If it’s true that Jared Kushner met with his father-in-law on Wednesday to discuss taking the job of White House chief of staff, then we’re nearing the endgame for this administration. This would be an insult too big to ignore and signal a final hunkering down. For starters, Kushner is every bit as much of a target of federal and state investigators as the president. Then there’s the whole security clearance issue, because presumably a president’s chief of staff has the highest clearance you can get. And, finally, just today the Senate condemned Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who happens to be BFF’s with Jared Kushner, by voting to end support for the war in Yemen.
Kushner and his wife Ivanka ― known derisively by White House critics as “Javanka” ― face considerable opposition from both inside and outside the West Wing because of concerns about nepotism as well as worries about Kushner’s judgment. He has had to repeatedly file addendums to his financial disclosure forms since joining the White House. More recently, he has become a strong advocate for the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman ― who U.S. intelligence agencies believe ordered the murder of U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi after luring him to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.
“Tone-deaf” wouldn’t begin to adequately describe a decision to make Kushner chief of staff. If it happens, it can only be out of sheer desperation and the fact that the Trump family has run out of people they feel they can trust. In The Godfather terms, it would be like Vito Corleone’s adopted son Tom Hagan taking over as consigliere after Genco Abbandando died of cancer or like Michael Corleone making Hagan acting boss after surviving an attempt on his life. Except, Jared is more like Fredo than Tom Hagan.
With Kushner as chief of staff, Trump would have a true partner in crime at the helm, and that’s probably the upside for him. He wouldn’t have to explain or hide things from his chief of staff anymore, and he’d be comforted to know that if he goes down, his lieutenant will go down with him. With that knowledge, at least he could count on a robust defense.
Too big for whom to ignore?
All American Citizens?
The ghosts of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln?
Late-night TV comedians?
🙂
Kushner has been my pick from the beginning. For the very reasons you cite.
And it’s why Kushner and Ivanka have been pushing Kelley out…they want the job.
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If indeed the president is removed from office–by resignation or impeachment–then there must be some accounting against the MAGA loyalists, remorseful Trump voters, and ordinary GOP voters alike. They must all be ruthlessly shamed and mocked and humiliated with extreme prejudice. They must be made to sleep upon the bed in which they shat. Some, I assume, are good people–and we can consider forgiving them–but there must be no such tolerance for the dead-enders. They must be shamed and scorned and punished for their stupidity and racism. Forever.
Ok well, this was supposed to be a comment on the low-wattage bulb diary, so feel free to dismiss both the comment and me as useless. Huzzah.
Some, I assume, are good people…
I used to assume that, but an abundance of evidence to the contrary has forced me to change my mind.
I was too kind, yeah. They’re all worthless marks or shysters.
. . . then their repentance is the necessary prerequisite to forgiveness. (Also the only sufficient evidence that they are, in fact, good people.)
That’s just how that works.
Next we’ll hear that Ivanka will be assuming Jared’s portfolio Trump assigned him when he came into office.
Sure, why not? Accelerate this presidency’s end, please. Mueller is arguably there because of Michael Flynn, but who was it who convinced Trump firing Comey would be a good idea? Why, it was Jared, of course. Who’s been selling US state secrets for personal and financial gain? It’s Jared.
Jared has a competent lawyer and hasn’t been too loud in public, so it’s really hard for me to tell if he’s going to jail for a long time, or if he’s going to get off scot free because he sold his step daddy down the river. And yet I look at all of the bad decisions Jared has made and how he’s been implicated in every crime in the probe, and can’t help but think we will get higher and accelerated crime potential if this happens. Beginning of the end, indeed.
Jared wants to be close to the donald so he will know when it is time for him, Ivanka, and he children to disappear to Israel.
I would not be a bit surprised. Certainly they have provided them with enough to win asylum. With all that sweet Sawdi cash.
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The Venn Diagram of Kushner being named chief of staff and Trump getting impeached are concentric circles.
They’re also both morons and aould probably end up publicly incriminating themselves before the month was out.
Hmmm Maybe Pence suggested he pick Kushner. It’s probably his fastest path to the presidency at this point.
The only alternative is Trump appoints himself as COS.
OK. I officially truly HATE THIS! My friend jokingly suggested over lunch Sunday that Trump would name Jared Kushner as Chief of Staff. I mocked him ruthlessly, because that could never happen outside of a Monty Python sketch. And now I have to admit to him that he was right. Of course he was being satiric, I don’t believe he really thought it would happen. I mean there are levels of blatant corruption of office you just don’t do openly. It just should never be necessary. I mean, even Nixon had loyalists in his administration.
True, they all started singing like Joey ‘Cargo’ Valachi once they were in the Watergate Special Counsels’ crosshairs. But, Nixon had his loyalists in the Administration to the end.
I mean, he didn’t have to appoint Tricia Nixon Cox’s husband Edward Cox. That would never have occurred to Nixon. It would have been seen as just too blatantly corrupt and self-serving to name your own son in law, because none of your other caporegimes are deemed loyal enough not to squeal when the indictments start to really home in.
In short, I thought it could never happen in real life, at least not in a major western democracy. Too brazen. Too open an implication of total and complete guilt.
And if it did happen, I reasoned to my friend, it would signal a serious decline in civilization. A bit like the Gothic invasion of 376-378. It wouldn’t signal the end, not yet. But, like the comet, in ancient times acclaimed the harbinger of the fall of empires and the death of kings, it would signal the onset of terminal decline.
I mean, we’re actually at the stage where the President of the United States, who is under imminent threat of being named as an “un-indicted co-conspirator #1”, just named his son-in-law as Chief of Staff, while said son-in-law is himself under potentially imminent status as being implicated in a criminal conspiracy, by a former colleague who has turned over mountains of evidence, which he insists on Twitter implicates the President directly in a criminal conspiracy conducted on said President’s behalf. That’s what John Dean did to Nixon. Except he didn’t announce on Twitter that he had committed all those crimes to protect the President at his direction and with his direct knowledge.
And his entire party is perfectly OK with this open criminality. So open and so blatant that it almost totally defies parody. How can SNL even exaggerate this in a sketch?
When you put it like that, not even Al Pacino and Marlon Brando could never do it justice.
“Now don’t forget, Javanka, whoever comes to you to propose a meeting with the Special Counsel, he or she’s the traitor! Don’t forget that!” Javanka: “I won’t pop.”
. . . what you wrote, i.e., “I won’t pop”?
Or did you maybe mean “I won’t, Pop”?
Cuz the former comes across as rather an odd promise to be making under the circumstances.
Sure. Who else can they trust?
Get rid of that useless Pence too and replace him with Ivanka – maybe Pence will get indicted and have to leave early, all the better – but Trump*Trump in 2020!
Daddy barely makes it thru the ice cream social after the inauguration in Jan 2021 – then it’s 25th Amendment due to illness, and he’s never seen again.
Ivanka becomes Acting President – there’s no term (waiting for the reappearance of the original president) or term limit for Acting President in the constitution, according to their pet Supreme Court – so Javanka is president for life. And what a life!
I’m getting right on this script before anyone else cranks it out.