Day 805 Friday March 22, 2019
591 Days to the 2020 election and 669 Days to Inauguration Day
Today I’m in New Orleans. It’s one of the few mythic places in this country. It has it’s own vibe. (I hate that word “vibe,” but here I am using it.) There’s something funky, decadent and magical about this place. You see it in the buildings, the people, the attitude.
It’s a fifteen hour drive or two days by train and airplane in this day and age, which makes it about the same either way.
At the first airport I had the opportunity to buy the book “Kushner, Inc.” subtitle: Greed. Ambition, Corruption. by Vicky Ward. She’s a New York times reporter and has written for The Huffington Post, and Vanity Fair. Corruption and greed is her beat.
There’s nothing really new in the book, just more detail. Jared and Ivanka are ambitious and know how to be in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, neither one is very bright or intellectually curious. This means once they get in the room, command the attention, they got nothing.
The backstory on the Kushners was the most interesting part to me. Jews living in Poland before WWII. They were put in a ghetto by the Nazis. First the intellectuals were killed, then the children. They had heard there were Jews living in the forest and they decided to tunnel under the wall and run for the forest. The mother and her sister had already been killed. The brother got lost in the escape and was never seen again. They lived in the forest through the winter, The Soviets pushed the Nazis out. The Kushners had heard that in Italy you could get visas to go to America. They walked from Poland to Italy. They lived in a camp for three years and got visas, came to America, settled in New Jersey.
They built houses. Then they started owning apartments. They moved up. This was Jared’s grandparent’s generation. His father Charlie had made the journey and took over. He was gregarious and made contributions to local political campaigns, etc. Money was sloshed around between accounts. Not all of it legal.
Here’s where it gets interesting. If you’ve had the experience of the Holocaust you are wary of rules. The attitude is that they don’t apply to you. You do what you gotta do. By the time you get to Jared and Ivanka the rules don’t apply to you because you are entitled. It’s an interesting turning something on its head proposition, but regardless, you come out at the same place.
Jared got into Harvard the old fashion way. His dad gave them $2.5 million. Otherwise, he never would have made it. He didn’t seem to attend class or do much there and ended up finishing elsewhere. Ivanka, similar story. She left the glitzy Manhattan school for Rosemary Hall in Greenwich (now Choate Rosemary Hall.) A person who was there at the time said it was really weird when she came to look at the school. Big white limo, no one else, just her. She looked around all alone.
The Kushners were a tight knit family. Orthodox Jews. Everyone in the family business was Jewish and from their congregation. This meant most people were beholding to Jared’s dad, Charlie. When Charlie did illicit things they turned a blind eye. Chris Christie put him in jail. Jared made sure Christie was outed from the Trump administration.
Reading this book is like watching the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. You’re watching the same drama, but told from a different viewpoint. The antics in the White House are only mentioned in passing, and only as they relate to Javanka – the term coined to describe the couple, because often it’s hard to know which one of the two did what, but regardless one of them did whatever it was.
The lack of moral and ethical restraint is not surprising. It’s just not there. It doesn’t play a role. Whatever deeply held beliefs are absent. Ivanka seemed to have some or pretend to have some, but they were always subservient to whatever else happened. Both of them are able to be there for the glory but absent for the blowback. Jared stays silent. Ivanka isn’t there.
The Kushners are orthodox Jews, which means from Friday at 5pm til Saturday a the same time you won’t hear from them. Unless, it’s really important, then of course. This colors everything they do.
Most of the book deals with the problem Jared’s dad created when he bought 666 Park Avenue. He paid an excessive amount. Was deeply in debt and many times on the brink of going under. Jared through his contacts in the Middle East was able to get money to bail them out. Jared almost started a war in the Middle East doing it, but hey you gotta do what you gotta do.
The Kushner family is close friends with Benjaomin Netanyahu. In fact he’s stayed at the Kushner home. Slept in Jared’s bed. Jared was sent to the basement.
Jared is also close friends with MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who had Jamal Kashoggi killed. In fact, I could make the case that it was Jared’s close relationship with MBS that made the dictator think he could get away with the murder. MBS and Jared have stayed up until 4am on several nights talking when Jared was in Riyadh. They continue to communicate via WhatsApp. The relationship does not seem to be mutual. Jared is referred to in Saudi Arabia as “the clown prince.” In one story about Jared and the Saudis they were aghast as to how transactional he was. I’m not sure exactly what transactional means but I think it means you are willing to throw your mother under the bus to get the deal.
The other thing startling, in some ways not, is the lack of knowledge they have about whatever they tackle. Very confident, but having nothing to offer is a dangerous mix. Jared delegates – everything, because he knows nothing. He apparently thinks (this is related in the book, not my idea) that he can solve the Middle East Peace problem after watching one YouTube video.
As John Kelly said of both of them, “They don’t do government, they play government.”
Any problem is merely a PR thing to be handled.
591 Days to the 2020 election and 669 Days to Inauguration Day
PS Find Your Power (at Wal Mart)
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