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Betsy DeVos’s summer home deserves a special place in McMansion Hell

Kate Wagner dissects the shingle-style Michigan summer home of the education secretary.

by Kate Wagner

Two weeks ago, somebody untied Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s $40 million yacht from its mooring . It got me thinking about another opulent display of wealth owned by DeVos: her 22,000-square-foot nautical-themed summer mansion, located in Holland, Michigan. Just a few more years of climate change and it’ll be floating too.

My mission for the past three years as the creator of the architectural humor blog McMansion Hell has been to unpack what makes mansions like DeVos’s so terrible, from both an architectural and social standpoint. It’s bad enough that we have a president who oversaw a massive redistribution of wealth toward the already wealthy through tax breaks. What’s worse is that obscenely wealthy people like him waste all their money building pseudo-castles and other eclectic tragedies, all while wagging their finger at the rest of us telling us to eat cake.

Trump official and fellow rich person DeVos just rolled back Obama administration loan forgiveness rules for students defrauded by for-profit colleges . It’s unsurprising that she doesn’t want to forgive the student loan debts of those defrauded by for-profit colleges considering that she got her net worth of more than $1 billion from her husband’s company, the multilevel marketing giant Amway, which is often described as a cult . Meanwhile, her brother Erik Prince owns the Blackwater firm , which essentially sells mercenaries. As we can see, we are not dealing with nice people.

As someone who owes tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, getting paid to make fun of DeVos’s tacky seaside decor is one of few ways to both feed myself and make myself feel better. With that, I’d like to dedicate this essay to all of the public school teachers who taught me how to write.

Betsy’s house is, in general, a mess. The home attempts to play on the historical American school of architecture known as the shingle style . This style, often seen by historians as a combination of the emerging Arts and Crafts movement and 19th-century eclecticism, is known for its extensive use of shingles as a building material and its multi-massed (massing is a fancy word for a building’s three-dimensional forms) architectural complexity. Betsy likely went with this style because it is very popular in New England and in coastal enclaves of the rich and famous in general.

Even though Betsy is riffing on the shingle style, there is a difference between architectural complexity and a mess, just as there is a difference between a masterful use of vocabulary and replacing every word in a sentence with the longest synonym you can find in the thesaurus.

Betsy’s house looks like a compound of multiple unfinished parts, and nothing about its hulking facade really gels. This is partially because it has no fewer than 13 window styles — yes, I counted them — and because each of the wings of the house tries (perhaps intentionally) to be very visually different from the next.

For example, why is there a massive turret tacked on as if they couldn’t quite commit to a separate lighthouse? The house’s roofline somehow includes three separate roof types (clipped gable, dutch gable, and hipped)? Why are some columns stone and others wood? Why do none of the doors seem to be the front door? (Is there even a front door?) It’s a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen, and none of those cooks are good at their job.

I don’t know how much this house cost, but according to the topical website PriceyPads.com , the house has three bedrooms and 10 bathrooms, three kitchens, eight dishwashers, 13 porches, and an elevator. Something about that ratio of bedrooms to dishwashers seems off to me, but what would I, a mere wretch, too dumb and poor to avoid being exploited by the predatory cost of higher education, know?

While the repairs are underway on one of her 10 boats , maybe poor Betsy can spare some of her precious time (otherwise spent being the villain of a Charles Dickens novel) reading essays like M.H. Miller’s in The Baffler , which describes in detail the toll student loan debt repayment takes on working families. Or she could take a gander at a recent Time article about how an entire generation of people have negative wealth .

In America, the rich get richer, and the poor have to beg the federal government to forgive the debts they owe to predatory for-profit colleges run by the rich who keep on getting richer. What do the rich do with all their money? Build horrific monstrosities with eight dishwashers and dismantle the public school system.

Architecture is never a vacuum. This house sucks, but like all buildings, it is a reflection of both the people and the broader culture that make building it both possible and desirable. Those, too, irrefutably suck.

Kate Wagner is the creator of the viral blog McMansion Hell , a freelance design writer, and contributor at Curbed . Kate is $42,000 in student loan debt for her MA in architectural acoustics from Johns Hopkins University.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines , and pitch us at [email protected] .

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Betsy DeVos' $40 Million Luxury Yacht Suddenly in Need of Repairs

Sad news yesterday out of Huron, Ohio, a tiny town nestled on the shores of beautiful Lake Erie: A $40 million yacht owned by the family of Betsy DeVos , who believes that public education is a ridesharing app , was vandalized by an unknown person or persons last weekend. The Toledo Blade reports that police were summoned to the docks on Sunday morning after crew members discovered that the 163-foot craft had been untied from its mooring overnight. Unfortunately, the hull suffered "large scratches and scrapes" during the subsequent re-docking effort. There are no suspects.

The boat, christened SeaQuest , is often spotted in Florida or the Caribbean, according to something called SuperYachtFan.com , and can comfortably accommodate a dozen passengers in six cabins. It is one of at least ten family yachts to which DeVos, a woman who has accused Americans victimized by for-profit colleges' predatory lending practices of just wanting "free money," can retire for a few days of leisure whenever the partisan rancor in Washington becomes too unpleasant for her to bear.

At this time, it is unclear how the SeaQuest 's temporary unavailability will affect the multiple DeVos family employees who are responsible for scheduling their various nautical excursions and ensuring that each onboard meal adheres to "proper table etiquette, service, and entertaining protocol." However, should she require the immediate services of a seaworthy vessel, rest assured that the United States Secretary of Education—who in the name of eliminating waste has dismissed pending civil rights cases, disposed of guidelines that safeguard the rights of disabled students, gutted regulations that protect sexual assault survivors, and dismantled programs that help borrowers manage debt and avoid delinquency—will be able to avail herself of one of her family's dozen private planes in order to reach the relevant port of call.

The damage will require between $5,000 and $10,000 to repair, says the Blade . The DeVos fortune is estimated at $5.3 billion; according to the most recent data published by the Census Bureau, the median household net worth in this country is a shade over $80,000. This means that for Betsy DeVos, paying to restore this luxury yacht will be the equivalent of the average American family spending fifteen cents—roughly the cost of a single dry erase marker that she would really prefer teachers to pay for out of their own pockets.

Secretary of Education Betsy Devos' $40 million yacht set adrift on Lake Huron

The SeaQuest, a 164-foot luxury yacht, was untied at a marina in Ohio.

A $40 million yacht belonging to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was untied from its mooring at a Lake Huron marina, police said.

The SeaQuest, a 164-foot luxury yacht, registered under a Cayman Islands flag, was set adrift at the Huron Boat Basin, where it was docked.

"Around sunrise the crew woke to find the boat had been untied from the dock and was adrift," according to a vandalism report filed Sunday by the Huron Police Department.

The crew was able to regain control, but not before the ship struck the dock, suffering several scratches and scrapes, the report said.

The captain estimated that the collision caused between $5,000-$10,000 in damages.

MORE: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos under fire for saying schools can report undocumented students

Investigators hope that nearby surveillance cameras may help them identify the person who untied the yacht.

The SeaQuest is one of a fleet of at least 10 boats owned by the DeVos family. The SeaQuest is staffed by a crew of twelve and, additionally, accommodates as many as twelve guests at a time.

DeVos has previously been criticized for her family’s wealth and holdings. She and her husband have a combined net worth of over $5 billion. Devos’ brother, Erik Prince, is the founder of Blackwater, a private military company that has faced scrutiny for its activities as a mercenary subcontractor for U.S. combat operations in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

MORE: Amid Mueller probe, Blackwater founder pitches mercenary takeover of Afghan War

DeVos’ press office did not respond to ABC News' request for comment.

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Someone set Betsy DeVos’s $40 million yacht adrift on Lake Erie

US education secretary Betsy DeVos’s 163-foot-yacht, the “Seaquest” was untied from its moorings and set adrift in the Huron Boat Basin in northern Ohio on Saturday night by an unknown person.

No one was hurt, but the yacht’s paint job sustained $5,000 to $10,000 in large scratches and scrapes, the Toledo Blade reports , citing a police report. The boat’s captain “called police at about 6 a.m. Sunday, telling them that he and the crew realized at sunrise that someone had untied Seaquest from the dock, setting it adrift,” the paper reports. Police are looking for surveillance video to figure out who was responsible.

The Seaquest, built in 2008, is a “luxury motor yacht” worth $40 million, with room for 12 guests in cabins and 12 crew, and a maximum speed of 24 knots, according to yachtharbour.com . DeVos and her husband’s assets include “no less than 10 yachts and reportedly an interest in the shipyard that built them,” the yachting news website reports. The boat has teak decks and room for 12 crew, yachtcharterfleet.com says .

The DeVos family’s other yachts include “WindQuest,” “SunQuest,” “Kitsune,” and “Godspeed,” according to superyachtfan.com .

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Betsy DeVos' 50m Westport yacht Seaquest deliberately set adrift

The 49.9 metre  Westport superyacht owned by US education secretary Betsy DeVos was deliberately cut loose by vandals last week, sustaining thousands of pounds worth of damage.

The Westport 164 Seaquest is one of 10 luxury yachts owned by billionaire DeVos who is Donald Trump’s education secretary. Police believe the yacht was intentionally set adrift at 6am on Sunday July 22. The yacht drifted from its mooring on Lake Erie at Boat Basin, Ohio and collided with the dock, causing large scratches estimated to cost around £7,000 to repair.

Police are now reviewing surveillance footage to identify who is responsible for untying the yacht.

Delivered in 2008, Seaquest has a top speed of 24 knots and a maximum cruising range of 3,700 nautical miles at 12 knots. She accommodates 12 guests and 13 crew members and was designed by  Donald Starkey  with  William Garden  developing the naval architecture.

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A $40-million yacht owned by Betsy DeVos’ family — one of 10 — is set adrift, causing thousands in damage

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Police say someone untied a yacht owned by the family of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in Ohio, causing the vessel to drift into a dock and incur up to $10,000 in damages.

The Blade reports the $40-million, 163-foot yacht was moored at the Huron Boat Basin when the captain reported it became untied around 6 a.m. Sunday.

The vessel, named the Seaquest, struck the dock and ended up with large scratches before the crew was able to get control of it.

DeVos was in Ohio earlier this month to tour a career center and a correctional treatment program. It’s unclear why the yacht was in Huron.

The Seaquest is one of 10 vessels owned by the DeVos family.

Authorities are reviewing surveillance video.

Betsy DeVos proposes rules that would cut student loan relief by an estimated $13 billion »

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Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' $40 Million Yacht Set Adrift and Damaged in Ohio

Betsy DeVos luxury yacht was set adrift from its port over the weekend causing thousands of dollars in damages

Betsy DeVos luxury yacht was set adrift from its port over the weekend potentially causing the secretary of education thousands of dollars in damages.

Secretary of education’s 163-foot yacht, Seaquest, was untied from the dock at the Huron Boat Basin in Ohio on Sunday and crashed into the dock, according to a police report obtained by the Toledo Blade .

Huron Police Chief Bob Lippert did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

The captain of the yacht was who called the police and reported that he had discovered someone had purposely untied the Seaquest from the dock, the report said.

He and his crew were able to regain control of the ship, but not before it crashed into the dock.

Damages to the boat are estimated to be between $5,000 and $10,000, according to the report.

Lippert told CNN the yacht belonged to DeVos’ family and that the secretary of education was not in Huron, Ohio when the incident occurred.

Lippert told the outlet police were working to get video surveillance of what took place.

The Seaquest is just one of 10 boats owned by the DeVos family, according to ABC News . The yacht can comfortably hold up to 12 guests and 12 crew members at a time.

DeVos and her husband Richard DeVos have a reported combined net worth of $5 billion, according to the outlet.

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Betsy devos' mega yacht gets vandalized.

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Apparently someone unmoored the DeVos family's yacht, the SeaQuest, causing five to ten thousand dollars in damage. July 27, 2018

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Betsy DeVos' $40M family yacht untied, causing $10,000 in damages

By Rebecca Bratek

Updated on: July 26, 2018 / 2:32 PM EDT / CBS News

A yacht owned by the family of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was untied from its dock in Ohio last weekend, police say. This unmooring caused the yacht to strike the dock, causing up to $10,000 in damages. The 163-foot yacht is worth a reported $40 million , according to Toledo's The Blade newspaper.

The vessel, named the SeaQuest, was moored at a basin in Huron, Ohio, when the captain reported it became untied and sent adrift around 6 a.m. Sunday, The Blade reports. The yacht received large scrapes as it struck the dock before the crew was able to gain control of it, according to a police report. 

The damage is estimated at $5,000 to $10,000, according to The Blade.

Officers are searching for surveillance video of the incident, the newspaper reports. It's unclear why the boat was docked in Huron, the Blade notes, but DeVos visited Ohio earlier this month to tour a career center and a correctional treatment program.

The SeaQuest is one of at least 10 boats owned by the DeVos family, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the family's wealth. It can accommodate 12 guests and 12 crew members, according to the SuperYachtFan website .

The DeVos clan also owns at least four planes and two helicopters, the Journal reports. 

Among those serving on President Trump's Cabinet, DeVos is the richest : she grew up wealthy and married even wealthier. She disclosed her family's wealth -- more than $580 million across her assets, according to the Journal's analysis -- when she was tapped for the education secretary post in 2016.

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“I’m Tired of America Wasting Our Blood and Treasure”: The Strange Ascent of Betsy DeVos and Erik Prince

On Friday, September 30, 2016, Republican nominee Donald Trump made his fifth campaign visit to Michigan, a battleground state where he was closing the gap with Hillary Clinton. He was scheduled to speak at five P.M. in Novi, a suburb northwest of Detroit. But instead of landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, his plane continued another 150 miles west to the city of Grand Rapids. The sun was peeking through the clouds over the skyline, one of the Midwest’s finest, a harmonious blend of steel-and-glass high-rises and lovingly restored old stone and red-brick buildings, when Trump’s motorcade drove through, at 12:30, and pulled up to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, named for the longtime Michigan congressman improbably catapulted into the Oval Office by the crimes of Watergate. Visitors were startled when a familiar figure—in a dark suit and unmistakable orange crown—emerged from his vehicle and placed a bouquet of roses, red and white, at the graves of Ford and his wife, Betty. Schoolchildren came racing across the lawn. A local banker called out, “Make America great again!”

By the time the motorcade reached the J. W. Marriott hotel, a cylindrical glass tower on the banks of the Grand River, the press, scrambling to catch up, had figured out what was going on. Donald Trump was in town to meet privately with donors—the cream of the city’s business class, manufacturers (Keeler Brass Company) and retailers (Cole’s Quality Foods)—gathered in the Marriott ballroom. Journalists, in the corridor outside, wondered: would the DeVoses be there?

In the solar system of elite Republican contributors, Richard DeVos Sr., who died Thursday at age 92—one of the two founders of Amway, the direct-sale colossus—occupied an exalted place, and his offspring did too. Since the 1970s, members of the DeVos family had given as much as $200 million to the G.O.P. and been tireless promoters of the modern conservative movement—its ideas, its policies, and its crusades combining free-market economics, a push for privatization of many government functions, and Christian social values. While other far-right mega-donors may have become better known over the years (the Coorses and the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers), Michigan’s DeVos dynasty stands apart—for the duration, range, and depth of its influence.

Start with the think tanks, advocacy organizations, and colleges. In the Grand Rapids area alone there are three conservative academic bastions: Grand Valley State University; Calvin College, attended by several generations of DeVoses, including Rich’s daughter-in-law Betsy DeVos, 60, who is now Trump’s secretary of education; and Northwood University, her husband Dick’s alma mater. The DeVoses are also major backers of Hillsdale, the libertarian-plus-Christian liberal-arts college in southern Michigan. One celebrated alum: Betsy DeVos’s brother, Erik Prince, 49, the swashbuckling military contractor who has come to the serious attention of investigators looking into the Trump team’s alleged dealings with Russia. Other recipients of DeVos largesse: the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Justice, and the American Enterprise Institute—the list goes on.

Top, DeVos and President Trump at the White House, April 2017. Bottom, Prince in Afghanistan, 2009.

The DeVoses don’t limit their activism to ideas. They have been enthusiastic supporters of Republican presidential nominees—from Gerald Ford to Mitt Romney, who also has deep Michigan roots. But 2016 changed everything. Betsy, the most visible member of the clan, had been close to former Florida governor Jeb Bush; the two shared a passion for remaking public-school education. When Bush dropped out of the race, she switched over to Florida senator Marco Rubio. She also wrote checks for Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker, John Kasich, Bobby Jindal—everyone, anyone , but Donald Trump. “I’m hopeful we are going to hear something from our nominee to convince me that I should support him,” she declared at the time.

The DeVoses’ preference for “values-oriented” candidates reflect the teachings of the Christian Reformed Church. A small breakaway denomination of its Dutch forerunner, it has some 300,000 adherents in North America, many living in the same western-Michigan towns where their immigrant ancestors settled in the 1840s to pursue a faith that combines Calvinist devotion to the work ethic, prayer, a dedication to family and community—and philanthropy. The DeVoses take this seriously. Quite apart from their political donations, they have lavished millions on worthy charitable projects in and around town and far beyond. They have done all this, however, with a flamboyance unusual for Grand Rapids, stamping the family name, or Amway’s, on many of the city’s most visible surfaces.

And now Donald J. Trump, himself a stranger to charity but not to branding, was in DeVos country. When the Marriott meeting ended, and the doors opened, “the one lasting image for me,” one Grand Rapids journalist would later recall, “was seeing Rich DeVos wheeled out of the ballroom to the elevator.” Trump had gotten his audience with the patriarch.

Some five weeks later, on November 7, Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, came back yet again for the campaign’s last rally—at the DeVos Place Convention Center. Trump, it turned out, would squeak through, by fewer than 11,000 votes. While the bellwether suburbs outside Detroit certainly helped, Michiganders knew the critical votes that formed Trump’s base had come from the western part of the state. The point was clinched 12 days later, when Betsy DeVos, in a stylish gray jacket and practiced smile, stood with Trump at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. She had agreed to be Trump’s education chief. The announcement brought “Western Michigan royalty into the Trump fold,” observed The New York Times . (Indeed, when the Senate was split on confirming her, her pal Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote.) In retrospect, it seemed an early token of surrenders to come, as G.O.P. leaders would make their bargain with the interloper Donald Trump.

That was one way of looking at it. Another was that Trump was a useful vehicle for advancing nationally the revolution the DeVoses had already enacted in Michigan. There was, for instance, Betsy DeVos’s campaign to undo the state’s public-education system and replace it with for-profit and charter schools that, as she had put it two decades earlier, shared her mission of “defending the Judeo-Christian values that made us what we are, but which are under attack from the liberal elite.” There was also the campaign she and her husband had waged to weaken Michigan’s unions. And there was the DeVos-family-funded gentrification of Grand Rapids, which had erased the haunting images of a once struggling Rust Belt city, though one beset by racial tensions.

Those are some of the lessons to be learned in western Michigan— West Michigan, as locals call it, as if to designate a separate state, or at least a state of mind. Other lessons can be found in the pulp-fiction career of Betsy DeVos’s younger brother, Erik Prince, the former navy SEAL who started Blackwater—the mammoth security company, some of whose “civilian soldiers” had gone rogue in Iraq. Prince recently turned over his computer and phones to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has no doubt looked closely at his possible involvement in helping establish back-channel communications with Russia for the Trump administration. (Prince denies any wrongdoing.)

Behind all this is the story of a family dynasty that has been a driving force on the far right—the Michigan Medicis of Donald Trump’s America.

When people in West Michigan speak of the DeVoses, they mean not one great family but two, joined as the great European noble houses once were—Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Hanover and Windsor. The story actually begins 30 miles west of Grand Rapids, in Holland, a town of some 34,000 on Lake Macatawa that is as reliable a Republican stronghold as any in America. The last time the county voted Democratic in a presidential election? In 1864— against Abraham Lincoln.

Betsy and Erik’s father, Edgar Prince, was a Chrysler-Plymouth salesman and then machine engineer who started a die-cast business and also had a tinkerer’s gift for inventions. One, the lighted vanity mirror on the flip-up sun visor (introduced in 1972), helped Prince become one of the wealthiest men in Michigan. Edgar and his wife, Elsa, were members of the charity-minded Christian Reformed Church (C.R.C.). As he got richer, the elder Prince rewarded his hometown handsomely; Prince money has done much to preserve downtown Holland, which remains a 1950s time capsule of Candy Land façades.

Elisabeth “Betsy” Prince, the eldest of four (there are two other daughters, Emilie and Eileen), attended Holland Christian, a Reformed high school, and then, like her mother, went to Calvin College, in Grand Rapids, “a kind of finishing school for that system,” says Doug Koopman, who teaches political science at Calvin and has served on the staff of several Republican legislators. Betsy was a freshman in the spring of 1976 when Ronald Reagan challenged the incumbent Jerry Ford in Republican primaries. Reformed Christians have a history of political activism, and Betsy eagerly joined the Ford youth brigade. The C.R.C.’s greatest figure, Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch theologian and prime minister who died almost a century ago, had declared, in words the faithful know by heart: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” The political message was open to interpretation. Some Calvin grads (including filmmaker Paul Schrader, class of 1968) had protested the Vietnam War. But many others veered right. And when Betsy DeVos later declared that her ambitions with “school choice” were to “advance God’s Kingdom,” she was echoing Kuyper’s teachings.

After the 1976 election, religion entered the bloodstream of American politics. The born-again Jimmy Carter was one reason. Another was the rise of the Republican right under Ronald Reagan. Among his most avid supporters were evangelicals who combined free-market gospel with a counteroffensive against what seemed dangerous secularism: abortion, affirmative action, busing, and “the liberalization” of school curriculums.

The Princes—parents and children alike—were in the vanguard of the Christian right. Edgar Prince had survived a heart attack in 1972, when he was 42, and the experience awakened him to a more observant religious life at a time when churches were beginning to embrace the culture wars. The enemy was everywhere, and growing: the Equal Rights Amendment, the pro-choice movement, and gay rights. The Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation would become major donors to two mighty organizations: Focus on the Family, founded by the psychologist and evangelist James Dobson, and the Family Research Council, led for more than a decade by Gary Bauer, the Christian Zionist who, in 2000, made a stab at the presidency. “Ed turned his future and the future of his business over to God,” Bauer wrote about the man he referred to as his “mentor.”

Betsy and Dick’s home in Holland, Michigan, 2010.

The Princes and DeVoses—with neighboring homes in Holland—had effected a merger thanks to the 1979 marriage of their firstborn, Betsy Prince and Dick DeVos, then in their 20s. “Bible-reading jet-setter” was the description in a Detroit Free Press profile of Betsy published once she emerged as a kingmaker in the state Republican Party. She invited friends over to read Scripture; she also enjoyed road trips to watch the Orlando Magic, the N.B.A. franchise her father-in-law had purchased for $85 million, appointing Dick president. (Betsy DeVos has not responded for comment despite repeated requests to her office.)

To be a DeVos was to live large. Betsy and Dick own a 22,000-square-foot mansion on Lake Macatawa, with a large infinity pool. (Betsy was a competitive swimmer in her teens.) They also have a place in Vero Beach, Florida. The scale of the DeVos clan’s wealth became a source of national wonderment this summer, and a punch line for Stephen Colbert, after news accounts described how vandals had set adrift their $40 million, 163-foot yacht, the SeaQuest , which had been docked on Lake Erie. (It turns out the family, reportedly, owns 10 boats .)

Seen from the snobbish heights of Grand Rapids, the young auto-parts heiress, by becoming a DeVos, had made a brilliant leap into the gilded lap of the super-rich. The facts are more complicated. Prince Corporation, with its die-casting machines, was a classic Rust Belt factory. But the DeVos family business, Amway (short for American Way)—which recruited people to sell soap and household cleaning products—was very different, a kind of high-pressure cult, replete with tent-style rallies, as disillusioned ex-Amway sellers began to say.

The Federal Trade Commission had spent four years investigating Amway. Its “multi-level marketing” approach—in which descending tiers of home-operating “distributors” purchased Amway products and made money selling them, as well as by recruiting new members—appeared very similar to an illegal pyramid scheme. In the end, the F.T.C. ruled that Amway was legal, because its entry requirements were modest, and distributors were not compelled to buy unnecessary inventory. But Rich DeVos and Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel were also told to stop fixing prices and to clean up their sales pitch, which exaggerated the potential riches.

And yet the company kept growing. As DeVos would later note with satisfaction in his Trumpishly titled memoir, Simply Rich , “Just four years after the F.T.C. brought the suit, our reported sales at retail more than tripled—to $800 million.” (In 1983, however, DeVos and Van Andel pleaded guilty to criminal tax fraud in Canada. They paid fines of $25 million; the charges were dropped.) Today the company’s biggest market is China, with its legions of go-getters, though authorities there are now giving Amway and other multi-level marketing firms a hard look.

There was more to this than slick salesmanship. DeVos and Van Andel were students of Dale Carnegie, the business and self-improvement pitchman, and, especially, of Norman Vincent Peale, the charismatic pastor at Marble Collegiate, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. (He was also a trustee at Hope College, a Reformed school in Holland.) Peale’s radio sermons reached millions in the 1950s and early 60s, when the Soviet Union appeared to be winning the Cold War. The confident declarations in Peale’s best-seller The Power of Positive Thinking —”attitudes are more important than facts”; “never doubt the reality of the mental image”—infuse Amway’s own liturgy. Peale’s politics were congenial too. He extolled Republican candidates and shrewdly made himself into a media brand with his books, magazine, and radio and TV shows. DeVos and Van Andel created a similar empire. In 1977 they purchased the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, paid Bob Hope to do promos, and hired Norman Rockwell to render their portraits in ads in The Saturday Evening Post .

Behind all this was an ideology neatly suited to the moment. Just as American manufacturing began a decline, Amway offered the promise of self-sufficiency. Instead of going off with your lunch pail or briefcase to be bossed around by someone no smarter or better than yourself, you were in charge—with your inventory and customers. “Selling America,” Rich DeVos’s signature motivational speech, included a tirade against softheaded college grads conned by liberal do-gooding dogma to “work for the welfare of others.” Nonsense, DeVos sneered. “We provided more welfare than anybody else. We provide employment for 72 million.” Seventy-two million? It was pure fiction. But it was also true that within a few years Michigan’s Big Three auto companies began to slip, while Amway profits were soaring.

A fellow pitchman, for General Electric, had been speaking Rich DeVos’s language: the actor turned California governor Ronald Reagan. He, too, had delivered silken odes to free enterprise mixed with warnings about the evils of big government. When Reagan got the presidential nomination in 1980, DeVos and Van Andel were two of the biggest donors to the Republican Party and conservative organizations. DeVos became finance chair of the Republican National Committee, though he didn’t help the G.O.P.’s image when he called the 1982 recession a “beneficial” and “cleansing process” and later said, of calls to increase the minimum wage, “If it’s too small, I have a suggestion for you. Get two eight-hour jobs.”

By this time, some began to notice how much of Reaganism was coming not just from California but also from West Michigan. In addition to DeVos and Van Andel, there was the conservative author Russell Kirk, the “sage of Mecosta,” who lived an hour north of Grand Rapids. He had been arguing since the 50s that federal programs, including school lunches, were a “vehicle for totalitarianism.” Kirk’s wife, Annette, served on Reagan’s education commission and helped slip language into its famous report, A Nation at Risk, that created an opening for vouchers and tuition credits. Reagan failed in his true objective, to eliminate the Department of Education, but Annette Kirk, who became an adviser to the DeVoses, persevered. Today, about 80 percent of Michigan’s charter schools are privately operated.

Another target was labor unions. Amway and the Prince Corporation had no use for them. Now the family waged a public fight. After Dick DeVos was routed when he ran for governor of Michigan in 2006, he blamed his defeat, in part, on Michigan’s unions and began to push for a right-to-work law (weakening the unions’ economic power and political clout, a pillar of the state’s Democratic Party). In 2012, the bill got through, and Michigan—headquarters to the United Automobile Workers, no less—became yet another of the country’s right-to-work states.

Betsy was waging a parallel battle against the public-school system and its unionized teachers. Her weapon was “school choice.” A state law rewarded so-called educational management organizations, which grabbed up public money to start private, for-profit schools. According to a year-long investigation by the Detroit Free Press , rampant abuses followed. (Some educators point to charter-school success stories in other states, where there has been more strict regulation and accountability.)

In her present job, DeVos has raised school choice to a national cause. She has effectively shut down Obama-sanctioned investigations of fraudulent for-profit colleges even as she has gone about hiring staffers from that world, including a former associate dean at one such school that settled a $100 million F.T.C. lawsuit for offering its students hollow promises of post-grad success—à la Amway and Trump U. During her 20 months in office, DeVos has pursued the unrealized quest of the Reagan years—championing charter and religious schools, and, in effect, dismantling the Department of Education from within.

Through it all, DeVos has maintained the composure of “West Michigan nice,” though many Michiganders are not surprised when the mask drops and something harder shows through—entitlement commingled with Calvinist certitude. Briskly touring Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, after the horrific shootings there, DeVos avoided giving specific answers to questions, even from student journalists. In June, she told Congress that firearms would not be a topic studied by her own school-safety committee, created post-Parkland. “So you’re studying gun violence,” remarked Democratic senator Patrick Leahy, incredulously, “but not considering the roles of guns.”

DeVos is too busy fighting her own war. “[Among] her big ‘accomplishments,’” says Diane Ravitch, the N.Y.U. professor and respected education historian, “have been reversing civil-rights enforcement for kids with disabilities, putting administrators from for-profit colleges in charge of monitoring for-profit colleges . . . stabbing in the back young people with heavy debt for their college education, and being a constant critic of public schools.” One saving grace, Ravitch contends, is that DeVos has gotten very few of her budget proposals through Congress. There is a method here—or, more precisely, a mission. Samuel Abrams, director of Columbia University’s National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, says that DeVos has used her position as a “bully pulpit” to advance the belief that “society doesn’t exist; only individuals and families. We accordingly should not be surprised that she has pushed for minimum standards at public school and cut funds for everything from career and technical education to teenage pregnancy prevention. For libertarians, she’s a godsend. For the rest of us, she’s a wrecking ball.”

Betsy and Dick in Michigan, 1992.

The election of Donald Trump has given us a new Gilded Age of privatization, profiteering—and self-dealing. Witness the administration personnel feeding greedily at the public trough: among them, Health and Human Services czar Tom Price and E.P.A. administrator Scott Pruitt (both now gone), not to mention Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner—who last year made at least $82 million in outside income while serving as White House senior advisers. But the most ambitious privatizer in Trumpworld—with the largest vision—has been Betsy’s brother, Erik Prince.

Strong-featured and blond, like his sister, Erik was devoted to his father, who doted on him. He played four sports at Holland Christian and was the proudly straitlaced kid who, without being asked, put away the soccer balls after practice. Prince enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy in 1987 but was shocked by the frat-house atmosphere—too much for a junior culture warrior who’d been an intern at the Family Research Council. After three semesters, he transferred to Michigan’s Hillsdale College.

Today Hillsdale, under its president, Larry P. Arnn (former head of the Claremont Institute, a citadel of far-right ideology), is known as a feeder school for the Trump administration, including Betsy DeVos’s chief of staff, Josh Venable. In May, the week Vice President Pence gave the commencement address there, Politico called it “the college that wants to take over Washington”—citing many alums who are now D.C. power players. (The school has received a great deal of DeVos and Van Andel money.) “We’re rolling in dough,” says Mickey Craig, a political-science professor at the Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship.

In the early 90s, Craig taught Erik Prince, and came to know him well. “He had that seriousness,” Craig says. “It was clear that he just worshipped his father.” At the time, father and son, like so many dedicated conservatives, were losing faith in President George H. W. Bush, a moderate. In 1989, Erik had been invited to a “youth” inaugural ball for Bush—and there had met Joan Keating, the woman who would become his first wife. Prince even worked as a Bush White House intern. “I saw a lot of things I didn’t agree with,” he later said. “Homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills. I think the administration has been indifferent to a lot of conservative concerns.” He left that job for another, in the office of California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who has often been called Vladimir Putin’s top Capitol Hill asset, so valued, the Times has reported, that he was given a Kremlin code name.

Then, in 1991, after the U.S.S.R. collapsed, Prince, at 21, joined a group of prominent conservatives who traveled through the Baltic states. One member of the tour was Pat Buchanan, the former Nixon speechwriter and right-wing commentator, who was eyeing the presidency. “I was very impressed by Pat’s convictions and knowledge,” Prince says in an e-mail. “I was drawn to his campaign for a wide range of issues from . . . trade to taxes (seeing Bush cave on ‘Read my lips’ [rescinding his vow not to introduce new taxes] was appalling).”

In 1992, Buchanan challenged Bush for the nomination on a platform combining ethno-nationalism with cultural conservatism. His slogan, MAKE AMERICA FIRST AGAIN, was an early taste of Trump. Both Edgar and Erik Prince were on board. “I volunteered for the Buchanan campaign,” Erik Prince recalls, adding that he was a “district chair as well.” Buchanan now remembers him as “one of the most impressive young guys I have ever met. He drove me around Indiana, spoke at my rallies, seemed a principled and tough-minded conservative. That he became a navy SEAL did not surprise me.”

Prince spent four years with the SEALs in the early 90s but moved on after his wife was diagnosed with cancer and his father, aged 63, died of a heart attack. The elder Prince left behind a business with 4,500 employees. The family sold it for $1.3 billion, and Erik, at 25, now had a sizable inheritance.

A short time later, Prince had a big idea: a new spin on the private-contracting business. “I saw how bureaucratic the entire D.O.D. was,” he recalls of the Department of Defense, “and wanted to provide a better capability for units that needed it.” One of Prince’s instructors in the SEALs, Al Clark, was also looking to set up a security-and-defense training company. Prince had money to invest. Out of this came Blackwater, which began as an instruction facility for law enforcement, the military, and special-ops squads in Moyock, North Carolina. In its first years customers were scarce. “This was the time of the peace dividend,” Prince explains. “Soviet Communism had collapsed, and all was supposedly right in the world.”

And then, in 2000, a navy destroyer, the U.S.S. Cole , was attacked in a Yemeni harbor, and 17 Americans died. Members of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, were blamed. Soon Blackwater got its first serious long-term contract, teaching American sailors how to fire M14 rifles. Next came September 11, 2001. The Bush administration drew up plans to strike back, but on the cheap, with some operations outsourced to private companies. In the process, Blackwater secured lucrative government contracts (ultimately, about $2 billion in total), promising to train and send teams and supplies to Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. At around the same time, as Vanity Fair would report, Prince was “working as a C.I.A. asset,” hiring ex-spooks in a clandestine program to “find, fix, and finish [off] al-Qaeda members.”

At its peak, Blackwater processed some 30,000 trainees a year, a special, swaggering breed, some acting like vigilantes. “I had a lot of friends who were P.M.C.’s”—private military contractors—one former Prince business associate says, “and they would come back from Iraq, and they’d tell me, `My God, we know Erik’s your friend, but Blackwater is so fucked up over there.’” In 2004, four Blackwater contractors were ambushed and killed in Fallujah. In 2007, a Blackwater contingent opened fire on unarmed civilians in Nisour Square, in Baghdad, killing 17. Three Blackwater operatives were convicted of manslaughter and a fourth of murder; after appeal, the three had their lengthy sentences voided (they are set to be re-sentenced), while the fourth is being re-tried. (A mistrial was declared in September.)

The Bush administration had begun to see Blackwater as a liability: Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s secretary of state, singled out the firm for special monitoring. Prince rebranded the company under different names and finally sold it off, relocating to the United Arab Emirates, where he got close to the ruling family and began a new venture, Frontier Services Group, which marketed its security services to foreign states. For a time, he even pondered a run for the Senate, from Wyoming, where his family has a vast ranch.

A new era was beginning—and for the Prince-DeVos circle it would eventually open up fresh vistas. The Great Recession of 2008 had left millions without jobs or savings. A tycoon and TV pitchman, Donald Trump, introduced his newest venture, the Trump Network. He called it a “rescue and recovery program.” To the Associated Press, it seemed more like “the Apprentice meets Amway.” The resemblances were hard to miss. You could buy into Trump’s scheme for only $48—which got you a handy marketing guide and access to a Web site to promote products. “For $497,” according to the AP, “you could get the kit, products, CDs, sales tips and coupons.” Trump’s pitch: “[It’s] an opportunity to help rebuild a country. . . . A chance for you to promote wellness and entrepreneurialism. Even more, a better way of life.” He was also busy promoting his fledgling real-estate “college,” Trump University. Its recruitment drives in Michigan included two at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel.

Trump, like Rich DeVos, was a devotee of Norman Vincent Peale. His parents, Fred and Mary Trump, had been parishioners at Marble Collegiate. Trump’s mother, in fact, had won the Peale Award for Positive Thinking, in 2000—seven years ahead of DeVos. Donald adored Peale. “You could listen to him all day long,” Trump told religious conservatives at the beginning of the presidential campaign. And Peale had liked him back. “You [are] going to be America’s greatest builder,” he’d predicted. “He thought I was his greatest student of all time,” Trump once remarked.

Orlando Magic owners Rich and Helen DeVos at the N.B.A.’s Rising Stars Challenge exhibition game in Orlando, Florida, 2012.

Erik Prince, as he had with Pat Buchanan, found a new disrupter in Trump—and once again made himself available. In a Breitbart radio broadcast in 2016, Prince joined the fringe of anti-Hillary Clinton conspiracists, at one point accusing her, wildly, of joining her husband on sprees to an island where “under-age sex” occurred. And today, Prince’s influence has been on the rise. His proposal to hire private contractors to run security training for Afghan forces—”something that would come from a bad soldier-of-fortune novel,” Republican senator Lindsey Graham has scoffed—has won a hearing from the two new hawks in Trump’s Cabinet, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, according to Forbes . (Defense Secretary James Mattis, however, recently nixed the concept.) And the Prince effect is rippling into other areas, too. Earlier this year, Johnson Ko Chun Shun, Prince’s business partner and the deputy chairman of Prince’s Frontier Services Group, joined the board of a new data firm—alongside heavyweights from Cambridge Analytica—the political data-mining company funded by Steve Bannon’s old patrons, the Mercer family, who some credit as having been pivotal in Trump’s victory.

Prince’s most conspicuous moment in the Trump orbit, however, came soon after the election. In January 2017, Prince traveled to the Seychelles and met with a Russian confidant of Putin’s. One area that investigators have likely explored is the substance of Prince’s appearance before Congress last year. “I could testify to at least three or four lies in that House testimony,” the former Prince business associate confided to me recently. He pointed to Prince’s business relationship with a Russian arms dealer and said that, contrary to Prince’s statements, he met with senior executives of the Moscow-based investment firm Renaissance Capital on 10 occasions.

Prince, in an e-mail, called the criticism “categorically false,” saying he had “a brief previous contact with a Ukrainian-born arms dealer but any contact had ended before the window of [the committee’s] inquiry.” As for RenCap, Prince said, “I disclosed all that contact to Congress in the pages of emails I provided them.”

Guessing at the identity of Vanity Fair ’s source, Prince characterized him as a disgruntled executive “who was fired for under-performance.” The source says he resigned after he discovered that Prince had approved plans to illegally weaponize aircraft and “actively train former Chinese Red Army personnel that are now being deployed into Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Uighur region in China”—actions he perceived as supporting foreign interests above America’s. (Other Prince associates reportedly resigned for similar reasons.) Prince firmly denied the allegations. “At no stage has FSG ever trained any Chinese official of any capacity—police military, or other,” he maintained. “I have never done anything contrary to American interests and never will. Period. When the D.C. beltway pundits and bitter former employees question my patriotism, I almost take it as a badge of honor. . . . I bleed Red White and Blue. Unlike 98% of Americans, including most of my critics, I served proudly in the military as shortly will two of my sons. I love my country. I got involved in the Afghanistan debate because I’m tired of America wasting our blood and treasure when there is another way, a better way.

“The real traitors,” he concluded, “are those doing everything possible . . . to block and undermine our democratically elected President and in so doing undermine our national interests. Those accusers should look in the mirror first before throwing lies at me.”

The tone—angry, even truculent—can also be heard in Prince’s congressional testimony. The transcript rawly captures the ideological right in our current moment, straight from the Michigan heartland. Prince, while testifying, makes no attempt to hide his contempt for his questioners, even as he claims they are persecuting him, a blameless patriot and defenseless “citizen-voter that cares about the wrong direction the country was heading in.”

It is the same mix of arrogance and piety one can discern in Betsy DeVos as she defies the long-established principles of public education. Whatever differences separated her worldview from Trump’s evaporated in December 2016 when she stood beside him at a rally in Grand Rapids and dismissed the controversy over her nomination as “false news.” (Ex-White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman has claimed that Trump has since voiced real reservations, calling DeVos “ditzy” behind her back and supposedly saying at one point he intended on letting her go.) For the time being, she has been in the forefront of Trump’s campaign to strip down federal agencies—a program now enforced across the executive branch, from the Departments of State and the Interior to the E.P.A., from the Post Office to the Bureau of Prisons. There is even a supposed proposal to merge the Labor and Education Departments. These are not experiments or improvisations. They are the advanced stages of a plan of privatization that reaches back decades. The DeVoses’ ideal, “selling America,” today can often mean selling it out—and selling it off, piece by piece.

In Donald Trump, the Medicis of West Michigan have found someone they can do business with. The partnership has helped usher in our brutish times, and each day the slogan MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN feels less like a promise than a threat.

Sam Tanenhaus

52 Super Series : “Platoon Aviation” mit Valencia-Gold fast zur Saison-Sensation

Tatjana Pokorny

 ·  28.09.2024

52 Super Series: kleiner Punkt, große Wirkung

Der starke aufwärtstrend von “platoon aviation”, nach louis-vuitton-cup aus: “american magic” siegt.

Das hätte nach den ersten beiden Regatten dieser Saison der 52 Super Series kaum jemand für möglich gehalten: Harm Müller-Spreers Crew hat sich übers Jahr mit dem neuen Botin-Design „Platoon Aviation“ so stark steigern können, dass sie die fünfte und letzte Regatta gewinnen konnte. Souverän wie zu besten Champions-Zeiten gewannen der dreimalige Weltmeister und sein Team mit dem Royal Cup vor Valencia die fünfte und letzte Regatta des Jahres. Aufs Valencia-Podium segelten außerdem “Provezza” und Hasso und Tina Plattners “Phoenix”.

Mit ihrem Sieg mischten sich der Eigner vom Norddeutschen Regatta Verein und seine Crew noch einmal massiv in den Kampf um die Saisonmeisterschaft der 52 Super Series ein. Weil die britischen Weltmeister auf “Gladiator” stark schwächelten, ging es im Endspurt zwischen dem US-Team Quantum Racing powered by American Magic und dem Team unter deutscher Flagge zur Sache. Ein Punkt machte schließlich den Unterschied zwischen den Plätzen eins und zwei in der Saisonmeisterschaft.

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“Das ist Höchststrafe!”, entfuhr es dem Eigner und Steuermann aus Hamburg nach dem knappen Ergebnis. Mit etwas Abstand sagte Harm Müller-Spreer aber auch: “Im vergangenen Jahr haben wir die Saisonmeisterschaft mit einem Punkt Vorsprung gewonnen. Da waren wir auf der glücklichen Seite. Mit dem alten Boot hätten wir die Saison wahrscheinlich gewonnen. Aber wir haben das neue Boot in den Griff bekommen. Nächstes Jahr wird es hoffentlich wieder besser. Der Anspruch ist auf jeden Fall da.”

Der Rückblick auf die Saison zeigt die imposante Leistungssteigerung von “Platoon Aviation” übers Jahr: Beim Saisonauftakt im Rahmen der Palmavela, hatte sich Harm Müller-Spreer noch über Platz sieben geärgert. Ein weiterer siebter Platz, mitverursacht von einer Kollision, folgte bei der ersten von zwei Newport-Regatten der 52 Super Series.

Danach ging es im selben Revier stramm bergauf: Bei der Weltmeisterschaft – ebenfalls vor Newport ausgetragen – sprang “Platoon Aviation” auf den dritten Podiumsplatz vor. Die Segelwoche vor Puerto Portals beendete das GER-Boot im Mallorca-Revier auf Platz zwei. Zum Finale belohnte sich das Team von Harm Müller-Spreer mit Taktiker Vasco Vascotto, Stratege Jordi Calafat, dem Kieler Michael Müller und ihren Mitstreitern mit einem Sieg für die fordernde Aufholjagd.

Die anfangs so schwer in den Griff zu bekommende neue “Platoon Aviation” zeigte beim Saisonfinale in Valencia mit der Serie 8, 1, 2, 4, 7, 4 und 2 nicht nur, dass mit dem Team in der kommenden Saison wieder stark zu rechnen sein wird. Das Boot machte erstmals in dieser Saison bei einer Regatta seiner Bugnummer alle Ehre: 01. Zur knapp verpassten Saisonmeisterschaft sinnierte “Platoon Aviation”-Taktiker Vasco Vascotto: „Es gab so viele Punkte, die wir im Laufe der Saison verloren haben, die jetzt einen Unterschied machen.”

Im Detail erklärte der Italiener: “Natürlich denke ich an den Zusammenstoß mit dem Objekt in Newport, der uns zehn Punkte oder so gekostet hat. Aber es ist eine lange Saison und jeder in dieser Flotte kann auf Punkte zurückblicken, die er überall verloren hat. Wir sind glücklich! Wir haben diese Regatta gewonnen, wir haben den Royal Cup gewonnen. Im letzten Rennen hatten wir ein wenig Pech (Red.: mit Blick auf den Kampf um die Saisonmeisterschaft), weil Provezza nicht in der Wertung war.”

“Ich denke, wir sollten stolz auf das sein, was wir geleistet haben.” Vasco Vascotto

Vascottos Saisonbilanz fiel insgesamt positiv aus: “Wir haben in den letzten paar Regatten und hier etwa 30 Punkte aufgeholt, und das ist großartig für unsere Zukunft.“ Die Saisonmeisterschaft sicherte sich Quantum Racing powered by American Magic nach 41 Wettfahrten bei den fünf TP-Gipfeln mit 207 Punkten vor “Platoon Aviation” (208 Punkte) und den Weltmeistern auf “Gladiator” (212 Punkte). Hasso und Tina Plattners “Phoenix” beendete die Saison mit 283 Punkten auf Platz acht.

Nicht ummünzen konnten im Valencia-Dreikampf um die Saisonmeisterschaft die Briten auf “Gladiator” ihre großen Erfolge des Jahres. Tony Langleys Team bleibt die Freude über den WM-Titel, insgesamt zwei Regattasiege und einen zweiten Platz. Team Gladiator war zwar in Valencia mit einem 18-Punkte-Vorsprung vor dem US-Team und sogar 28 Punkten vor “Platoon Aviation” angetreten, beendete die letzte Regatta aber nur auf dem zwölften und vorletzten Platz. Die drehenden Offshore-Winde vor Valencia schienen Boot und Team wenig zu liegen.

Für die amerikanischen Jahres-Besten dürfte die Saisonmeisterschaft nach dem Halbfinal-Aus von NYYC American Magic im Louis Vuitton Cup vor Barcelona ein kleiner Trost gewesen sein. Bei beiden Teams gehört Doug DeVos zu den Dirigenten und Antreibern. Ed Reynolds, Manager für das Team Quantum American Magic, sagte: “Ich kann mich nicht erinnern, dass wir je eine so leistungsstarke Saison hatte. Jedes Team in der Flotte kann Rennen gewinnen.”

Hier geht es zum finalen Saisonklassement der 52 Super Series 2024 und den Ergebnissen aller Regatten.

REPLAY! Die Übertragung vom Finaltag der Saison 2024 der 52 Super Series:

Meistgelesen in der rubrik regatta.

Two senior Republican lawmakers, the chairs of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, say their colleagues are echoing Russian state propaganda against Ukraine.

Researchers who study disinformation say Reps. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, are merely acknowledging what has been clear for some time: Russian propaganda aimed at undermining U.S. and European support for Ukraine has steadily seeped into America’s political conversation over the past decade, taking on a life of its own.

McCaul, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Puck News he thinks “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”

Turner, chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN that anti-Ukraine messages from Russia are “being uttered on the House floor.”

For the past decade, since Russia’s first military incursion into Ukraine in 2014, Moscow has spread propaganda and disinformation in a bid to undercut U.S. and European military support for Ukraine, according to U.S. and Western officials.

Some of the arguments, distortions and falsehoods spread by Russia have taken root, mostly among right-wing pro-Trump outlets and Republican politicians, researchers say, including that Ukraine’s government is too corrupt to benefit from Western aid and that the Biden family has alleged corrupt ties to Ukraine.

Russia, in keeping with traditional propaganda techniques, seeks to make its case and tarnish Ukraine through a mixture of outright falsehoods, half-truths, inferences or simply amplifying and promoting arguments already being made by American or European commentators and politicians, researchers say.

The propaganda is sometimes spread covertly, through fake online accounts, or openly by Russian officials and state media. As a result, the origin of some allegations or criticisms is often opaque, especially when a certain accusation or perception has gained wide acceptance, leaving no clear fingerprints.

Early in the war, a false story boosted by Russian propaganda — that the U.S. had helped Ukraine build biological weapons labs — gained traction on right-wing social media and was touted by then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Russia also is conducting a parallel propaganda campaign in Europe. Belgium’s prime minister said Thursday that his government is investigating alleged Russian bribes to members of the European Parliament as part of Moscow’s campaign to undermine support for Ukraine. Czech law enforcement officials last month alleged that a former pro-Russian member of Ukraine’s parliament, Viktor Medvedchuk, was behind a Prague-based Russian propaganda network designed to promote opposition to aiding Ukraine.

Here are some examples of Republican lawmakers using arguments often promoted by Russian propaganda:

Buying yachts

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with members of Congress behind closed doors in December to appeal for more U.S. help for his country’s troops, some lawmakers raised questions about Ukraine allegedly buying yachts with American aid money.

Zelenskyy made clear that was not the case, according to Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a strong supporter of arming Ukraine. “I think the notion of corruption came up because some have said we can’t do it, because people will buy yachts with the money,” Tillis told CNN. “[Zelenskyy] disabused people of those notions.”

Where did the yacht rumor come from?

Pro-Russian actors and websites promoted a narrative alleging Zelenskyy bought two superyachts with U.S. aid dollars. One Russia-based propaganda site, DC Weekly , published a story last November that included photos of two luxury yachts, called Lucky Me and My Legacy , which it alleged were bought for $75 million.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a vocal opponent of military aid to Ukraine, in November retweeted a post about the alleged yacht purchase from the Strategic Culture Foundation, a Russian-based propaganda outlet directed by Russia’s intelligence services, according to the Treasury Department. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on the organization, accusing it of spreading disinformation and interfering in U.S. elections.

Another outspoken critic of aid to Ukraine, Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, also made a similar claim.

In a December interview with former President Donald Trump’s White House adviser Steve Bannon, Vance claimed that members of Congress wanted to cut Social Security benefits to provide more aid to Ukraine, and that money would allegedly be used for Zelenskyy’s ministers to “buy a bigger yacht.”

“There are people who would cut Social Security, throw our grandparents into poverty. Why? So that one of Zelenskyy’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?” Vance said. “Kiss my ass, Steve. It’s not happening.”

The tale of Zelenskyy’s luxury yacht, however, turned out to be totally false . The yachts cited in the DC Weekly article remain up for sale , the owners told The Associated Press.

Two academics at Clemson University, disinformation researchers Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren, found that DC Weekly ran numerous stories copied from other sites that were rewritten by artificial intelligence engines. The articles had bylines with fake names along with headshots copied from other online sites. DC Weekly appeared to be a Russian effort to launder false information through a seemingly legitimate news site as part of an attempt to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine, according to the researchers .

Asked by reporters about Vance’s comments, Tillis said: “I think it’s bullshit. ...If you’re talking about giving money to Ukrainian ministers — total and unmitigated bullshit.”

Greene’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Vance’s spokesperson said the senator was making a rhetorical point about how he opposed sending U.S. assistance to what he sees as a corrupt country, but was not asserting the yacht stories online were accurate.

Vance’s office referred NBC News to an earlier response to the BBC on the same topic:

“For years, everyone in the West recognized that Ukraine was one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Somehow everyone forgot that just as we started sending them billions of dollars in foreign aid.”

Enabling ‘corruption’

Russian state media for years has painted Ukraine as deeply corrupt, and has argued that the U.S. and its allies are wasting money and military hardware by assisting such an allegedly corrupt government.

“This is absolutely a line that they have pushed, and then once it appears in the Western ecosystem, other [Russian] media picks it up and it gets recycled back,” said Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy.

This line of argument has gained traction partly because Ukraine does face a genuine corruption problem.

Russia’s effort to focus attention on corruption in Ukraine reflects a long-established propaganda method of using facts or partial truths to anchor a broader assertion or accusation, sometimes making a leap in logic, Schafer and other researchers said. Russia’s message amounts to: Ukraine is corrupt, therefore U.S. and Western aid will be stolen and wasted.

Schafer said it was ironic for Russia, a country mired in corruption and kleptocracy, to be leveling accusations about corruption.

Republican Rep. Mary Miller has said she strongly opposes more assistance for Ukraine because it amounts to sending cash to “corrupt oligarchs.”

“With Zelensky coming to DC this week to ask for more money, I will continue to vote AGAINST sending your tax $$ to corrupt oligarchs in Ukraine for a proxy war that could have ended in ‘22,” Miller wrote in a post on X in December.

The Illinois lawmaker also echoed another assertion that often appears in Russian media, that the Biden administration allegedly undermined efforts by Russia to avoid war with Ukraine.

 “A peace deal was on the table that [Ukraine] and [Russia] were both ready to sign, but Biden said NO,” she wrote.

There was in fact no proposed peace agreement that Russia and Ukraine were prepared to sign before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to U.S. and European officials. As Russian troops massed on the border of Ukraine, Western governments urged Russia not to invade and warned there would be economic and diplomatic consequences.

Reuters has reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected a possible deal to avert a war that had been discussed with Kyiv by Russia’s envoy to Ukraine. The Kremlin said the report was inaccurate and has said Russia tried for years to arrive at an understanding with Ukraine.

As for corruption in Ukraine, Zelenskyy has vowed to tackle the problem, sacking senior officials in some recent cases. But some civil society groups have criticized his approach and Ukrainians say corruption is the country’s second-most serious problem, after the Russian invasion, according to a poll conducted last year.

In an annual survey, Transparency International said Ukraine made progress toward addressing the issue and now ranks 104th out of 180 countries on its Corruption Perceptions Index , climbing 12 places up from its previous ranking.

Ukraine is not alone among countries that receive U.S. and other foreign aid but struggle with corruption. Supporters of assisting Ukraine argue it would undermine America’s influence in the world and its humanitarian efforts if Washington withheld foreign aid from every country where there were reports of corruption.

Miller’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The Biden family and Ukraine

Republicans have repeatedly alleged that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter have corrupt ties to Ukraine, and that they sought $5 million in bribes from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma to protect the firm from an investigation by Ukraine’s prosecutor general.

There is no credible evidence for the allegations. A key source for the accusations against the Bidens is a former FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, who was arrested in February on federal charges of fabricating the bribery claims. Smirnov says he was fed information by Russian intelligence.

Republicans had heavily promoted Smirnov’s allegations against the Bidens, seeing them as crucial to a planned impeachment effort against the president that has since fizzled .

“In my estimation, that is probably the clearest example of Russian propaganda working its way into the American political system,” said Emerson Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council.

GOP Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona cited the false bribery allegations in expressing his opposition to providing assistance to Ukraine.

“In exchange for … bribe money from Ukraine, Joe Biden has dished out over $100 billion in taxpayer money to fund the war in Ukraine. I will not assist this corruption by sending more money to the authoritarian Ukrainian regime,” Gosar said in a statement in October.

Gosar’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Dan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. 

Syedah Asghar is a Capitol Hill researcher for NBC News and is based in Washington, D.C.

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Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko berths superyacht in UAE

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Simeon Kerr in Ras al-Khaimah

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Investigators around the world have been searching for sanctions-hit Russian oligarchs’ yachts. One has been hiding in plain sight.

Italian authorities in March impounded Russian coal and fertilisers magnate Andrey Melnichenko’s $600mn Sailing Yacht A after Russia invaded Ukraine. Another yacht, the $300mn Philippe Starck-designed Motor Yacht A, has been anchored for weeks in the port of Ras al-Khaimah, in the United Arab Emirates.

By placing his yacht in the UAE, Melnichenko has put it beyond the reach of western governments enforcing sanctions on those deemed supportive of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Its presence is a symbolic reminder of the Gulf monarchy’s ambivalence towards western sanctions on Russia, allies of Putin and the wealthy businessmen who have often benefited from ties to the state.

While the UAE government is trying to enhance measures against money laundering to exit a global dirty-money watchdog’s watchlist, the economic foundation of cities such as Dubai has long been based on welcoming flows of assets and people.

“Given its non-enforcement of western sanctions, the dilemma for the UAE is how to sustain its place as an open destination for capital while also appearing to be a good global citizen,” said one compliance professional. “It’s a tricky balancing act.”

The government of the Isle of Man said it had in March deregistered Melnichenko’s yachts, including Motor Yacht A, because of western sanctions, saying, “we will continue to act with appropriate robustness should the situation warrant it”.

Marine locator services placed Motor Yacht A off the Maldives in March. The Financial Times then saw the yacht on April 18. On Saturday it remained moored opposite Ras al-Khaimah’s city-centre fish market.

Businessmen in the UAE say Melnichenko, who denies affiliations to the Kremlin, held meetings there in April, but the tycoon has since returned to Moscow. A representative of Melnichenko, who has been placed under sanctions by the EU and UK as well as Switzerland and Australia, referred questions on the yacht to a lawyer who declined to comment.

UAE authorities in Dubai, Ras al-Khaimah and Abu Dhabi declined to comment.

European officials say they have raised concerns with Emirati counterparts that the UAE could become a financial haven for Russians placed under western sanctions. “We don’t want our allies to become facilitators for the Putin regime,” said one.

The UAE government has said it is maintaining a neutral course through the war, calling for an end to hostilities and providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Abu Dhabi, which has developed closer ties with Moscow in recent years, has also assured its allies that sanctions-hit entities will not be able to operate in the UAE. The Gulf monarchy, which has long argued that it is not compelled to enforce other nations’ sanctions, is keen to maintain its historical role as an apolitical territory focused on business.

Thousands of wealthy, non-sanctions-hit Russians have relocated to the UAE to escape economic uncertainty and political instability at home, even though they sometimes struggle to access the financial system. “Big banks are more cautious but smaller banks are offering help to those wishing to relocate. It’s just taking a lot of time,” said a Russian businessman.

Very wealthy Russians generally find financial institutions accommodating. Most of the wealthy elite have second passports from countries that sell nationality, such as Malta or Portugal, which facilitates the opening of new accounts with lenders that are warier of Russian passport holders.

Others have turned to alternative routes, such as cryptocurrencies and hawala, or informal money exchange services. The cost of this service has risen from 1 per cent of the transaction value to 5 per cent since the war broke out as demand surges, said one person aware of the trades.

Many in the UAE see a hypocrisy in western concern over the presence of the yacht and the Russians building new lives there. “So it was OK for London to take all the oligarch money but not for Dubai?” asked one lawyer.

Additional reporting by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya in Riga

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