After the Trump Administration’s decision that federal civil rights law does not protect LGBT people from workplace discrimination, one activist asked the New York Times: “Where’s Jared? Where’s Ivanka?”
That question, from Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin, was of course rhetorical. As we’ve long known, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are useless.
Yes, there was hope once that the supposedly socially progressive New Yorkers might be a moderating influence on our unpredictable president. But no.
Oh sure, they do PR. They pose, Ken and Barbie-like. (Flak-Jacket Ken? Cares-About-Working-Moms Barbie?) But none of that leads to anything good actually happening.
Ivanka Trump’s role in the White House is extremely unclear — her biggest contribution of late was a strategic interruption of an interview with Trump — with her daughter/prop in hand — in an attempt to humanize him as a doting granddad.
Kushner’s role is even less clear. He has a ridiculously long list of White House responsibilities — adviser, government re-inventor, unofficial diplomat and Middle East peace broker among them — but is best known for defending dicey meetings with Russians.
His uselessness in matters like Middle East peace brokerage isn’t surprising. His past experience, as Pro Publica and the New York Times reported in May, was tormenting low-income tenants.
Even some conservatives accidentally acknowledge Kushner’s basic uselessness. Steve Bannon famously called him a “cuck,” according to the Daily Beast. And Bill O’Reilly tweeted this week: “Kushner looks like a high school senior. … Hard to believe he’s fixing elections with Putin. In fact, impossible to believe.”
How is the guy who supposedly can’t fix an election going to fix the Middle East? O’Reilly doesn’t explain.
But I think Kushner deserves credit where it’s due — he clearly knows how to do things that are wildly unhelpful to the greater good.
Forbes reported in November that Kushner ran Trump campaign’s “secret data operation… like a Silicon Valley startup” and “eventually tipped the states that swung the election.”
Let’s say that’s true — and that Kushner neither provided nor received data from Russian hackers on which areas to target.
Trump’s electoral win makes Kushner the dog who caught the car. Or worse — handed the keys to his dirty dog dad-in-law.
On issue after issue where people thought/hoped/wished Kushner and Ivanka Trump might be a moderating influence — health care, Paris accords, the basic civil rights of anyone LGBT, saving health care for millions — Jared and Ivanka are nowhere.
Ivanka, never elected to anything, drew criticism for briefly filling in for her father at a G20 summit this month.
But don’t worry: She didn’t do anything.
She never does.