He’s family
Godalmighty, Trump’s real estate developer son-in-law has been sent to Iraq to perform diplomacy. Seriously? Why? He has no relevant experience or training or education, he’s just a child of money who makes money selling real estate. What is he doing in Iraq??
Kushner, 36, who is married to the president’s elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, acted as a de facto campaign manager during much of the 2016 presidential race, and has consolidated even more power since entering the White House.
Kushner also has taken on some international outreach for the White House, and his portfolio includes China, Mexico, Canada and the Middle East. The president, in fact, has specifically tasked Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, with brokering peace in the region.
Despite his complete lack of relevant experience or training or education. Trump might as well send his pets, except that he doesn’t have any.
That’s not how any of this should work.
He’s setting up a dynasty, both in the classical sense of generational entitlement and in a modern sense of giving his offspring enough experience to set up their own runs for ‘legitimate’ office. I give it even odds (conditional upon our survival as a species after the next eight years) that the first successful female presidential candidate will be named Trump.
He has pets; there’s Jared, Ivanka, Little Donny……
Oh GOD I hadn’t even thought of that!
On the plus side, his approval ratings might hint that the dynasty bid won’t work.
It’s like one of those Holiday Inn Express commercials.
“Are you an international relations scholar or a foreign policy expert?”
“No, but I am fucking the President’s daughter.”
Ivanka could always register as a Democrat and try to pull the same shit Trump did in the reds’ primary…
I would say it’s more like because, not despite. After all, they were elected partially because they had no Washington knowledge. Because running a government is something you want someone to do when they have no training, no skills, and no talent. Or something.
This is that whole red state thing of “I don’t want someone smarter than me to be the president”. When I hear that, I always ask why the hell not? I DO want someone smarter than me to be president – unfortunately, I am also subjected to the Trump family shenanigans, because someone in their infinite wisdom assumed that the places where fewer people live should have a larger impact on the vote.
Yeah. Goddam Jeffersonian illusions about yeomen farmers yadda yadda.
I have to wonder if it isn’t a trip with the full support of the administration to explore business opportunities for the Trump family empire and shape diplomacy to fit them.
Jeff, I was reading that Kushner has been appointed to head a White House council to draw up plans for running the government more like a business; the council will be composed entirely of businessmen who have no experience in government.
When will people learn, the reason we don’t run government like a business is that the purpose of government is not the same as business. Government exists to enhance the welfare of all people (yes, I realize most governments exist to control people and enhance the wealthy, but I’m looking at social contract theory, not reality). Business exists to enrich the business owners/managers. Government is not a for-profit organization (or, in theory, it is not. In practice, corrupt government officials often make it for profit, and idiotic Republican legislatures often insist that government institutions should make money, or be replaced through privatization with a for-profit group).
I think our current leaders are looking to replace our current system with something much more in line with feudalism – they are the overlords, and we turn over our labor and production to them, while they decide what pittance we can keep to keep us alive. This seems very much like what they would like.
It’d be consistent with their theory and interests to re-organize government as a security firm and ultimate arbitration service. Those could function as businesses, more or less, and I suppose it could do those jobs well enough working as a business. (In theory, and with enough tolerance for injustice, mind you.) It takes in taxes, it delivers guys with guns, judges, and some approximate responsibility to the “customers” for the use of the guns and judges.
They could even claim that they’re within a social contract theory tradition, with enough squinting – it’s a contract to surrender individual sovereignty to a government that provides law enforcement and military defense and nothing else. That’s what the libertarians have always claimed to want, and some of them would want even that much government privatized.
Granted, that wouldn’t be a theory that would offer much grounds for (e.g.) screwing with abortion access, but that sort of shenanigan is so old-hat for the right that the hypocrisy is nothing more than a familiar pleasant warmth for them anymore.
What they certainly wouldn’t be doing is working within a tradition of government theory that supposes that it’s there to provide welfare writ broadly – to serve the people in whatever way is reasonably consistent with individual rights and promotes public well-being in ways private entities cannot be counted upon to do well enough, consistently, or fairly. That’s been a view they’ve roundly rejected for the last 40 years here in the U.S., and one the Democrats have been thoroughly lackluster in articulating and defending – despite it being the one most voters would stand behind given a choice.
iknklast do you remember where you were reading that?
I read it in The Week, which is a compilation of articles from other places; I could get you the exact reference, if they included it, but in their shorter blurbs, they sometimes don’t. But they don’t do original news, so they got it somewhere else.
Ok I’ll look for it then; thanks.