A nation must think before it acts.
Fox Fellow Clint Watts Quoted in Vanity Fair
Jack Bryan was your average Upper East Side-raised son of a millionaire trying to get his filmmaking career started when Donald Trump began persistently popping up in his life. In New York City’s social circuit, Bryan’s father, Shelby Bryan—a telecom mogul and Democratic donor—was friendly enough with Trump, perhaps because both are relative outsiders (Bryan being from Texas, and Trump being Trump). On vacation in Palm Beach in 2008, the Bryan family was immersed in the scuttlebutt about how a then financially strapped Trump had curiously managed to sell a Palm Beach estate he’d bought for $41 million to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million. Around 2012, Shelby Bryan shared a car to the U.S. Open with the real-estate tycoon, after which he told his son, “That guy sure does like Russia.” The elder Bryan (who is also the longtime partner of Condé Nast’s artistic director, Anna Wintour) also brought his sons, Jack and Austin, on a golfing trip to the United Kingdom, where Trump gave them early access to his Trump International Golf Links course in Scotland and chatted with them after their game.