Supermarket owner Ron Burkle and Bill Clinton were friends. They flew around on Burkle's private jet and made each other lots and lots of money. Now they have broken up, and they are not friends. And Burkle owes Bill money!

In The Daily Beast, Kim Masters (with reporting help from Lloyd Grove!) lays out this sad his-camp-said/his-spokesmen-said tale.

Back in the early post-presidency days, it was a beautiful friendship between these two known skirt-chasing creeps. Bill was some sort of vague "adviser" for Burkle's investment funds and really just got paid a shitload of money to party with this billionaire and lend him some of that ex-president cred.

It had to end, though, because of Burkle's affinity for terribly young women and the stories about his plane being called "Air Fuck One" and also yes the occasional shady business dealings (like secretly owning Radar, a defunct pornographic magazine). And then Bill's wife Hillary became the Secretary of State, which was pretty much the end of this affair.

(There was also other stuff, like pictures of Bill with college-age-looking girls on Ron's plane, and this insane rumor about him fucking Gina Gershon, and also Jared Paul Stern is suing Ron Burkle forever for the thing where Stern allegedly tried to extort him or maybe Burkle just set him up. Also he maybe paid Paris Hilton for a handjob, which seems like a terrible investment.)

But Ron Burkle apparently owes Bill Clinton $20 million, or maybe $25 million. And now Burkle is saying undermining things to the press, and his spokespeople are being kind of nasty. And Bill, though his power is diminished in this age of Nobama, can still pretty much put a stop to Ron's Democratic fundraiser bigwig status, and make him toxic to the other billionaires who jet around pretending to save the world.