Trump Booster Stephen Schwarzman Gets Huge Payoff From Saudis

Greed Personified – Saudi Arabia Anti-Semites, Who Cares

Billionaire managers of investment funds get a huge tax break.  Because of a technical glitch in the tax code they pay tax on their income at very low rates.  And they are outraged, outraged that someone would try to take that tax break away from them.

Word of mouth says that Blackstone founder Steve Schwarzman got suddenly very passionate when talking about tax hikes in July.

He was speaking to board members of a nonprofit organization when, apparently, Schwarzman started comparing the proposal to increase taxes on private equity firms to the conditions in Nazi Germany.

Newsweek doesn't name the charity board in question, nor their sources, but rumor is that Schwarzman said fighting with the administration over the taxes is something like this:

“It’s a war."

“It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

Now the NYT reports how Schwarzman has cozied up to Trumpie and as a result has been awarded the right to manage a $20 billion Saudi fund.

But Mr. Schwarzman’s stature in both the world of finance and in Mr. Trump’s Washington helped Blackstone nail down one of the biggest deals on Wall Street this year — its selection by Saudi Arabia to manage a new $20 billion fund, according to a person with knowledge of the selection process.

In May, while the president was visiting Saudi Arabia, Blackstone announced the agreement to manage the fund, the largest in the world to invest in infrastructure projects. The announcement was made at the royal palace in Riyadh as Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner looked on.

Saudi Arabia is one of the leading purveyors of hatred in the world, hatred against Israel, hatred against Jews.  They finance education that routinely calls for Jewish extermination.  And they regularly support condemnation of people just because they are Jewish.

In 2015, the state-appointed grand mufti preached that Jews were planning to destroy Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque and called ISIS “part of the Israeli army.” The top state-appointed religious body praised what it called the Palestinian “jihad and defense of the sanctities of Muslims in Palestine,” terming Israel’s so-called “violation of the sanctity of Islamic holy sites” an act of “terrorism.”

One member of that state-appointed council has contended that Jews plot against the entire world, and in 2016 sermons from Mecca’s Grand Mosque called for divine intervention against the “usurper Jews,” whom he dubbed a “criminal people.” Last year King Salman handed that preacher an award “for service to Islam.” This past June, Saudi state TV gave five hours of airtime to a zealot with a government title who had recently called for God to “destroy” the Jews and save Al-Aqsa from their “claws.”

Jewish men, women and children will be killed because of Saudi policy.  Men like Stephen Schwarzman don’t care.  Their billions are not enough; they want more.