Jared the joke

I admit I have never had any use for Prince Jared Kushner. Indeed, while I have spent much of my career saying much about how every Jew has the duty to love every other Jew, I must admit I have nothing but contempt for Jared.

There’s just something about him, something so nauseating. I think mostly it’s that he has so little ability and yet seems to have so little recognition of that. He is the very epitome of the old saying about someone being born on third base who thinks he hit a triple.

Jared has been very successful and yet has actually achieved nothing in his life, has failed at almost everything and yet keeps climbing higher and higher.

For those few poor souls who still use AOL, of which sadly I am one, you know that when you sign on to your email account, up pops a screen that has the latest news from that most trusted source of news, AOL. It goes from one screen to the next, usually about 50 in all, letting you know all they think you need to know.

Let me pause here for a second to mention how truly terrifying it is that most Americans, especially most young Americans, get most of their news from Facebook. The absurdity of that explains almost everything wrong with society today, and there is quite a bit wrong, more and more wrong each and every day.

Indeed, I truly don’t recognize the world that I grew up in, so much has changed and so much not for the better. I know most of us tend to romanticize the good old days, but I do clearly remember my early days and remember clearly that people were more decent, kinder and that when it came to news, you had very trusted sources, filled with journalists who had devoted their entire lives to finding and reporting the truth.

The truth is that when we just had NBC and ABC and CBS, we had news organizations that didn’t care about the bottom line, had reporters all over the world and had seasoned journalists who cared about nothing else but finding the best available version of the truth.

You could trust and rely on Walter Cronkite, my journalistic hero, and David Brinkley and Ted Koppel, one of the most impressive people I’ve ever interviewed. And you could count on the reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post, reporters backed up by experienced editors. Please note by the way that almost everything we know about the Trump administration’s dangerous misdeeds is the result of stories in the Times and Post. If it weren’t for those papers, Russian stooge Michael Flynn would very likely still be national security advisor and wives beater Rob Porter would still be staff secretary, handling top secret documents.

But while thankfully we still have the Times and the Post, we scarily also have Facebook which has no journalists, doesn’t understand what journalism is about, cares only about the bottom line, and yet somehow in this crazy world in which we live is the go to source for news for most people.

It is no wonder the Russians used it as their main vehicle to spread falsehoods, to mess with our democracy and to do all they could to get Trump elected. When I was a kid, we were taught to hate and fear the Russians, to realize that the Russians were a force for evil and were always up to no good. I remember vividly watching ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’ cartoons, which featured a couple of Russian spies, Boris Badanov and his sidekick Natasha. It taught even young kids watching cartoons to understand the Russians were not our friends.

And so, while I don’t know what Robert Mueller will eventually find, I do find it disturbing and revealing that the Russians wanted Trump to win. Why? Why would our enemy want him to be our leader? And why when Trump has something critical to say about virtually everyone, has he to this very minute never found one bad thing to say about Vladimir Putin, who is Boris Badanov in the flesh. Why?

Anyway, I digress. One other person that Trump likes is Prince Jared, which kind of makes him this country’s most powerful Jew. Why, I keep wondering, are so many who are the most famous, most powerful, most wealthy among us, such creeps. Eliminate all the Jews involved in the sexual harassment scandals of the last few months and the scandal is but a tiny blip. Literally almost half of the famous men caught with their pants down have been Jews. Something to think and worry about.

But let’s get back to Jared. The AOL story was about how he may very well lose his security clearance at the White House. Seems that even after a year, he has not yet been approved to have a permanent security clearance, which means the FBI has found stuff about him that gives them pause, and that should give us pause.

The AOL report begins by saying that “Jared Kushner was born a simple rich boy” and then goes into great detail about how his whole life has been about achieving things not because he deserved or earned them, but because he or his daddy could afford them.

Jared, who got lousy grades in high school, got into Harvard just months after his father made a $2.5 million donation to the university. Jared got into graduate school at New York University, just weeks after his father made a large gift to the school. Jared took over his father’s real estate empire when his dad was in jail for tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions and other crimes. Oh and to give you a sense of the moral fiber of the Kushner mishpachah, Kushner was found guilty in part thanks to evidence provided by his sister’s husband. Out of revenge, daddy Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, had them videotaped while having sex and then showed the video to his sister. Jared’s business acumen was shown when he bought 666 Park Avenue, paying the most money ever paid anywhere for a building. He actually paid far more than it was worth. But remember that Jared once said that “real estate is porn for rich people.” Jared took a huge financial bath on the property, but just when it seemed he might have to declare bankruptcy as a result, he was rescued when a Chinese company bought a piece of the building, right after Trump was elected and Jared was put in charge of US-China relations.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that everything Jared has achieved is because he or his father bought it for him. Indeed it is fair to say that the only things Jared has truly done right is be born into a rich real estate family and marry into a rich real estate family.

He makes me sick. He makes me sick because he was fine when his father in law absurdly put him in charge of more than a dozen big jobs, from totally revamping how government operates to solving the opioid crisis to achieving a peace deal in the Middle East. He is not qualified to do any of those and yet thinks he is the best who can handle all of those. And oh as to his political chops, please note that it was Jared who urged Trump to fire Jim Comey. Jared thought it would be good for Trump and we all know how that worked out.

I despise Jared for his arrogance, despise him for his ignorance and despise that he makes himself out to be the prince of the Jews when in fact he is a walking example of the worst Jewish stereotypes. I cringed watching that AOL report. And I cringe when he calls himself and the missus Ivanka, Orthodox Jews. If they act or dress as Orthodox Jews, then I am a Buddhist monk.

Let’s take the Middle East piece of his portfolio. The guy really believes he can do what no one else has been able to do, not Dennis Ross or Bill Clinton or anyone with far more experience and wisdom. But he thinks he’s oh so clever and so he spent a whole night sitting up with the corrupt and greedy and equally arrogant crown prince of Saudi Arabia, sure his silver tongue could charm the Saudi prince to do stuff that will make it possible for the Jewish prince to bring peace. Jared is so stupid he doesn’t realize that of course the Saudi prince let him think he is going to help make peace. Boy, is Jared going to be shocked when he turns to the Saudi prince to deliver, and he finds out he has no intention of truly helping. Never did.

I found it particularly telling and hilarious this week when Jared and his flunkies in the Trump administration charged with making Middle East peace were practically urinating in their pants because Palestinian president Abbas went to the United Nations and made what they saw as a major and historic concession.

In his speech, Abbas recognized Jerusalem’s holiness to Jews. Yep, that’s what he did, but the reaction by Jared and his boys made you think Abbas asked Bibi out for dinner and a movie.

There Jared was, sitting right behind US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley as Abbas made his historic speech, telling us what is as obvious as that the sky is blue.

In a nauseating statement, Jared’s boys said “We appreciated the opportunity to listen to his speech,” adding “We were hoping to hear some new and constructive ideas, and the recognition that Jerusalem is holy to Jews in addition to Muslims and Christians is a step in the right direction.”

Hard to imagine a tinier step. How pathetic it is, how desperate Jared and his boys are that they grabbed onto a statement acknowledging that Jerusalem is holy to Jews as if it was some big whoop. But considering that Jared has been working on peace for more than a year and has nothing to show for it, I guess you gotta take what you can get.

Why peace is not going to happen now was seen by how the Israelis reacted. While Jared and his boys were overjoyed with what Abbas said, in his response to Abbas’ speech, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said of Abbas that “rather than driving just 12 minutes between Ramallah and Jerusalem, he has chosen to fly just 12 hours to New York to avoid the possibility of peace.”

Okay. For his part, Netanyahu said Abbas “offered nothing new. He continues to flee from police and continues to pay terrorists and their families.”

Please know that now that the Israeli police have recommended that Bibi be charged with a series of corruption related crimes, you can be sure he will become even more intransigent, inflammatory, will do all he can to make trouble so that he can paint himself as the tough guy who can handle the Palestinians and Iran. Even though it was under his watch that last week, an Israeli jet fighter was shot down for the first time in decades and an Iranian drone flew into Israeli airspace.

Everything his whole life has come easy to Jared, has been handed to him on a silver platter. Boy, is he in for a surprise when he finds out that peace in the Middle East is not something daddy can buy him.