Post-White House Wealth and Political Influence

Welcome to another episode of This Fucking Guy, the show where we spotlight one fucking guy making America worse and explain why they suck. I'm Erin Ryan, host of Crooked Media's hysteria podcast. And I'm Alyssa Mastermonico, the other host of Crooked Media's hysteria podcast.s Alyssa, have you ever wondered what would happen if a haunted doll were put in charge of the Middle Eastern peace process? No, I can't say that I have. Well, wonder no more. I literally haven't been wondering. Well, the answer is this episode 's subject Jared Kushner. Okay . In order to get the full Jared, we need to go back a bit further in his family history than we normally do with fucking guys, two Jewish kids living in eastern Poland during World War II, named Y osel Berkowitz and Ray Kushner. Eastern Poland was a bad place to be during World War two for pretty much everybody, but especially for Jewish people. Ray Kushner and her family escaped the Nazis by hand digging tunnels from their occup ied village into the woods where there was a larger group of Jews living in holes to evade detection. One of the others was a young man named Yosel Berkowitz. Ray and Yossel were married and Yosel took his wife's last name because she came from a higher status family than he did. How very modern? Yes. Jerred Kushner's grandpa, the original feminist. After Soviet troops liberated their village, Ray and Yoscel lived in a refugee camp while they waited to find out if any countries would let them in. Writing for Pro Publica, Alan Sloan dug up an interesting excerpt from an interview Ray Kushner gave in nineteen eighty two, where she recalled how miserable the ordeal was for her family . Quote, the day after we got married in Budapest, Hungary, we smuggled ourselves over the border into Italy, Ray Kushner said. This was our honeymoon. In Italy, we sat in a displaced person's camp. It was like being in the ghetto again. Nobody wanted to take us in. So for three and a half years we waited until we finally got a visa to come to the United States. Yeah, the Kushners were ultimately able to leave the camp after Yossel, who had by then changed his name to Joshua fudged his immigration forms a bit and claimed that his father was already living in the US. It was actually his father in law. Can't begrudge people doing what they need in order to survive, but imagine how willfully unsympathetic Jared Kushner would have to be to fail to see the connection between the ways his own family was harmed by restrict ive immigration policies and the ways that the Trump administration is doing the same thing to families now. Yeah, what the Kushner's did to get into this country would be by Maga standards, grounds for incarceration at a migrant detention center . So the Kushners moved to the US and settled in New Jersey. They had three kids, Murray, Esther, and Charles. Joseph got into real estate and became part of what's known as the Holocaust builders, European Jews who settled in the same part of Jersey around the same time and worked in the same business. The Holocaust builders were typically people who kept their heads down and their minds on their businesses and their families. They weren't flashy or fame seeking and they certainly didn't want to draw too much attention by getting mixed up in politics. But Charles Kushner was not like that. He was flashy, pushy, and ambitious, and was seen as gauche by others in their small community. In other words, he was kind of a dick. Charles Kushner wasn't ha , put this character on a reality show, trashy. He was throw him in the Basura, trashy for reasons we'll get to in a minute. Charles and his wife, Cyril had four children, Dara, Nicole, Joseph, and today's fucking guy , Jared Corey Kushner, born on january tenth, nineteen eighty one. Jared Cory , a name meant to be airbrushed on a t shirt on the wild wood boardwalk. Yep, that name comes with the trans and a vowel track description. Jerad was the older of the two Kushner boys and his father's favorite. According to Vicki Ward's book Kushner Inc. Travis Kushner thought of himself as a kind of Joseph Kennedy figure and thought that Jerad would make a great JFK . I think of Charles Kushner more like the George Blue and Jared more like the Buster. Charles wasn't all that interested in priming his daughters for greatness. This from a man who was descended from a woman so badass that she dug a tunnel out of a Nazi occupied village. Sexism is so dumb. Charles was a well known philanthropist who gave to schools and hospitals as well as synagogues and charitable causes both stateside and in Israel. He also donated to a lot of Democrat ic politicians. One was a young upstart named Cory Booker, who launched an ultimately failed Mayoral campaign in two thousand two, a campaign partially fueled by a donation from Daddy Kushner. Charles had a tight relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, the future Israeli prime minister, who would take Jared's childhood bed during one of his visits with the family, displacing Jared to the basement for the night. That is bananas. That's bananas. That's bananas. Kushner's priz ed political pet was a man named Jim McGreavy, who ascended all the way from Mayor of Woodbridge Township to the New Jersey Governor's Mansion before his career and life came crashing down. His rise in spectacular fall would not have been possible without Charles Kushner. In the few years between when Kushner and McGreavy met in the late nineteen nineties and when both men's lives went tits up, Kushner and his close associates donated at least three hundred sixty nine thousand dollars to McGre vy. Kushner was also what's known as a bundler, which is a donor who wrangles up donations from other donors. Reporting suggests that Kushner raised at least a million dollars for McGreevy when he successfully ran for governor of New Jersey in two thousand one. In two thousand two, McGreevey nominated Kushner to be the chairman of the port authority of New York and New Jersey. This was a powerful post that would have given Charles Kushner's sway over the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site as well as influence over billions in trade. Now, even for the corrupt world of New Jersey politics, this was a bridge and tunnel too far. As Charles was cozying up to McGreevey, trouble was brewing in the Kushner clan. The first generation of American cushioners were at one point a close knit extended family. According to a New York magazine piece from the early Auts, Esther, Murray, and Charles would take big extended family trips together, all the kids, all the grand kids, etc. But that all started to come apart when in two thousand one, Murray sued Charles over allegations that Charles had cheated Murray out of money from real estate deals. Murray's suit also alleged that Charles had been mismanaging funds in other ways, funneling millions to political candidates and public figures like Benjamin Netanyahu, to whom Charles had allegedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees. Before discovery could be completed and evidence of Charles dealings could be made public, the case was sealed. Enter Robert Yontif. Yontiff, a former Kushner company employee, also sued Charles , alleging he was fired after he'd helped Murray's lawyers assemble documents necessary for the original suit to proceed . So the port authority nomination happened while there were still all these unanswered questions about Kushner's business dealings. Charles Kushner had girl boss too close to the son. Because the pieces were moving into place from aggriev y's downfall to happen almost in tandem with Kushner's. In two thousand, Charles Kushner had taken McGrevy with him on one of his many trips to Israel. While they were there, according to Vicki Ward, Charles introduced McGrevie to a young man named Golan Sipple. After he was elected governor, McGreevy appointed Sipple to a homeland security post, which confused people because Golan Sipple had like no experience. Now that was back when people would actually get upset by no polit noticalhing, appointees. Eyebrows were raised. Whispers were wisped. McGreevy was married and had children, but by two thousand three, rumors were swirling that Sipple was going to file a sexual harassment suit against the governor, which would include allegations that the governor and SIPL were in a same sex relationship, which led to this Hall of Fame awkward press conference . I engaged in an adult consensual affair with another man , which violates bonds of matrimony . It was wrong , it was foolish , it was inexcusable . And for this I asked the forgiveness and the grace of my wife . She has been extraordinary throughout this ordeal , and I am blessed by virtue of her love and strength . Given the circumstances surrounding the affair , and its likely impact upon my family and my ability to govern . I have decided the right course of action is to resign. Sometimes I'm worried that we haven't come very far or I'm like, man , things are worse now for women than they were in the nineties and then I see footage like this and I'm like, I feel like today it would be more acceptable for a wife to be like , fuck you though. Like, I'm not standing behind you. One of them were recounted by New York Magaz ine was that it was Kushner who had egged Sipples lawsuit on because Kushner knew he was about to go down and wanted to take McGree with him. After McGree's resignation, state lawmakers demanded that Kushner submit to a review of his business pract ices before they'd confirm him to one of the most powerful appointments in the state. But rather than be scrutinized, Charles Kushner withdrew his nomination. This did not help dispel suspicions that Charles Kushner was hiding some dirty dealings, investigators started sniffing around. And that's when Charles Kushner really broke back. He suspected that his sister, Esther Shoulder and her husband, Bill, were helping the Feds in their investigation into Kushner's dealings. And so to get back at her, he paid a prostitute ten thousand dollars to lure Bill to a hotel , seduce him, and secretly record the sexual encounter. Krishna then mailed the tape of the blow job to Bill's wife again, his own sister and timed it to arrive on the same day as her son's engagement party. Keep it classy. So anybody who's looked into Jared Kushner's piece of shit dad knows about that, but I was surprised to learn in researching this that Charles Kushner tried the same scheme with a different guy, Robert Yontuf, the guy who had helped with Murray's lawsuit. Yontuf rejected the prostitute's advances, though. In two thousand four, an ambitious federal prosecutor by the name of Chris Christie secured an eighteen count indictment against Daddy Kushner. The charges included illegal campaign contributions, tax crimes, and witness retaliation. Yeah, the witness retaliation charge came courtesy of Kushner's sister Esther, who had taken her husband's blow job tape directly to the Fed. What a messy bunch. Kushner surrendered willingly and pled guilty. Why? Well, there's a lot of speculation about this. One school of thought is that Christie's investigation had been so aggressive that Kushner's team just wanted him to lay off before he uncovered other stuff. Vicki Ward reported in Kushner Inc that the unsubstantiated rumor that Christie had threatened to expose Kushner for being secretly bisexual, or other salacious details of his personal life. There's never been any verified evidence confirming this rumor, but the fact that it exists and is written down in a book is a testament to what an attack dog Christie was and how eager he was to bring Charles Kushner down. Gotta respect it, right? Respect. Let's get back to Jared for a second. Growing up, the future golden boy of the Trump White House was, by all accounts, about as unremarkable as a white gym sock. He attended private Jewish schools where he was a mediocre student. He played high school basketball and was a big fan of Billy Joel . That's Seaton Hall Caliber, not Ivy League . But shortly before it was time for Jera to apply to college, Charles made a two point five million dollars donation to Harvard University and then , lo and behold, his favorite son got in. What did he do? Darret got in over the actual exceptional students at his high school that had better grades than him. Mediocracy at work. The line is actually meritocracy, but mediocracy at work. Whatever boat. Great. Hey, let's keep the portmanteau. I love it. Mediocracy. By most accounts, Jared was also boring and average at Harvard, returning home most weekends and spending his free time buying and selling real estate in the greater Boston area. After graduating enro,lled he at NYU in a dual MBA and JD program. Wow, so he must have done okay at Harvard. I mean, hard to say. He was enrolled in the NYU program in two thousand three, which happened to be the same year that Charles Kushner rented some prime office space to NYU at a discounted rate, and he'd also made a donation to NYU in the recent past. Weird. Charles Kushner went to prison in two thousand five, and when his dad was in the clinic, Jared would visit him regularly. He maintains to this day that his father was not a corrupt piece of trash, but rather a victim of prosecutorial excess, even though in his twenty twenty two book Breaking History, he admitted that his dad made some big mistakes. Darred hasn't said much about the actual academic aspects of his college years. After college, he used the money he earned from collegiate junior slum learning to purchase the New York Observer, a once venerable journalistic outfit that he would go on to slowly ruin. He hired former Gawk Editor Elizabeth Sears to sit atop the masthead. Spears has recounted both on social media and in a lengthy out for the Washington Post that Jared was kind of an idiot who didn't know what he was doing. Spears observed his business acumen thusly, quote, yes, he ran the company, but he inherited, not uncommon in New York's dynast ic insulat real estate world, but he was sure he had the goods. When I worked for him, I didn't think he had a realistic view of his own capabilities since, like his father in law. He seemed to view his wealth and its concomitant accoutrements as rewards for his personal success in business and not something he would have had in any case. To me, he appeared to view his position and net worth as the products of an essentially meritocratic process. I've also heard through second hand sources that Jerry is quote dumb and mean. Somebody I know who worked for the observer during these years after the Spears era said that they never saw Jared in the office, not once. It's pretty much consensus among media watchers that Jared destroyed the New York Observer, but quality journalis m that New Yorkers can depend on was never what he aimed to do. Some have implied that the real reason Jared bought the observer so that there'd be a place for him to launder his family's flagging reputation. Charles Kushner got out of jail in two thousand six after serving fourteen months of his two year sentence and served out the remainder of his term in a halfway house. After that, he wasn't supposed to be taking an active role in running the company, but it was widely acknowledged that Charles was the puppet master even though Jared technically had the title of head of his dad's company. I mean, Bluth family vibes. two thousand seven was a big year for bumpet hairstyles, forever twenty one going out tops, and Jared Kushner. For one thing, this was the year he intro wasduced his f touture wife, Ivanka Trump. Charles and Sarah Kushner had some issues with her at first because she wasn't Jewish. For a time the two broke up that they got back together. According to Vicki War, Donald Trump was also initially disappointed with Jared before coming around to him. He'd hoped to marry his prize child off to New England patriots quarterback Tom Brady . Seriously, it sounds like something like a six year old would do crazy. But both sets of parents eventually came around to the coupling after all, both families were Manhattan outsiders who desperately wanted the adoration and fear of the insiders who looked down on them. Ivanka converted to Judaism, and in two thousand nine, Javanka got married in a five hundred person over the top ceremony at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Alyssa, I wonder if Mother of the Bride, Ivana Trump knew that within a decade, she'd be buried on that very golf course. I knew that's where you were going. Ivanka wore a Vira Wang gown meant to pay homage to Grace Kelly, who she's weirdly obsessed with. She tried to do Grace Kelly cosplay at her sister Tiffany's wedding years later, America's Princess Girl boss. Yes, Jared and Ivanka, like their parents, are also weirdly obsessed ed with the Kennys. Now I know you and I have talked about this, but you know, all three of Ivanka and Jared's kids have Kennedy names. Yes, Joseph , Theodore, and Arabella. Now who is Arabella? Arabella is the name of JFK and Jackie's first daughter , who died shortly after she was born. Jackie O, more like Taki O . So that's the fairy tale origin of the Javonkin romance. But back to Banner Year two thousand seven, that's when Jared demonstrated his impeccable market timing by purchasing six hundred and sixty six fifth Avenue. I went on a rabbit hole researching this episode and yes, it turns out that a powerful Orthodox Jew with ties to Israel purchasing a building with the address six hundred and sixty six was not handled calmly by America's antisemitic lunatic fringe. Their theory is that the Kushners are part of a secretive sect that worships the ancient Canaanite god BAL. Wow . Yeah, BAAL is huge in the lunatic fringe right now, Alyssa , it's so much ball. I saw more than a few message board dwellers suggesting that Jared is the Antichrist, which is so silly on its face because the antichrist would have more gravitos than a guy who sounds like this when he talks. My name is Jared Kushner. I am senior advisor to President Donald J. Trump . When my father in law decided to run for president , I served his campaign the best I could because I believe in him and his ability to improve the lives of all Americans . And now, serving the president and the people of the United States has been the honor and privilege of a lifetime. You know what I mean? Like the antichrist is gonna be like, he's gonna have like a James Earl Jones thing. A hundred percent. He's got a have Rizz. Jared Kushner is associated with real stupid and real evil stuff. No need to involve the old gods here. When Derr tried to make his fellow dad's skyscraper wishes come true by purchasing a building with an unfortunate address, real estate had been going up, up, up. Number not go down. Not ever. And so Kushner companies led at least on paper by Jared aggressively pursued the eye popping one point eight billion dollars purchase of six ty six fifth Avenue. At the time it was the biggest transaction in the history of Manhattan commercial real estate, as it was. Shortly thereafter, the two thousand eight financial crisis would hit and uh oh, number go down. Uh oh. In the ensuing years, that's how I imagine business school. Yep, uh oh where's number fall down ? In the ensuing years six , six, fifth Af would become considered one of the worst real estate deals in all of Manhattan. What a business savant. I can't believe that anybody would suggest that Jared didn't deserve to get into Harvard. In the years before Jared's father in law would slither down the golden escalator and embed himself into our nightmares forever, Jared Kushner was focused primarily on his family's real estate portfolio, which consisted mainly of what people might refer to as down market apartment rentals that are frequently the subject of complaints . Yeah, the Kushners are slum lords. That's a loaded term . I've got some reasons to back this up. Okay. It's based on a long wrap sheet of alleged slimy behaviors like the tenants of eighteen Sydney Place and Brooklyn Heights who sued Kushner companies for illegally charging market rate rent on apartments that should have been rent stabilized between twenty thirteen and twenty sixteen. Kushner companies allegedly filed false paperwork claiming that buildings they owned didn't contain rent stabilized tenants. They did this eighty different times across thirty four different buildings. Why would they do that? To dodge city oversight for renovations, they allegedly would try to use no noisy and disrupt ive construction work as a way to force tenants out. Funny story. When I was in NYC, I dated a guy whose building was bought by a Kushner company and basically right away the long term super was kicked out for renovations that were incredibly loud and seemed unsafe. I remember hearing about this one. Kushner Village in the East Village was subject to a lawsuit alleging unsafe conditions, like non working fire sprinklers, neglected repairs, and generally unlivable conditions. Residents at one point wanted to withhold rent because their apartments were so crappy. Best city in the world New York . In twenty eighteen, the Kushner company was fined two hundred ten thousand dollars for filing false paperwork while Jared was in charge. They'd claim that buildings were empty in order to obtain construction permits when in fact they're full of tenants, some of which are rent controlled. They did that over and over again. Seems like a favorite trick of theirs. Yeah, so that's why I call them slum lords. Fair enough. Okay, let's get ahead a bit to the election of Donald Trump in twenty sixteen. I know we don't want to go there, but we've got to. Once Trump was elected, Jared immediately joined the transition team. The transition team was chaired by none other than Chris Christie, the former prosecutor who had thrown Jared dad's in prison a little more than a decade prior. Now, Jared had a problem with this. According to an interview Chris Christie gave to the fifth column podcast, Lil Kushner immediately whined about the appointment to Trump and kept whining about it until Christie was fired. Revenge is his. Yeah, it's like an anticlimactic version of the Sopranos where instead of killing Christopher, Tony complains about him to HR. It's always kind of seemed like Donald Trump talked about Jared Kushner, like he wanted to fuck his daughter vicariously through him. I know, but it's true. But during his first term in office, it became clear that Donald Trump also doesn't know anybody smarter than Jared Kushner. When Trump was inaugurated in twenty seventeen , Jared was named senior advisor and granted an interim top secret sensitive compartmented information or SCI clearance. Right. An interim clearance isn't weird by itself. Lots of senior officials of incoming administrations get temporary clearances while the process unfolds. Here's where it gets weird. He had initially submitted his background paperwork in twenty sixteen, but in twenty seventeen, he submitted at least three revisions that stated that actually he'd omitted extensive details of meetings with foreign officials, including Russian nationals. Team Kushner had said that the omissions weren't on purpose and that he corrected them once he discovered the errors. Still, his full clearance wasn't granted until twenty eighteen , and you know, I have some experience with these matters. The agent brought in my form, and soon she asked how many times had I smoked pot. I said, I didn't know. More than twenty? Yes, I replied, more than twenty. More than a hundred ? Yes, I said more than one hundred . More than five hundred . Just right unknown. They were finally satisfied with more than five hundred would be fair . Because she told the truth, because she didn't lie about the five hundred plus times she had smoked pot . Alyssa Master Monaco did get her security clearance . 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You make it home Jerad's disclosure slipperiness didn't stop him from being given a barbie adjacent number of jobs, but he's just Ken. He is pretty ken like. I don't think he has genitals, Lissa. Under Jerred's pants, the out line of molded plastic underwear and him and Ivanka kiss by mashing their faces together. I believe that. Yeah, Jared's most daunting job was being put in charge of the Middle Eastern peace process. Now this raised some alarm bells. Not disclosing foreign contacts, he had no experience in diplomacy, hadn't even been to most of the countries that he was supposed to be dealing with , although he had gone on a Star study trip to Jordan once. Second, Benjamin Netanyahu was a family friend who stayed over Jared's house. Yeah, that's a problem. Navigating the politics of the Middle East is a complicated job, requiring somebody with vast historical knowledge and the ability to manage conflicting sensitivities. Giving the job to Jared Kushner made about as much sense as choosing a heart surgeon based on how many hot dogs they can eat in under five minutes. But that didn't matter. Smartest guy President Trump knows. President Trump's leadership style is similar to the way a button mashing three year old plays video games. He wildly flails around, sometimes he randomly hits the button that does something good and because the game is so often rigged in his favor, even when he mashes the wrong button, he's usually insulated from the consequences of his mistakes. To be fair, the more we learn about how unremarkable the super rich are, the more it seems like a lot of them are just button mashing through life and being lauded as geniuses by people who want their money. I mean, Elon Musk, right here Teal. They're all button mashing. Critics of Kushner's handling of Middle East Peace, a hilarious collection of words to say in that order, pointed out that Jared frequently skipped over the State Department entirely in pursuing his goals , which broke protocol, but more importantly is just an inefficient way to conduct yourself as a member of the executive branch. Like trying to fix a broken bone with a little duck . Kushner enjoyed a cozy relationship with Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman or MBS, which got a bit awkward when, on october second, twenty eighteen, the Saudi American journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul and never left. Khashoggi was killed and dismembered with a bone saw by a fifteen man goon squad ostensibly in response to Khashoggi's vocal criticism of the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia has denied that MBS was directly involved, but both Turkish and American intelligence have independently concluded to the point of near certainty that the operation was carried out with the approval of MBS, if not at his direction. Whenever Jared has been asked about this, he's given one of his trademark pageant answers , of course we don't like murder, it's very bad. Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner. MBS is a dude I work with on things. Money please. Interviews with him sound like a shareholder call for a company that has had a bad quarter. Yeah, so after all this toe stepping and learning curving in the Middle East, Jared brokered a peace agreement called the Abraham Accords. But it's a stretch to call it a peace agreement when Israel had to make zero concessions to Palestinians. Palestinians weren't even initially involved, and critics say it actually resulted in more arms sales between countries, which made an already volatile region even more militarized, but great for Raytheon shareholders, I guess. But don't just trust us. We're professional haters. Let's see what the people who study this day in and day out have to say. Writing for Russ University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, Middle East Policy expert Omar Raman said the agreement one lacks intrinsic value, two is overreliant on the U. S. produces too much risk for Gulf States, four is tremendously unpopular in the Middle East, and five is facing the headwinds of a changing regional context. Okay , still , the accords take up a huge portion of Jared Kushner's Wikipedia page like it's the Harvard Diploma his dad bought him. President Trump put Jerred in charge of something called the Office of American Innovation. It was a job made up just for J ohn I've never heard of it . In theory, it was supposed to increase government efficiency and eliminate waste. In practice, the OAI kind of functioned like a middle manager, eager to take credit for processes that had already been underway when they took them on as projects. One function of OAI was supposed to be streamlining government agencies and cutting down on overlap , functions that were not performed at all by OAI and would go on to be performed with great clumsiness by the poorly behaved children of Doge eight years l ater. Steve Bannon once told me that he thinks Jared Kushner is dumb as a stick. A broken clock. Jared was also put in charge of immigration reform because why not? He set out to find a path for it in a divided country for f unding border security, how to handle ongoing protections for DOCA recipients, and reforms to the visa process. He tried to accomplish all of these goals at once. Therefore, he accomplished none of these goals. This might have been because he didn't involve actual key players in the immigration picture. He cut out career DHS officials, advocacy groups, actual experts, and Congress. Hm m. Seeing a pattern here. Derret's biggest White House faceplant was in helping handle the federal government's response to the COVID nineteen pandemic. First, like just about everybody in the administration, while he paid lip service to readiness and deference to experts, reality didn't bear his posturing out. This interview with Bloomberg that he did in january twenty twenty makes me feel a little sick to my stomach to watch today. How's the administration monitoring coronavirus? This is something that's on the minds of a lot of Americans . The answer is very closely. President Trump has been getting briefed regularly in the U. S. government, we have so many tremendous resources and incredible people, and the President has been meeting with them constantly. He's reached out to China to offer any support they may need. They're being very transparent so far. We believe in terms of the information they've been sharing with us. And the hope is that we'll continue to work the problem and hopefully it will get under control. Confidence inspiring By mid march twenty twenty, when life was shutting down and the pandemic was spiraling out of control, Jerod was put in charge of supply chain logistics for things like PPE and ventilators. On march nineteenth, he was front and center at a press conference about the Trump administration's response to supply shortages. You have instances where in cities they're running out, but the state still has a stockpile . And the notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use. So we're encouraging the states to make sure that they're assessing the needs. They're getting the data from their local local situations and then trying to fill it with the supplies that we've given them. The same thing with the mas the Pksres.ident What and the Vice President were able to do with Congress was to get the waiver so that you could expand the pool because a lot of the masks were used for the construction industries. Now there's a much bigger pool of masks in the country . There was a stockpile. They distributed that based on where they anticipated a lot of the need would go, but a lot of that still is stuck with the states and it hasn't trickled down to the right places within the state. So I would just encourage you, when you have governors saying that the federal government hasn't given them what they need, I would just urge you to ask them, well, have you looked within your state? What is the federal stockpile for if not for U. S. citizens ? And also so many words word salad, nothing. But behind the scenes, Jared was screwing the pandemic pooch. According to a report in Vanity Fair by Catherine Iban, during those early days of the pandemic, private sector business leaders were eager for direction on how to redirect their industrial output toward providing essential medical supplies , but they needed President Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act in order for the plan to work. That plan ran into a Jared Kushner shaped pothole. I'm going to read from Ibon's reporting of how one particularly crazy Kushner led me meeting went. Quote, Kushner, seated at the head of the conference table, in a chair taller than all the others, was quick to strike a confrontational tone. The federal government is not going to lead this response, he announced. It's up to the states to figure out what they want to do. One attendee explained to Kushner that due to the finite supply of PPE, Americans were bidding against each other and driving prices up. To solve that, businesses eager to help were looking to the federal government for leadership and direction. Free markets will solve this, Kushner said dismissively. That is not the role of government. The same attendee explained that although he believed in open markets, he feared that the system was breaking, as evidence he pointed to a CNN report about New York Governor Andrew Cuom o and his desperate call for supplies. That's the CNN bullshit, Kushner snapped. They lie. According to another attendee, Kushner then began to rail against the governor. Cuomo didn't pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state. His people are going to to have suffer and that's their problem. End quote So essentially, Jared Kushner used his role at the center of the federal government's COVID nineteen response to be like, hey, we're not going to do anything to help . That's for the states Kafkaesque corporate nonsense. Ibon reported that later that summer, Jared quote had commissioned a robust federal COVID nineteen testing plan only to abandon it before it could be implemented , why would anyone do that? For the most gross and evil reason imaginable, politics. twenty twenty was an election year. Some in the White House believed that the virus was hitting Democratic states and cities the hardest, and that when federal government allowed those states to twist in the wind, Republicans could blame Democratic elected officials. Yuck. Okay . Ibon called Kushner's approach to COVID, the consultant state as opposed to the deep state, which I think is brilliant. That description paints a picture of a bunch of useless McKenzie types circling back around and putting a pin in it and ideating on deliverables , which makes Kushner's waxy grimacing through COVID seem even more sinister. I think you'll see by June, a lot of the countries should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July, the country's really rockin' again. Federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story . And I think that that's really what needs to be told ? Rockin' . Uf . Whenever you get mad about how twenty twenty screwed our lives up, remember, it was kinda a little bit Jared Kushner's fault. Kinda informally Ja,red was also a White House communication coordinator, which is code for sticking his nose into everything and mucking up the gears. Christian is one of those business boys who doesn't know anything about the world and surmises with a bunch of MBA brainiacs that say, Hey, maybe it is time to rein vent the wheel, you know? Now let's check back in with the Kushner family business. Remember six, six fifth Avenue? Of course. Well yeah, the family was growing increasingly desperate to restructure the debt on that building because it was such a terrible investment that it could have taken the whole company down with it. Luckily , and I'm sure completely coincidentally, during the first couple of years of Trump one point zero, what do you know? Kushner companies secured a Freddie Mac Back refinancing deal with incredibly favorable terms for ten years, they would only need to pay the interest on the seven hundred eighty six million dollars loan, which covered servicing of six fifth Avenue in addition to other properties in the Kushner portfolio. In twenty eighteen, the property was sold to a few different entities, and the Kushner family's original investment was basically wiped out. Now, there's no smoking gun here to prove that Jared Kushner's sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, invoked her brother's name at any stage in the negotiating process with Fred die Mac, or that Jared himself was directly involved in lining up financing or buyers. But the appearance of impropriety, when the family business of a high level government official secures a ridiculously favorable loan backed by the government , that doesn't look great. This showcased how susceptible Jared was to influence from foreigners because his family business needed access to capital. Foreign entities could offer that capital. Why wouldn't they ask for a little something extra? Favorable treatment by a high ranking member of the administration, perhaps? Perhaps. By the end of Trump one point zero, Jared Kushner was trudging along with the burden of his duties and scrutiny like Florence P atepp theer end of midsummer , and he was tired of all the attention. You won't have Jared Cory Kushner to kick around anymore, America. Soon after departing, the White House's brand new private equity firm Affinity Partners nabbed a two billion dollars investment from a Saudi fund. The face of the other side of this deal was none other than his not murderer but not a murderer, not a friend but not a friend, Muhammad bin Salman. Bonesaw boy, allegedly. Yep, and according to Andrea Bernstein in the Atlantic, MBS invested in J ared's business against the advice of his own advisors. This was mainly because Jared's firm was unsatisfactory in all aspects, according to their analysis. Makes sense, Jared and his partners had barely any experience in private equity before starting his post Trump fund. Yeah, but MBS wanted to invest because they wanted to maintain a friendship with Kushner. Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, what were we saying about susceptibility to foreign influence? Apparently Jared,'s Mark status is the worst kept secret in international relations. In interviews during the Biden years, Jared swore off participating in politics as he scurried around the world, collecting money from shady foreigners like a squirrel on a nut farm. But the sirens ' call of political involvement drew him back in. Jared Kushner is now Schrodinger's secretary. He is a government official when he needs access to state secrets and foreign leaders , but he's not a government official when he wants to use that access to make money. Bernstein writes, without title or remit or any kind of official designation, only presidential son in law, Kushner has in the first fourteen months of the second Trump administration sat down with world leaders, including Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, along with Saudis and multiple other actors from the Middle East. That is quote Bananas. I know . You don't need security clearance when you're not an official official. He's getting all the access that comes with working for the government with none of the constraints. It's like meeting somebody's parents and then they still refuse to call you their girlfriend. Except this is exactly what Jared wants. He's free of the pesky headline risk that came with working in the White House in an official capacity, and now he can do what he probably always wanted to do anyway, which is enrich himself by playing a game that has never been more rigged for him. He can cosplay as JFK and Joseph Kennedy at the same time . He's not a special government employee like Elon Musk was. He's not an employee at all. According to the White House, he's a volunteer. Alyssa, is that is that a thing? I can confirm volunteer is not a real thing . Volunteer is not a real job in the White House. Look at whatever Jared is, he's doing some very sensitive shit. He went to Davos presenting a plan for the future of Gaza, but also while at Davos, he was soliciting cash for his private equity firm. Jared has said some weird things about Gaza. Like during this interview where and he mused about the valuable waterfront property, it was the site of hundreds of thousands of mostly civilian deaths at the hands of the Israeli military. There are real fears on the part of Arabs and I'm sure you talk to a lot of them who think once Gaz leave Gaza, Netanyahu's never going to let them back in. Maybe, but I'm not sure there's much left of Gaza at this point. So if you think about even the construct like Gaza, Gaza was not really a historical precedent, right? It was the result of a war, right? You had tribes that were in different places, but then Gaza became a thing . Egypt used to run it. And then over time, you had different governments that came in different ways. How do we deal with the terror threat that is there so that it cannot be a threat to Israel or to Egypt? Right? I think that both sides are spending a for tune on military. I think neither side really wants to have a terrorist organization enclaved right between them. In Gaza's waterfront property, it could be very valuable to if people would focus on kind of building up livelihoods. You think about all the money that's gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions if that would have gone into education or innovation , what could have been done? And so I think that it's a little bit of an unfortunate situation there. But I think from Israel's perspective , I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up. But I don't think that Israel has stated that they don't want the people to move back there afterwards. Waterfront what a we always knew Oh my god, jaw on the floor. Now, does Jared Kushner's family stand to benefit financially from other unrest in Israel? Also, yes, according to analysis from Jacobin magazine. The Trump administration recently lifted sanctions against settlers in the occupied West Bank in East Jerusalem. These settlers are responsible for at least a thousand attacks on Palestinians in the last year. Just before the Israeli ceasefire was announced, Kushner's private equity firm received regulators approval to double its stake in Phoenix Financial Limited in Israeli insurance behemoth that, among other things, finances and insures construction of settlers' homes and businesses in Palestinian territory. Jared has said the investment has already returned ninefold. Congrats dude, I guess that way to go. By the end of twenty twenty four, Kushner's private equity enterprise was ninety nine percent funded by foreign money. In the run up to the twenty twenty four presidential election, a Senate committee looked into Kushner's business and discovered that they'd been paid one hundred fifty seven million in management fees by foreign clients and they hadn't paid anything out. How would somebody invest in something that doesn't pay out unless they're getting something besides money from the arrangement? Ethics disclosures. We don't need no stink in ethics disclosures. Here's Jared bullshitting his way through an explanation about why it's okay for him to be jetting around the world, acting like a government official by traveling on government planes with special envoy Steve Witcoff. What people call conflicts of interest, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world . If Steve and I didn't have these deep relationships, the deal that we were able to help get done that freed these hostages would not have occurred. Worst episode of Couples Therapy ever Truly . Through all this , Jared found time in twenty twenty two to write , write a book. New York Times book reviewer Dwight Garner described Kushner's breaking history as lengthy and soulless. Garner wrote, Kushner looks like a mannequin and he writes like one. And now I'm going to read an excerpt from this review because Alyssa, as you know, bitchy takedowns are my favorite genre of literary total criticism. Just beautiful. This is great. This book is like a tour of a once majestic eighteenth century wooden house now burned to its foundations that focuses solely on and rejoices in what's left amid the ashes the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox. Kushner's fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog's eyeboard . The tone is college admissions essay, typical sentence in an environment of maximum pressure. I learned to ignore the noise and distractions and instead to push for results that would improve lives . Every political cliche gets a fresh shampooing. Quote, Even in a starkly divided country, there are always opportunities to build bridges, Kushner writes, and quoting the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Chris Ledell, every day here is sand through an hourglass and we have to make it count so true for these are the days of our lives and quote Yum delayed so good. It's so good. You have to read the whole review. In twenty twenty six, Forbes estimated that Kushner has joined the ranks of American billionaires. That's up from nine hundred million in twenty twenty five. And he did it all on his own. Yep, nobody helped him at all, all on merit, like his Harvard and NYU admissions and that job in the White House and that loan his family business got when he was working for the White House and the two billion the Saudis gave his fledgling fund, all hard work, all grit . Now he's not the first Kushner to hit a billion though. That distinction belongs to both his dad and his father's second favorite son, Josh Kushner, founder of Oscar Health and husband of supermodel Carly Kloss, otherwise known as the Less Terrible Kushner. He was photographed at the Women's March in twenty seventeen , which is slightly more than the least he could possibly. I stood next to him . That is so wide. I know it's so weird. Okay, and what became of Charles Cushner, the Falonist Patriarch? Well, everything turned out just fine for him. In one of his last acts before leaving office the first time, President Trump gave Daddy Kushner a full pardon. Chris Christie has suggested that the only reason that Jared joined the administration in the first place was so that he could make that happen . And after Trump was inaugurated a second time, Charles Kushner , who had once hired a prostitute to seduce his own brother in law in order to get revenge on his sister , was nominated to be ambassador to France. One Democrat voted to approve the appointment , New Jersey's Corey Booker, a long ago recipient of some of that sweet, sweet, Kushner political donation money. So there you have it folks. Jared Corey Kushner, the silver spoon slope shouldered favored son of a crook who has been handed everything and earned nothing, except of course, our collective derision. Grandma Ray, the one time refugee who lived in a hole to escape the Nazis , is shaking a rolling pin at these clowns from the afterlife. Yes, she is. Alyssa, where does Jared lie on our matrix of fucking guys? All right, so we'll go with scheming sociopath , an opportunist, right? He doesn't believe in anything, does he other than money? Yeah, I think that he is an opportunist and a little bit of a dumbass, but if you're really, really rich, like the opportunities you get just like keep coming, and you keep thinking that you made them happen. Oh , he really does think he made it all happen. That about wraps up the time we have this episod fore of this fucking guy. If you like what you see, hit the like button, share with your friends, and leave us a comment if you've got an idea for a future fucking guy subject. This episode was written and researched by me, Erin Ryan with an assist from Melissa Master Monico. Carolyn Reston is histor hisious senior produc er, all the rest of our credits as well as links to our sources, like Andrea Bernstein's work in the Atlantic and Craig Horowitz's banger of a piece on Jim McGreevy from New York magazine