Off-the-Record: Weddings by Kremlev

0:00Happy Friday Slatesters. We have reached kind of the end of the week, which is when we go off the record just for you, our Slate plus friends and neighbors. We took a couple of weeks off of that because, you know, it was a summer break, but now it's September, back to school, midterms. You know what that means. Yeah, it means a virus. What up, Lizzie? Yeah. It means a virus. It means my child is homesick. Six days. We made it six days of first grade. It's making them stronger. Yeah. So now we've got to talk about some stuff because we have five episodes, But we did not get to cover some of these more out there stories, some of which just have phenomenal reporting in them.

0:43The other one just makes me want to jump out a window. So to do that, I am here with my friend, co-host, awesome person, Mary Harris. Hi, bud. What's up, Lizzie? I feel like we're like five shows. Not enough. There's more. Gotta add more. too much in this brain i gotta get it out by talking i once described my head to someone as my brain is full of bees and that is how i feel right too many news stories um so you are gonna kick us off uh what next started this week with ivanka trump and the albanian island she wants to buy which yeah didn't it kind of make you want to go to albania that show it made me want to go to albania and like hug yeah i mean i don't know that it's at the top of my list for you know bucket list activities but I would like to hug a flamingo there we go there you go but we're gonna start not with Ivanka but one of her brothers Don Jr.

1:43what is up with Don yeah we're staying in the same family tree here so around the same time that this Albania show came out ProPublica came out with this amazing reporting about Don Jr.'s wedding, which you might remember Don Jr.'s wedding because it happened in the spring. And it happened, as I recall, it was a weekend when people were like, maybe something's going to happen with the Iran war because Donald Trump is avoiding Don Jr.'s wedding on this island. So that's like my memory of it, that it was this thing that was happening and people were speculating because Donald Trump the president was not going that oh maybe something would change in Iran haha jokes on us no but now we learn about what actually happened at this wedding which is a three-day affair across two different islands which I mean great it sounded okay first thing there's a there's a lot that's reported this story is fantastic and we should just like I just want to give so good Republica which is already just all an extraordinary news organization it's fantastic investigative reporting but also the details in here are bananas bananas yeah so we have basically the fact that this wedding was funded in part but like significant part by a russian oligarch a guy named umar kremlov so okay that's that's the main detail here but then they support it with all of this delicious crap that you just want to know like how tacky Don Jr.'s wedding was that they airlifted a Funfetti cake from Florida to be there, which you're just like, if you're going to airlift something to an island, I would at least go French croissants.

3:27Do you know what I mean? Like, I would go with something. A five-tier Funfetti cake, no less. You don't need that many tiers of Funfetti, y 'all. I don't know. If you're going to go Funfetti, why not? That's it for now. And if you want to hear the rest of this episode, the way to do it is to subscribe to Slate Plus. Unlock Slate Plus now by going to slate.com forward slash whatnextplus.