A number of media outlets have recently reported that Jared Kushner has been “tasked” with oversight of the administration’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic.
That’s evidently in addition to his “task” of bringing peace to the Middle East, and Vice President Mike Pence’s “task” of heading up the dysfunctional White House pandemic Task Force. Two recent columns have addressed this latest assignment handed to Wonder Boy, both by New York Times columnists.
I usually find Maureen Dowd too self-consciously cute for my tastes, but her column on Trump, Kushner and the pandemic is dead-on. She spent the bulk of her column inches on Trump’s incompetence, but it was her description of Kushner that resonated with me.
At the Thursday briefing, the president brought out another wealthy, uninformed man-child who loves to play boss: Jared Kushner. Where’s our Mideast peace deal, dude? Surely Trump did not think giving Kushner a lead role would inspire confidence. This is the very same adviser who told his father-in-law early on that the virus was being overplayed by the press and also urged him to tout a Google website guiding people to testing sites that turned out to be, um, still under construction.
Now he is leading a group, mocked within the government as “the Slim Suit crowd,” that is providing one more layer of confusion — and inane consultant argot — to the laggardly, disorganized response.
From the lectern, Kushner drilled down on his role as the annoying, spoiled kid in every teen movie ever made. “And the notion of the federal stockpile was, it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” he said. “It’s not supposed to be the states’ stockpiles that they then use.”
There has been a predictable uproar over Kushner’s description of “our stockpile,” but it was precisely the sort of arrogant ignorance that we’ve come to expect from someone perfectly described as the “annoying spoiled kid in every teen movie ever made.”
Michelle Goldberg’s column was a more serious analysis of the insanity of Jared’s most recent “tasking.” Here’s her lede:
Reporting on the White House’s herky-jerky coronavirus response, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman has a quotation from Jared Kushner that should make all Americans, and particularly all New Yorkers, dizzy with terror.
According to Sherman, when New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that the state would need 30,000 ventilators at the apex of the coronavirus outbreak, Kushner decided that Cuomo was being alarmist. “I have all this data about I.C.U. capacity,” Kushner reportedly said. “I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators.” (Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top expert on infectious diseases, has said he trusts Cuomo’s estimate.)
As Goldberg notes, Jared Kushner has had exactly three”successes” thus far in his life: being born to rich parents, marrying well, and influencing his father-in-law. Other endeavors —” his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.”
(No wonder he gets along so well with Trump–they have similar trajectories…and similar delusions of competence. But I digress.)
“Behind the scenes, Kushner takes charge of coronavirus response,” said a Politico headline on Wednesday. This is dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.
The author of a book about the Kushner family described Jared thusly: “he had supreme confidence in his own abilities and his own judgment even when he didn’t know what he was talking about.” Like his father-in-law. (In the quotable words of Rick Wilson, “Everything he touches dies.”)
His forays into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — for which he boasted of reading a whole 25 books — have left the dream of a two-state solution on life support. Michael Koplow of the centrist Israel Policy Forum described Kushner’s plan for the Palestinian economy as “the Monty Python version of Israeli-Palestinian peace.”
Now, in our hour of existential horror, Kushner is making life-or-death decisions for all Americans, showing all the wisdom we’ve come to expect from him.
I have repeatedly described Trump’s White House as a cross between the Keystone Kops and the Mafia. To which I should add that all of them are walking, talking illustrations of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Gee–I wonder why I’m not reassured….?
If you really, really need something permanently ruined, bring in an MBA
The problem with stockpiles and the Trump clan is entitlement. They believe that the point of a stockpile is to acquire it — not to use it. So, OF COURSE they outbid the states to increase the federal stockpile which then sits in an underground warehouse somewhere in the DC area. If they were to use any of the items in the stockpile, they would have fewer items, not more. And how does that help anybody???
Remember when Trump accused the doctors and nurses of, “hoarding and worse than hoarding?” This is what he was talking about. Because Trump is the king of projecting his own actions onto others.
Remember Trump’s 2016 campaign speeches castigating the United States for not taking the “spoils of war” from the countries they invaded? Remember his promise that he would take advantage of that opportunity. What better “spoils of war” during this Covid-19 Pandemic than the most important medical supplies needed to save lives of patients and those trying to save them? Now he has millions of pills to dispense at his prescription, once his family members are well supplied.
As for appointing Jared Kushner, First Son-In-Law, to any position(s) of authority, this is like “Don” Corleone appointing speak-first-and-think-later Sonny Corleone to that position than either of his Fredo level sons who don’t even think later.
“I have repeatedly described Trump’s White House as a cross between the Keystone Kops and the Mafia. To which I should add that all of them are walking, talking illustrations of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.”
The Trump dynasty seems to hold many in this country in their thrall as this country’s “Goodfellows” have always held movie goers. Will it take this Covid-19 Pandemic to wake his supporters to the reality of the lack of leadership by counting the dead victims of his Stable Genius ego?
Thanks for a well written piece
to JoAnn Green:
Will even this disaster wake his followers? Nothing has until now.
I’ll wager that this will entrench his true believers even more and, when he declares victory if “only” 100,000 die, they will believe him. And vote for him come November.
/smh/
Well we’d all better buckle up. Yesterday, Fauci said he was beginning to see some light at the end of our little tunnel. While it’s true that hospitalizations are down in New York, deaths are still holding steady and those are only the deaths we can knowingly attribute to the virus. There may be literally hundreds of deaths that are caused by the virus, but that won’t be attributed because our morgues don’t have the capacity to test all of the bodies coming in. In spite of that 45 is talking of opening everything back up quickly. Never hint to a simpleton that things might be getting a little better.
We all need to keep our focus on November. If you don’t believe that, I urge you to consider what SCOTUS did to the people of Wisconsin. We won’t have results from that primary until sometime next week, but I’m praying that the people of Wisconsin saw through the Republican attempt to maintain power and voted against the state supreme court member whose position the were so desperate to maintain. Note that we’ll have to wait up to two weeks to find out how many were exposed to the virus while standing in line to vote.
Oh Sheila, PLEASE digress !!! It’s so much fun when you do !!!
We need all kinds of humor right now including “tongue-in-cheek” and full out Snarky.
Let, me digress. I actually belong to a FB group called Snarky Snowflakes. (ear-to-ear grin)
Peggy,
An infamous 4-star general once invoked the light-tunnel continuum in Vietnam. This light precipitated the TET Offensive and slaughter. That light turned out to be an on-coming train.
Yes, Incompetence, LLC is hard at work proving all the critics correct. Yes, the Trump-ites will follow their piper of bullshit over the cliff. Yes, thousands of lives will be lost because of the arrogance and self-adulation of utter fools. And yes, EVERYTHING TRUMP TOUCHES DIES. And now he is touching all of us.
As the deaths decrease (or remain hidden as they are not noted, happen in prisons, etc.) just wait until the President proudly announces that “they predicted 240,000 deaths and there were only 80,000” – a GREAT JOB. This has been the plan all along….
Kushner unaccountably & without a valid security clearance, works out of a WH office promoting his personal profit. When Congress passed the 2 trillion stimulus bill, Jared jumped in. #3 just got rid of the appointed oversight IG for the fund. How much clearer can it get, to what’s going on?
There is no Possible Way, Jared Kushner is a true MBA! Let alone having 2, SMH, LOL!
All of these celebrities that were prosecuted for buying their kids college educations, and Kushner’s family was just as guilty, the guy is a stooge!
I myself hated school, but I probably alluded to that before, thanks to my family members, I received an early education head and shoulders above anything I could have gotten in high school. You don’t have to have a long line of systemic education to be intellectual, sometimes, credence is given to those who have the “Paper” rather than “Ethics, Common sense, and moral compassion.
Now, there are a lot of folks that have “Paper” and ethics, common sense, and moral compassion, And a fine example of that would be Sheila! But, even if one has paper, that doesn’t mean they have intellect. Case in point Jared Kushner! When you buy your education, it’s like a beautifully wrapped encyclopedia set, and, Unfortunately it stays wrapped.
When it comes to getting things done, OJT is the best teacher, learning from those who came before you, learning the nuances of whatever issues you are trying to address from those who have addressed them before. Not trying to reinvent the wheel, but smoothing out the road to make it function a little bit better. This administration has continuously slashed the tires on those wheels, refused to repair the potholes, and have blown up all the bridges. They continuously project their ineptitude on others, and Trumpnotize their Trone like toadies!
Go on the FOXBusiness website, read some of those articles, then scroll down to the comments! It is an enlightening peek into the projection generation of Trumpnotized Trones. It’s almost As if it was written for a comedy show or Saturday Night Live with really bad writers.
I think Lester hit the nail on the head with them projecting hundreds of thousands of deaths possibly, and hoping it’s underneath that. That way they can claim a success. Unfortunately, you look at the Pressers from George Bush in 2005 and Barack Obama in 2014 talking about forming agencies to keep an eye on pandemics, the very ones that Trump disbanded! If you stuck some pointed ears on Kushner, He’d look just like Mr. Spock, Mr. Spock on the outside, and dumb and dumber on the inside!
“Live long and prosper!” LOL, we know that ain’t gonna happen.
Testing has been the missing strategy in this battle. The President does not want to test, and yet without testing there is no victory.
No surprise here! https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-hotels-do-appear-to-qualify-for-coronavirus-bailout-benefits
I always thought that the military had to be the world’s leading experts on supply chain management. After all a soldier without bullets can be correctly labeled as a target. Modern warfare is that parable taken to an extreme as it is more about getting stuff to the front than people though prosecuting the war demands the right combination of both.
Not far behind is, in my mind, FEMA. When, say a hurricane, strikes the first priority is the rescue people but the next is getting relief supplies to them including housing and food and clothing. IOW, build a supply chain immediately that never existed before.
All this seems to be reasonable but what did Trump deliver? Pence and Kushner.
Given that, I can’t imagine anyone for any reason who would wish to extend the life of this sad, incompetent, corrupt, silly administration.
One way to keep a lid on information concerning the total, utter incompetence of the Trumpet is to appoint Pastor Pence and grifter Kushner to be the public faces of Federal inaction.
Pastor Pence and Kushner can be counted to be total stooges for The Trumpet.
In the Trump era, I’ve lost a lot of faith in the quality and legitimacy of the education provided by elite institutions. Jared was admitted to Harvard after his father, a businessman and convicted felon, quietly gave that institution a gift of $2.5 million. After graduating from Harvard, where apparently he partied a lot and didn’t take his studies seriously, he went on to get a combined MBA/JD degree from New York University. While unlike his father-in-law, Jared actually reads, from his performance in business and politics, it is clear that Jared is not the sharpest tool in his shed.
After a brief stint at Fordam, Donald Trump was admitted to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, which is an Ivy League School. Even in college, Trump was well-known to not read material and often didn’t go to lectures. Yet, somehow, he managed to end up with a degree.
Three of his adult children, Don, Jr., Ivanka and Tiffany, all have degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, again an Ivy League school. Eric Trump graduated from Georgetown, with honors no less. While Tiffany has stayed out of the limelight, Ivanka, Don, Jr., and Eric are constantly proving they are not bright people every time they open their mouths. These, their father included, are not people who have the intelligence and academic ability, to be graduated from elite institutions.
I used to think big donations only bought the admission of these children of wealthy parents to elite schools. Then, once admitted, they had to prove their academic ability was as good as those whose parents did not buy their way in. I was sooooo wrong. Apparently, big donations don’t just buy admission to elite colleges, they buy four year degrees. For those of us who had to EARN their degrees through hard work and sacrifice, I find the whole thing quite disgusting.
two crows makes a good point – that when Trump accuses nurses and doctors of “hoarding” masks etc. he is projecting; i.e., that he is accusing others of what he is doing himself, as strongly suggested by his front man’s (Kushner’s) assertion with the use of the adjectival “our” for federal supplies to be rationed out to the states. This has been the mark of Trump all along – that everything ours is his, prompted by an underlying view that he is the state (a view held by all dictators, and in this case, wannabes – so far). Such a view, of course, does great violence to Lincoln’s view that “the people” are sovereign and his “of the people, by the people, and for the people” pronouncement.
I think that at base Trump’s appointment of unqualified and partisan (see Barr’s pretended pro-dictator reading of Article II and people like Kushner), his failure to timely act to blunt the effects of the coronavirus disaster, and his firing of anyone overseeing the rescue money Congress just passed in favor of having his own people (and thus himself) overseeing distribution of this trove our great grand children will be paying for, among other evidences of blatant violation of the Separation of Powers Doctrine, tell us all we need to know, i.e., that, being functionally unable to rule in a democracy, he wants to become our dictator. My vote is not only no, but never.
if testing is not making a true count,then we maybe if for a drivel type reaction from the slum lord. italy admitted that the ones who have recently past, are not being tested,postmortem. they need the tests for the ongoing issue. the final death toll, when its moved on,,will probably take years to figure out. testing via blood samples…the greed factory is already making its case, see, the maket is going back up..back to work slaves.. slumlord kushners silver spoon was draggin out his butt the day trump took office.. giddy with assurance he could conquer the world with his bright ideas…he cant keep his buildings up, what did ya expect from a slum lord. the mid east fiasco was eneded with Jamil Khashoggi. his silence was the death blow to that.. poor little boy has his hand in the cookie jar now, florida,check, gets theirs,and so on..hey,profits,send it all to a warehouse in the private sector to be bidded on.. how do you like me now for your needs to be above mine,for profit… but that doesnt take a slum lord to do buisness this way,his buddies insist upon it,after all, we stopped the economy(wall street) hense now ya see the pay back.. trump is said to have lost 1 billion$ in this fiasco. kushner probably lost millions, hold on,,,eer, o.k. im done crying… we already know the score,and the ink is dried, pass this on, and have a conversation beyond our discussion. make a view, have a conversation with others oit side of this site..
I wrote the interscept last night, the picture on top page, showed a lost Bernie,walking away.i called foul.. wrong picture,wrong attitude… as a follower,and a Bernie supporter,i will now carry his load too. he passed it on to those who see what we need to overcome and over throw a corprate goverment. Bernies supporters are going to carry on, and make a louder voice,one Joe can hear to. Bernie didnt drop out, he passed the torch to those who will, stand and fight.
this call, was probably in someway,because of the callouse decision by the republicans in Wisconsin who see someones misery to support a democracy.. Bernie will rally with us,and discuss the issues,and to make a point,lets at least get back to some sort of normalcy
in washington again..two parties,who may work again..unless theres a major upset in novemeber,one that overwhelmingly decides the issue,and kicks trump to the curb,like hes done too so many already.. id give a years salary to watch him from the white,house doorway,when he leaves,saluting his administration. Bernie may have dropped out,but hes far from gone.. thanks Bernie, your posture is pure backbone..now lets take the gloves off..
People who worry that Biden is a flawed candidate are correct. It seems that the primary process that resulted in choosing him as well as the DNC as an institution must therefore also be flawed. Also correct and undeniable.
Here’s the rub though. He and they and it are absolutely the best available by a long shot given the demonstrated failure of the RNC as an institution and process and their candidates.
I know that I can be faulted as being Captain Obvious in saying all of this but on the other hand so many people seem to ignore the obvious nowadays in favor of having their biases stroked by people who are essentially entertainers for hire performing the scripts written for them by profiteers.
i got a e mail,from my trucking representing org,OOIDA.. we have issues trying to function out here,keeping America fed,supplied,and at least living..seems a big national truckstop org called NATSO, which reperesnts like a lobby,the truckstops,independantly owned mosty.. the OOIDA supports food trucks in rest areas, to help get a hot meal for these people. our restaurants are closed. cant use a drive up window,or walk up to one. and most every truckstop today only serves fast food.same ol,same ol.. there is a possibile help,here.the emergency from the feds have dropped enforcement of this rule,to allow these food tricks to opertrate in a public rest area, mainly because it can provide parking and little resriction. keep ot down to a few in each RA would be a rule..its needed,and were tired of being pushed away when we have hours in a log book to meet,and deliverys and picks to be made..NATSO called the feds and cried about the issues. profits..
my reply to the OOIDA, this letter is to Mike Matusk,gov affairs rep at OOIDA
Mike,this seriously should never,so often now, say blaintantly,we have issues,they say,we have profit..all ya need now is a corprate enitiy above all other things..this is some serious dishonor of the people in the working class.to even say your above the ones who do the work.this my friend is how our country is run now,morals be damn,,,
i will end with, the truckers have been treated like trumps trash way before his squatting at the white,house..
I have repeatedly described Trump’s White House as a cross between the Keystone Kops and the Mafia. HAHAHAHAHA!! I hope you don’t mind if I use that — it’s priceless.
Thanks
Pete,
Thanks, sums it all up….but dont stop pushing for change..
Looks like the nursing homes, old people, sick people, people of color, dumb partiers will, on balance, give us a lean, mean work force.
Hitler wanted that.
No comment, I just wanted to subscribe to your blog.