I heard once, not sure where, but it sticks in my head, that a junior writer asked legendary Chicago-based columnist Mike Royko how he was able to write a column every single day. He replied something to the effect of, “Write about what makes you angry.”
I think about that anecdote often — actually, all the time. It is damn hard sometimes to figure out not just what makes you mad, but what makes you the maddest, since there are so many things coming from the Trump administration that boil the blood.
He floods the zone with news, but he also floods the zone with a deluge of despair.
Lost in all the recent flooding and deluge was something that was particularly anger-inducing. While everyone was fixated on the horror of a Russian oligarch paying for the wedding party of Donald Trump Jr., The New Yorker’sDexter Filkins wrote about another Trump family member, the loathsome Jared Kushner.
And it should make every American furious.
According to Filkins’ reporting, which was brilliant, extensive and jaw-dropping, Kushner and fellow envoy Steve Witkoff showed up to February talks with Iran in Geneva without a technical adviser in the room, despite the Department of Energy having assigned one to Witkoff specifically.
In the story, a former White House official who had handled Iran’s nuclear file called the preparation “total malpractice.” Another Kushner associate, more bluntly, told Filkins Trump's son-in-law was “way out of his depth.”
These are not partisan hacks trashing Kushner. These are people who worked alongside him.
Gotta stop here. One must feel like they rolled around in tar, mud and excrement after working alongside Kushner.
While Kushner and Witkoff were reportedly negotiating with Iran in the mornings and discussing Russia’s war on Ukraine in the afternoons, Filkins wrote that Kushner was also quietly working Middle Eastern investors for a fresh $5 billion for his private equity firm, Affinity Partners.
Within hours of the two men returning to Washington and reporting that Iran wouldn’t budge, American and Israeli forces struck Iran and killed much of its senior leadership, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Questions immediately surfaced about whether the fundraising and the diplomacy were connected.
Um, do you think? Like his crooked and corrupt father-in-law, Kushner does nothing that doesn’t include the sound of ching, ching, ching.
Kushner’s Affinity Partners has grown into a multibillion-dollar operation whose largest backer is Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, with additional money from the UAE and Qatar — the very region Kushner is supposedly representing American interests in, not the wealth of his shady firm, which has also poured hundreds of millions into Israeli companies.
So when Kushner jets off to Pakistan or the Gulf in his capacity as a “special envoy,” is he there for the United States, or for Affinity?
That is probably the silliest question I have ever asked.
Filkins’ reporting on Kushner’s involvement with Russia is even more horrifying. If anything, it’s worse and more anger-inducing. Kushner reportedly talked about ending the war in Ukraine in the language of a “win-win” business arrangement. And this is the part that made my head pop off.
How obtuse can you be to think that stopping Russia’s devastating war on Ukraine would be solved via a business deal? Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because he wants to rebuild the Russian empire. Further, Putin is perhaps the richest man on Earth, so Kushner’s puny little $5 billion deals are child’s play to him.
And it gets worse. According to Filkins’ story, Kushner and Witkoff reportedly traveled to Moscow to meet Putin, riding in a Russian limousine instead of a U.S. Embassy vehicle.
Let’s stop here again. How stupid, ignorant and careless can you be to ride in a Russian limousine when you are ostensibly representing the United States of America? Did these morons not even consider that the car was bugged? And that’s just the beginning. What in God’s name were they thinking?
Can you imagine what Vladimir Putin was saying about these bozos while he was listening in on their conversation?
Here’s how much respect Putin has for Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Filkins writes that the day after that meeting, Russia launched one of its largest assaults of the war on Ukraine. I can imagine Putin saying, “OK, boys, time to run off. I have bombs to drop and more people to kill.”
Kushner is not some “special envoy.” He’s an avaricious money-grubber. He has zero understanding of Iran’s revolutionary theocracy or the motivations of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer who has spent a career outmaneuvering people far, far, far more experienced than the dim-witted Kushner.
And what in the hell does Kushner know about nuclear diplomacy, the history of European land wars, Russian conquest, Middle Eastern religions, regional faiths, or sectarian and minority groups?
He’s just a silver-spooned real estate dealmaker and a wolf in sheep’s clothing when it comes to hoarding cash.
Career diplomats and national security professionals who spent their lives learning how these regimes actually think have been sidelined. And in their place: Kushner. OMFG!
Honestly, what have we come to when Filkins’ story barely registers in the national media and on cable shows? There should be tremendous outrage. Well, there is from me, for sure.
He and his carnival sidekick Witkoff haven’t even come close to producing peace in Ukraine or Iran. If anything, both situations are worse because of their absurd involvement.
Unfortunately, voters don’t get to fire Jared Kushner. But they take a big whack at him this November by electing a Congress willing to hold him to account and demand that America’s foreign policy be run by experienced, learned, knowledgeable professionals.