Wilbur L Ross Jr has taken a hammering from the press since leaving behind his shipping investments to join the Trump cabinet, but he emerges from the new tell-all book “Fire and Fury” relatively unscathed.
Ross is mentioned only three times in author Michael Wolff’s 336-page account of the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, and only one reference might be cause for mild embarrassment.
As with many of the explosive revelations directed at Trump and his team, it involves an observation by former presidential advisor and right-wing hardliner Stephen Bannon.
It has to do with Ross accompanying Trump on a trip to Saudi Arabia:
“Ross was widely ridiculed for never missing an Air Force One opportunity,” Wolff writes.
“As Bannon put it, ‘Wilbur is Zelig, every time you turn around he’s in a picture.’”
The reference is to the 1983 mockumentary Zelig in which filmmaker Woody Allen’s character pops up repeatedly in historical newsreels.
Ross can probably laugh this one off, especially in comparison to recent press accounts that have questioned the ties of his shipping investment Navigator Holdings to Russian operatives, and separately seen him dropped from Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires.
The “King of Bankruptcy” helped lead a wave of private equity investment into shipping. Besides his backing of Navigator, Ross is the former chairman of private tanker company Diamond S Shipping and also led the private Transportation Recovery Fund.
