Cawthorn, St. Petersburg, and “Captain Todd”
Madison Cawthorn tells a very odd story about how he met Cristina, his soon-to-be ex-wife.
Here’s the vid. (transcript below, key portion starts at 16:00)
“Then we got on a boat and went into St Petersburg in Russia, and, you know, we just decided to take $100 each and go into a casino and see how it went. And, you know, I ended up meeting a — an American there who was a captain in the army, and who was originally from Miami.”
“And so we hit it off, created a really great relationship and stayed in contact for about a year and a half until later I was down in Miami for work and, uh, he — he texted me and said, uh ‘hey, would you like to come compete in a Crossfit competition’ and so I laughed and I said ‘you know, Todd, I’m in a wheelchair, I obviously can’t do Crossfit’ and he was like ‘well just do the pullup section’ and I was like ‘okay, sounds good’ and so I show up.”
“But anyways it all was a sham, it was a fake Crossfit competition, he just wanted me — to put me in the same room with with uh, uh, the girl who was eventually gonna be my fiance, and so we did — her and I hit it off, and it was, uh, it was a really — magical relationship ever since.”
Cawthorn also described the trip to a local journalist. (Transcript below, key bit starts at 1:52)
https://twitter.com/muh_thoughts/status/1474473763928477703?s=20
“Well, tell me, how did you get into Russia?”
“Now, getting into Russia — I might incriminate myself here a little bit, uh, we did not realize that you had to have visas to get into the country. So we flashed some smiles, might have, might have, might have passed some vodka to some people, but we were able to go into the country and the, the, the Russian government was just kind enough to let us in to go in, so it was incredible.
Cawthorn repeated the claim that he bribed his way into Russia without a visa, in this since-deleted IG post.
This story, while wild, is not true.
First off, he was actually on a planned cruise.
Cawthorn’s itinerary, as shown in his friend’s Instagram stories, exactly matches this 13-day Royal Caribbean cruise. There’s even a picture of them on the cruise ship.
Captain Todd is a real person, and was really in the US Army. His itinerary also matches this cruise.
So they would have been required to have visas. Per the cruise policy:
“All guests onboard Royal Caribbean ships are required to carry a valid passport and have valid visas for travel to each of the destinations on their itinerary where applicable. Guests who do not possess the proper documentation will be prevented from boarding the ship.”
(https://www.24x7cruise.com/uploads/cruiselines/brochures/royal-caribbean-cruises.pdf)
Secondly, there’s no casino in St Petersburg.
Russia banned gambling back in 2009. (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gambling-closure-odd/russia-bans-all-gambling-and-shuts-casinos-idUSTRE56045Y20090701) But there is a casino on the cruise ship.
Third, Cawthorn may not have needed a visa at all. So, no bribery required.
Cruise passengers can stay in Russia for 72 hours without visas only if they have booked tours through the companies officially licensed by the Russian government.
So, what’s the takeaway here?
Cawthorn lies. A lot. Constantly. When first digging into this story, I made the mistake of believing his version. I though that if he claimed to have engaged in suspicious and illegal activity, that meant that he had.
But nope. Just a cruise.
Cawthorn is still a sexual predator, a constant liar, and jonesing for the violent overthrow of the US Government. He’s even following the current Trumpist line about Russia.
But he didn’t bribe his way into Russia and meet a man in a St Petersburg casino. He just went on a cruise, and made up a story to sound cool.
