MSNBC and Daily Beast Feature UAE Lobbyist David Rothkopf With No Disclosure: a Scandalous Media-Wide Practice

ON THURSDAY, the Daily Beast published an article about the Saudi/US relationship by David Rothkopf, a long-time member in good standing of the U.S. Foreign Policy elite. Until last year, he was the editor-in-chief of the establishment journal Foreign Policy, named to that position in 2012 when it was owned by the Washington Post. He’s also a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting professor at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He was previously deputy undersecretary of commerce for international trade policy in the Clinton administration and managing director of Kissinger Associates, the advisory firm founded by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

But, unbeknownst to Daily Beast readers consuming his commentary about Saudi Arabia, Rothkopf is something else: a paid lobbyist for the Saudi regime’s close ally, the equally despotic regime of the United Arab Emirates. Last month, Rothkopf formally registered as a foreign agent for the Emiratis.

On September 12, Rothkopf personally signed a contract with the UAE regime to be paid $50,000 every month, for a period of three years, to, among other services, “provide day-to-day advice on the development of messages”; to work on “media projects [and] outreach efforts”; and to “prepare memoranda [and] talking points” for the “Embassy of the United Arab Emirates to develop and support specific programs and initiatives within the United States.”

Although the contract is in the name of “The Rothkopf Group,” that entity appears to have little real existence beyond Rothkopf himself. It has a Twitter account that has never tweeted, a website that cannot be accessed without a password, and a Linkedin page that lists a tiny handful of employees, the most senior of whom (its “Vice President and Senior Project Manager”) most recently worked as a Capitol Hill intern, a “professional dancer,” a yoga instructor and an assistant to a Commerce Under Secretary for 7 months. So one can safely assume that the vast majority of the $600,000 annual payment from UAE goes to Rothkopf personally.

But Daily Beast readers interested in knowing why Rothkopf is qualified to opine on matters relating to Saudi Arabia and other matters of foreign affairs would have no idea that he is paid a substantial sum by one of the region’s most repressive regimes to disseminate messaging on its behalf. That’s because there is nothing in any of Rothkopf’s articles for The Daily Beast that indicates this, nor does his bio page for the journal include this rather significant fact:

The Rothkopf article published on Thursday does not mention the UAE. It does, however, call the U.S. relationship with the Saudis, one of the key allies of the UAE regime that pays him, “important,” though it argues that it is not as important as it once was. Like most U.S. elites who have long defended ties with Gulf dictators but who now must denounce the Saudi despots given the P.R. anger over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Rothkopf does denounce the Saudi leaders in the article.

But – unbelievably – Rothkopf has the audacity to criticize Trump for having “repeatedly shown great fondness for foreign leaders—even despots and known murderers, human rights abusers and criminals”, while Rothkopf himself is literally a paid agent working to disseminate propaganda for one of the most repressive regimes on the planet, one that does much of the Saudis’ dirty work for it in Washington. And the fact that the Daily Beast makes no disclosure of any of this is what makes this practice – having paid lobbyists and consultants for foreign regimes and corporations masquerade as objective and neutral analysts of the news – such a massive journalistic scandal and fraud.

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