When Nepotism Doesn’t Work

For most of America’s history the public didn’t have to concern itself with what the President of the United States’ son or son-law were up to, but that’s another one of those things you can no longer count on the age of President Donald Trump. Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and presidential namesake son Donald Trump Jr. were both once again prominently in the news on Tuesday, and neither looked at all good.

Trump ran for president on the promise he would appoint only the very best people, and it’s turned out that the very best person to negotiate Middle East peace and end the country’s opioid crisis and re-invent government happens to be his favorite child’s husband. Press reports indicate that Kushner has also been charged with the tricky task of reforming America’s immigration policies, and that he’s also struggling with that.

Kushner met with the Senate’s slim majority of Republicans on Tuesday, and although it was a closed-door meeting the inevitable leaks suggest it didn’t go well. Kushner reportedly had trouble answering questions about the several million so-called “dreamers” who were illegally brought into the country as children and have since been verifiably blameless quasi-citizens, which is a political problem that a hard-line anti-immigrant Republican administration will need some pretty damned convincing answers for. Kushner reportedly made a case for a merit-based immigration system that would favor highly skilled workers and scientists and engineers, which still seems reasonable enough even as the booming economy Trump routinely brags about needs ever more hammer-swingers and assembly-line workers to keep up with demand, and some well-credentialed and high-tech and Republican-leaning friends of ours are complaining about foreign competition on the job market.

Despite the president’s son-in-law’s best efforts, we don’t think we’re any closer to a much-needed bipartisan reform of immigration law than we are to Middle East peace or an end to the opioid crisis or the reinvention of American government. Trump seems to think that his favorite child’s husband is smart, which we begrudgingly admire, but to us the kid clearly isn’t that damned smart.

Meanwhile, the president’s namesake son has agreed to an another round of grilling from the Senate’s intelligence committee about that “Russia thing” Trump hoped he had put behind him when a special counsel investigation declined to indict him on anything. The special counsel’s report did include some suspicious facts about the contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian operates, notably the meeting that Donald Trump Jr. has admitted taking with some government-connected Russians he clearly understood to be working on behalf of his father’s campaign, and even though the Republicans control the Senate intelligence committee they still have some reasonable questions about that. The younger Trump was able to negotiate that his testimony won’t be in public, but it will be under oath, and given how restive the farm state Republicans are about the elder Trump’s trade wars we expect it will be entirely and embarrassingly leaked to the press.

There are still plenty of people left in prominent political positions who aren’t related to Trump through blood or marriage, on the other hand, so we’ll hold out hope it all somehow works out.

— Bud Norman

The Son-in-Law Rises Again

The partial government shutdown is now in its 33rd day, and hundreds of thousands of government workers are going a third week without pay, with many of them calling in sick as a result, but the good news is that presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner is bravely taking charge of the situation.

In case you’re unaware of the wunderkind’s remarkable resume, the heavily indebted real estate mogul has also been given responsibility for ending America’s opioid crisis and bringing peace to the Middle East and re-inventing the federal government, among other things. Although he doesn’t seem to have quite yet accomplished any of these Herculean tasks, he’s reportedly asserted himself into the shutdown negotiations, which look to be as intractable as any of his many other jobs. There’s much skepticism about his ability to pull any of it off, but the young fellow is apparently as self-confident as ever.

According to The Washington Post’s reporting Kushner is sure that the Democrats in congress will soon capitulate to President Donald Trump’s demand for five billion dollars or so of funding for the big and beautiful border wall that he promised his supporters, and that Trump’s smartest move is to remain obstinate in the demand. Kushner has a more impressive job description than we do, including the difficult task of being Trump’s son-in-law, but we nonetheless wonder where he gets such cockamamie ideas.

All of the public opinion polls show that a plurality of Americans don’t want a border wall, and a clear majority don’t think it justifies a partial government shutdown, and such veteran politicians and wily wheeler-dealers as Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem to be enjoying the hit Trump has taken in polls. Trump is no longer making more than a token effort to argue that the Mexicans are eventually going to repay whatever money the Democrats might fork over, he’s now willing to let the Democrats call it something other than a big beautiful wall, and until the right wing provocateurs Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham spoke he was willing to capitulate on the whole idea, and for now he seems to have the far worse negotiating position. Several congressional Republicans are already planning to vote for a budget bill or continuing resolution to fully re-open the government that doesn’t include funding for the border wall, including all the congressmen who represent districts along the border.

There’s always a chance Trump’s rhetorical eloquence will persuade a majority of Americans that a big beautiful border wall is the most important issue facing the nation, perhaps when he delivers his State of the Union address in front of some raucous rally crowd in some deep-red state in the coming days, but so far that hasn’t happened. The president’s son-in-law reportedly played a role in getting the criminal justice reform bill passed, but that was a weak-on-crime bill that all the Democrats wanted and the likes of Limbaugh and Coulter and Ingraham didn’t talk about, and it doesn’t suggest he’s much a negotiator. Kushner is famous for rarely speaking in public, so it’s harder to assess his oratorical abilities, but based on what we have heard we don’t give him a better chance of swaying public opinion that his father-in-law. Our guess is he’ll be most useful to the president as an eventual scapegoat.

Meanwhile, Trump’s daughter-in-law is getting involved, and so far that’s not been helpful. Lara Trump, wife of the still-married Eric Trump, told a news outlet that those unpaid federal workers should “stay strong” and insist on a border wall before they get paid. The billionaire heiress said acknowledge that going weeks without a paycheck “is a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of country, and their children and grandchildren and generations after will thank them for their sacrifice right now.” She’s more well spoken that her father-in-law and brother-in law, but we expect that even more unpaid government workers will be calling in sick today.

— Bud Norman

As the Son-In-Law Sets

The revelation that Jared Kushner has been using a private e-mail account to conduct government business isn’t that big a deal, and surely won’t get as much attention as those football players who didn’t stand at attention during the national anthem during the recent games, but we can’t blame our Democratic friends for taking such glee in it. Kushner is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and most trusted senior advisor on a wide array of issues ranging from the opioid crisis to Middle East peace, after all, and during the past campaign Trump did take considerable glee in the revelation that his vanquished Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton had used a private e-mail account to conduct government business.

Trump’s apologists can rightly note that at least Kushner’s private account wasn’t on a private and appallingly insecure server, as Clinton’s was, but his critics can plausibly accuse Kushner of the same secretive and insidious motives that were plausibly attributed to Clinton, and in both cases it’s clearly it’s against the rules. The Trump apologists can also argue that it’s not like Kushner is so high-ranking an official as a Secretary of State, as Clinton was, but there’s another argument that given his wide-ranging portfolio and most trusted senior advisor status and the currently lowly status of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson he probably is. Clinton’s long career in public service had produced plenty of other scandals that made those purposely hidden e-mails all the more suspicious, to be sure, but in his relatively short career in public life Kushner has already been involved in quite a few of his own.

Kushner was a big-time Democratic donor back in his private sector days as the head of the family’s New York real estate business, and talked all the Democratic talk you hear at the New York City soirees he attended, just as his father and fellow real estate mogul father-in-law had once done, so by now few Republicans trust him and all the Democrats find him a convenient whipping boy. His private sector ventures are still deep in debt and desperately seeking foreign financing for a ill-fated investment in an ominously overpriced property at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City, since his involvement in his father in law’s campaign and transition team and administration the press have uncovered several meetings with Russians officials hoping for relief from sanctions that prevent them from investing American real estate ventures, all of which he hadn’t previously disclosed on his security clearance forms, and it’s hard for Trump apologists to explain how it doesn’t look very bad.

So far Kushner hasn’t solved the opioid crisis or brought peace to the Middle East or accomplished anything else on his far-ranging to-do list, nor has he exerted the moderating influence on the Trump administration that all those Democratic party-goers were hoping for. There are unavoidable questions about why his security clearance was renewed after all those revisions regarding meetings with Russians, and what qualified him for any of those jobs in the first place, so except for his faithful wife and father-in-law and high priced lawyers he doesn’t seem to have a lot of people rooting for him. Kushner took over the family real estate business when his father went to federal prison for tax evasion and witness intimidation, so we’re sure he’s well aware of the potential legal jeopardy he’s facing, and all our Democratic friends are gleeful about the possible deals he might cut.

Our jaded old Republican souls can easily see it working out very badly for both Kushner and Trump, and no matter how badly it works out for either of them it will be fine with us, but we also hate think that this any vindication for that horrible Clinton woman. There are sound security and openness reasons that require government communications be communicated on government e-mail accounts, and potentially self-interested meetings with foreign agents be forthrightly disclosed on security clearance forms, and the civic norms expecting honesty and disinterested dealings from public officials, and we’ll not abandon them for any lowlife of either party.

And for cryin’ out loud, Kushner, you did this after all those “lock her up” chants about Clinton’s private e-mail account?

— Bud Norman