Weeks before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in America to flout his millennial-friendly brand of authoritarianism, the worlds of the White House, the Saudis, and the Trump-friendly tabloid empire American Media Inc. mysteriously collided to produce The New Kingdom: a 97-page tribute to M.B.S. packaged as an ad-free, byline-sparse magazine, and sold in Walmart and assorted supermarkets for $13.99. Fielding questions as to the title’s funding and questionable appeal to the American consumer, A.M.I. explained that The New Kingdom is simply an addition to its lucrative line of special issues, previous subjects of which have included the Olympics, the royal family, Elvis, and the Kennedys. It’s unclear whether the Saudis themselves had anything to do with the issue’s conveniently timed publication—the Associated Press reported that a digital copy was shared with officials at the Saudi embassy in Washington (not true, says A.M.I.), but the Saudis have denied any involvement—“If you find out, we’d love to know,” they tweeted of the magazine’s origins. Regardless of whether Saudi money changed hands, however, the glossy remains a symbol of M.B.S.’s American voyage, where he rubbed shoulders with those who preferred to skirt over his country’s history of human-rights violations in the hopes of a cash infusion.

Sporting cover lines like “Our Closest Middle East Ally Destroying Terrorism,” the magazine devotes plentiful space to N.E.O.M., a $640 billion “utopian city the likes of which the world has never seen,” which will allegedly boast fleets of robots, artificially reduced temperatures, and a “more benign attitude toward what is acceptable and what is not in terms of dress and behavior.” The city is just part of the crown prince’s Vision 2030, i.e. his plan to diversify the desert kingdom’s oil-rich economy. Included in this vision are “new rights for Saudi women,” which the magazine takes pains to point out is “of course [the brainchild of] Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”

Though the magazine boasts of M.B.S.’s $3 billion fortune and 54,000-square-foot palace near Versailles, decidedly fewer column inches focus on the more problematic aspects of his rule, including the repression of media, the ongoing bombing campaign in Yemen, and Saudi Arabia’s extant system of male guardianship. To be fair, the magazine’s visual vocabulary makes Saudi involvement markedly less likely—the bevy of images meant to showcase Saudi Arabia’s alluring landscape reportedly includes a photo of sand-dune surfing in Namibia, and another of a large indoor greenhouse in the Netherlands. A person with knowledge of the situation told the A.P. that A.M.I. never heard back from Saudi officials prior to publication, which may explain the exotic compilation.

Of course, there’s also the murky question of Trump’s possible entanglement in The New Kingdom. A.M.I. owns The National Enquirer, which has ties to his beleaguered attorney Michael Cohen. Following a raid on Cohen’s office, investigators are reported to be examining whether the title was involved in Trump’s campaign; indeed, during the 2016 race, it paid former Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 to stay silent about an alleged relationship with Trump—a contract from which she was recently released. Meanwhile, the A.P. has also reported that A.M.I. once made a $30,000 payment to a former doorman at a Trump building, a move that was interpreted as buying his silence about another alleged affair. (RadarOnline, which is also owned by A.M.I., has reported that the Enquirer ultimately decided that the doorman, who passed a polygraph test, wasn’t credible.)