Jared Kushner is acting like a parallel Secretary of State, doing diplomacy all on his own.

Rex Tillerson, the former US secretary of state, has accused Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, of cutting top US diplomats out of meetings with powerful world leaders.

In a newly released transcript of a testimony to the House foreign affairs committee last May, Mr Tillerson outlined several instances in which he said Mr Kushner acted independently to meet foreign diplomats without informing Mr Tillerson or the state department.

The transcript reveals the level of influence that Mr Kushner, who serves as a Middle East adviser for his father-in-law, had over foreign policy at the start of Mr Trump’s time in office.

“Serves as” – is that like “identifies as”? Because Kushner has zero education or experience that makes him competent to be “a Middle East adviser” for the current president of the US. He’s a landlord. There’s no reason for a landlord to “serve as” a Middle East adviser to anyone, let alone a president.

There’s also, by the way, no reason to think he has any brains or talent or principles, either. He married into the hideous, corrupt Trump family; his father spent time in prison; schemes to make big profits off real estate are all he knows. He’s a zero. He’s wallpaper.

Mr Tillerson said he was not told of key meetings that had taken place between Mr Kushner and Arab leaders, including a meeting in May 2017 between Mr Kushner, former presidential adviser Steve Bannon and the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In one of these meetings, the men allegedly discussed plans by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to impose a blockade on Qatar — which came as a surprise to both Mr Tillerson and Jim Mattis, who was then serving as defence secretary, when it was announced.

Not that there’s any reason to think Tillerson was up to the job either, but he wasn’t as callow and ignorant as the son-in-law is.