![\"Sheldon](\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/121019-sheldon-adelson1_2-270x300.jpg\")
Sheldon Adelson, GOP kingmaker?<\/p><\/div>\n
But that hasn’t stopped the first crop of 2016 nominee wannabes from jumping to Adelson’s whistle: \u00a0Republican Party players John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Scott Walker spent the weekend kowtowing like sops in a display Hollywood couldn’t have sketched out better. Mindful of their party’s family values, no doubt, they guilelessly delivered themselves up to the mogul of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation empire, square in the epicenter of blackjack and booze, prostitutes and pleasure. Milbank :<\/p>\n
Adelson was hosting the Republican Jewish Coalition at his Venetian hotel and gambling complex, and the would-be candidates paraded themselves before the group, hoping to catch the 80-year-old casino mogul\u2019s eye. Everybody knows that, behind closed doors, politicians often sell themselves to the highest bidder; this time, they were doing it in public, as if vending their wares at a live auction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Adelson has bestowed great generosity on Republicans — $150 million in post-Citizens United <\/em>cash to\u00a0their candidates and causes during the last presidential election cycle — but clearly only those that adhere to his own fervently hawkish views on the Middle East.\u00a0Adelson is unabashed defender of Israel who, according to The New York Times<\/a>, “opposes any territorial compromise to make way for a\u00a0Palestinian\u00a0state.” He is openly Islamophobic, saying at one point that “not all Islamists are terrorists,\u00a0but all the terrorists are Islamists,” \u00a0and defending Gingrich with vigor when the former Speaker of the House famously declared Palestinians “an invented people.”<\/p>\n
Adelson has been known to underwrite congressional boondoggles to Israel, helping to shape their views on foreign policy. His attempt at influencing outcomes doesn’t end at the border. In 2007, according to The New York Times<\/em>, Adelson started a free daily newspaper widely viewed as supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “a close friend who shares his hawkish outlook.” The NYT also noted that at one point, Adelson was rumored to be calling for the ouster of Condoleezza Rice from the Bush Administration because she \u00a0— and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert — were “betraying Israel.”<\/p>\n
Anything close to an Adelson foreign policy in the White House would be a nightmare, and most likely everyone knows it but that hasn’t kept power-desperate Republicans from taking his money. Aside from the millions he wasted on Gingrich, he’s sprinkled millions\u00a0on other hawks, like John McCain,\u00a0Rudy Giuliani, George W. Bush,\u00a0and<\/a>\u00a0Eric Cantor, too.<\/p>\n
And he’s known as a street fighter — aside from making his fortune in one of the most predatory and exploitive industries there is, in 2013 Adelson admitted he “might” have violated federal bribery laws during an ongoing investigation of his dealings with the Chinese<\/a>. Adelson owns five of Macau’s 35 casinos (including the biggest, the Venetian Macau) and reportedly wants a much bigger imprint on the Chinese mainland. Investigators want to know more amid a number lawsuits alleging that Adelson bribed officials to exploit Macau, and to pursue his commercial interests in Beijing. According to Wikipedia<\/a>, Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands brought in $4.2 billion in Macau-generated revenue in 2011 alone.<\/p>\n
Many have sued Adelson, but not all win. According to The New York Times, his own sons sued him, alleged he cheated them, but they lost. Meanwhile Adelson is always suing others, and sometimes he wins.\u00a0\u00a0He filed a libel suit against a Las Vegas newspaper columnist, John L. Smith, who eventually had to declare bankruptcy. He won a libel suit against the\u00a0Daily Mail\u00a0of London in 2008. The newspaper had accused him of pursuing “despicable business practices” and having “habitually and corruptly bought political favour.” Adelson said it was “a grave slur” on his “personal integrity and business reputation”, and he won a judgment of approximately \u00a34 million as a result.<\/a><\/p>\n