Entertainment Report
Russian pop star linked to Trump family releases bizarre music video
Emin Agalarov, the Russian pop star who is said to have helped arrange Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign, released a new music video on Tuesday.
It is … interesting.
In the video for a track titled “Got Me Good,” Agalarov sings in English alongside look-alikes of some familiar faces: President Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Stormy Daniels, Hillary Clinton and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Oh, and a guy playing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un shows up at the end.
In one scene, an actor dressed like President Trump cavorts with bikini-clad beauty pageant contestants in a hotel room. (The backstory: Agalarov appeared in a music video with Trump when the Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow in 2013. Trump, who owned the pageant at the time, pretended to fire the singer as if he were a contestant on “The Apprentice.”)
There are other puzzling moments in the video. Agalarov hands a leather briefcase to a woman resembling Ivanka Trump, then shoots a coy grin at the camera. He appears to exchange a wad of cash with an actress playing Daniels, the adult-film performer who claims she had an affair with Trump. White House aides have denied the allegation.
Agalarov also throws back shots, plays poker and snaps a selfie with an actress clearly meant to portray Clinton.
“Got Me Good” at times sounds like a break-up track, with Agalarov playing the role of a spurned lover, crooning: “Wish you at least said let’s break up / Wish you could say how you feel / But you keep on playing / And every time that you go.”
But it also plays like a conspiracy thriller, with several shots of a shadowy figure watching surveillance footage on a panel of monitors — a possible nod to lurid allegations about the president in the 35-page dossier compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.
The video ends with apparently authentic footage of Trump saying, “Emin, I can’t believe you,” taken from a video in which Trump wished the pop star a happy birthday. The action then abruptly cuts to the figure watching the monitors — the actor playing Kim, who munches on popcorn and laughs maniacally.
The video’s political message is not entirely clear. Julia Ioffe, a correspondent for GQ who has written extensively about Russia under President Vladimir Putin, raised one possibility, tweeting that American viewers were being “trolled and made fun of by Emin Agalarov.”
Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., told NBC News last year that Agalarov was key in setting the meeting up. She claimed at the time that she had never met Agalarov, who is the son of the Azerbaijani-Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov.
By: NBC Palm Springs
June 26, 2018
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