald Trump Jr. agreed to meet with Russians inside Trump Tower? You may recall that the man who arranged that meeting was a music promoter and publicist named Rob Goldstone. One of Goldstone’s clients, a Russian pop star, Emin Agalarov, as well as Emin’s father, Aras Agalarov were friendly with then-candidate Donald Trump. Aras told Goldstone he had some “incriminating” information regarding Clinton, and that he wanted to offer it up as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” according to Goldstone’s email to the younger Trump Jr.
Setting the collusion aside for a second, Emin Agalarov is indeed a major pop star in Russia. On Tuesday, he released the music video for his latest single, “Got Me Good.” It doesn’t shy away from playing up Emin’s connection to some of the issues that have plagued the American political system for the past two years.
Let’s unpack this scene by scene…
1. An actor playing Kim Jong-un sits down at a multi-screen surveillance station, where he cues up footage of Emin walking down a hotel hallway with an actor playing Trump. Trailing them are some beauty pageant contestants.
2. Emin and Trump exchange a briefcase and bro hug.
3. Kim has some bling on his wrist.
4. An actress playing Ivanka appears and another surreptitious exchange is made. We then see Emin, Trump, an actor playing Mark Zuckerberg (!) and the beauty pageant contestants (who we’re led to believe might actually be prostitutes) popping bottles in a hotel suite.
5. The bikini-clad women start jumping on the bed and a pillow fight breaks out. We’re now deep in pee tape territory, but wait … Kim erases Trump from the footage! (Zuckerberg remains.)
6. An actress playing Stormy Daniels walks into the hotel. Emin pays her off in the elevator.
7. An actress playing Hillary Clinton appears. Emin and Ivanka greet her before sitting down in the a club to take shots. Whatever Hillary was drinking didn’t go down smooth, but it’s cool. They’re having a good time.
8. Zuckerberg shows up again with what could be the Steele dossier. It changes hands several times.
9. Now the whole crew is playing poker together. Lot of laughs, lot of action. Presumably still tipsy from the shots at the club, Hillary tosses the dossier in the pot. Emin wins the hand and rakes in the chips, but where’s the dossier?
10. Cut to Kim’s surveillance station, where a man delivers a briefcase to the North Korean dictator. Inside is the dossier. The video ends with Kim cackling as he snacks on a tub of popcorn.
If you’re wondering how Emin and his father became so tight with Trump in the first place, it goes back to the now-notorious 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, which happened to be financed by the father-son duo. So cozy did the Apprentice star become with the Agalarovs that he even made a cameo in the music video for Emin’s 2013 single “In Another Life.” Trump shows up near the end of the video to wake up a daydreaming Emin. “Emin, let’s get with it!” Trump barks. “You’re always late! You’re just another pretty face! I’m really tired of you! You’re fired!”
Though the “Got Me Good” video is one of the more ludicrous parodies of Trump-era corruption, there’s a not-insignificant chance that Emin actually does possess information that could be salient to the Russia investigation, whether it be details of Trump’s cloudy relationship with the nation, or if the pee tape does in fact exist. There’s also a small but greater-than-zero-percent chance that the “Got Me Good” video has been brought to the attention of Special Counsel Mueller, and that the man leading the most sensitive investigation in the history of the United States at some point today sat shaking his head for three minutes as he watched a smug, 38-year-old Russian pop star give him the finger.