Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) fiercely defended Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in the wake of President Trump’s attacks on the Maryland Democrat and the Baltimore-area district he represents, The Hill reports.
Said Pelosi: “The president without — and this comes as no surprise — really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But maybe he could ask his son-in-law, who’s a slumlord.”
“In a now-viral tweetstorm on Saturday, President Trump characterized Rep. Elijah Cummings’s Baltimore-based congressional district as a ‘rodent infested mess’ where ‘no human’ would want to live,” the Washington Post reports.
“His criticism rang with a particular irony in Baltimore County, where presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner owns more than a dozen apartment complexes that have been cited for hundreds of code violations and, critics say, provide substandard housing to lower-income tenants… Tenants of Kushner properties reported mouse infestations, mold problems and maggots.”
Washington Post: “Kushner is the hidden hand of Trump’s 2020 campaign — rarely glimpsed in its Northern Virginia headquarters but signing off behind the scenes on everything from spending to digital initiatives to top-level hires.”
“He has asked Bill Stepien, a senior political adviser to the campaign, to provide him with a 10-year plan outlining how Republicans can win inner-city voters. He speaks daily — and often multiple times a day — with Parscale, and has recommended digital and media vendors for the campaign. Campaign aides who want to brief Trump often go through him. And when Kushner suggested that the campaign bring on Kayleigh McEnany as its national press secretary, Parscale made the hire.”
“Some allies liken Kushner to a de facto campaign manager, saying his role in Trump’s reelection bid is akin to Karl Rove for President George W. Bush or James Baker for President George H.W. Bush. Some of his critics agree — but also say that Kushner lacks the political savvy of those two experienced hands, and that his position smacks of nepotism.”
Gabriel Sherman: “What is a problem for the campaign, though, is the escalating cold war between Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. for control of the reelection, five sources close to the White House told me in recent days. Brad Parscale is the nominal campaign manager—but Jared and Don Jr., who both have good relationships with Parscale, are jockeying to be the ultimate decision makers.”
“The tensions between Don Jr. and Kushner amplified beneath the glare of the Mueller investigation… Don Jr. has told people he suspected Kushner was behind the initial leak of Don Jr.’s infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russians to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.”
Said a source: “Don Jr. and Jared really dislike each other. Don was telling people Jared leaked it to hurt him. No one could figure out how it leaked. It was a closely guarded secret.”
“Jared Kushner’s family averted disaster last year when a Canadian asset manager swooped in to buy their skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, which had been hemorrhaging millions of dollars. Now they’re facing a similar crisis a few blocks away,” Bloomberg reports.
“At the former New York Times building on West 43rd Street, a graying property in Times Square, the pattern is uncannily similar: Buy at a steep price, pile on too much debt, run up big losses, fight with tenants and flirt with default.”
“It’s the latest example of overreach for a family that built a fortune on suburban rental properties, only to have its urban ambitions stymied.”
“A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump,” the Guardian reports.
“Investment has flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the US… The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that guarantees corporate secrecy.”
Jared Kushner wouldn’t answer Jonathan Swan directly when asked if he disapproves of President Trump’s promotion of birtherism:
SWAN: Have you ever seen him say or do anything that you would describe as racist or bigoted?
KUSHNER: So, the answer is un — uh, no. Absolutely not. You can’t not be a racist for 69 years, then run for president and be a racist. What I’ll say is that, when a lot of the Democrats call the president a racist, I think they’re doing a disservice to people who suffer because of real racism in this country.
SWAN: Was birtherism racist?
KUSHNER: Um, look I wasn’t really involved in that.
SWAN: I know you weren’t. Was it racist?
KUSHNER: Like I said, I wasn’t involved in that.
SWAN: I know you weren’t. Was it racist?
KUSHNER: I know who the president is, and I have not seen anything in him that is racist. So, again, I was not involved in that.
SWAN: Did you wish he didn’t do that?
KUSHNER: Like I said, I was not involved in that. That was a long time ago.
Aaron Blake: “So for Kushner to dismiss it as trivial is to bury his own head in the sand. Kushner may not be a senior White House adviser without it. But of course, he didn’t really dismiss it; he actively sought to distance himself from it — which pretty much says it all.”
Jared Kushner told Axios on HBO that he doesn’t know whether he’d call the FBI if he were to receive an email today like the one before the campaign’s Trump Tower meeting, which had the subject line: “Re: Russia – Clinton – private and confidential.”
Kushner said this after a tense exchange about the email he received to set up the infamous Trump Tower meeting.
New York Times: “They are there before 7 a.m. to catch Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner departing for work. After switching shifts midday, they are also there at 8 p.m., when the couple usually return home. This repeats itself most days, including weekends and holidays.”
“Neighbors don’t seem to mind or even take notice. That’s because Kalorama already has its share of high-profile officials, with as many black town cars and Chevy Suburbans idling on its leafy drives as one might see in gangster’s cortège.”
“The paparazzi stay sandwiched between the Secret Service detail guarding the Trump-Kushner residence and another detail guarding the Obamas, who live a block away… Still, it’s a somniferous situation for the photographers, who camp out in their cars for hours at a time for a few seconds of activity.”
“Shortly after Donald Trump’s 2016 election, Paul Manafort wrote to Jared Kushner to ask the incoming administration to consider giving a ‘major appointment’’ to Manafort’s banker,” Bloomberg reports.
Replied Kushner: “On it!”
“That email exchange, which was admitted as evidence during Manafort’s tax-fraud trial last year, gained new significance Thursday with the unsealing of a federal indictment in New York. The new filing accused the banker, Stephen Calk, of extending loans to Manafort as part of an effort to bribe his way into a plum administration job.”
Playbook: “In the last two weeks, Jared Kushner has launched two initiatives: his big-time immigration plan, and an economic plan for the Middle East, aimed at empowering the Palestinians.”
“What’s the common thread here? In both cases, a debate about the merits was drowned out by an apparent lack of preparation — and coalition-building — by Jared’s crew in the White House.”
“On immigration, House Republicans and Democrats were caught flat-footed by the plan, and Jared’s team — deeply distrustful of everyone in the White House — didn’t have paper immediately to explain what they were trying to do.”
“As for Mideast peace, one of the immediate storylines that emerged was that the Palestinians said they were not consulted about the Palestinian economic empowerment summit that’s a month away in Bahrain. That led Middle East reporters and longtime Israel watchers to immediately doubt Jared’s plan.”
“Jared Kushner struggled to answer questions about his plan to overhaul the immigration system in a closed-door meeting with Republican senators Tuesday, winning little support for the proposal,” the Washington Post reports.
“Publicly, senators emerged from their weekly Capitol Hill luncheon, applauding the White House senior adviser’s pitch to move U.S. immigration toward a merit-based system that prioritizes highly skilled workers, a task he undertook at Trump’s behest.”
“But privately, Republican officials said Kushner had difficulty answering questions from a friendly audience, prompting Trump’s other senior adviser, Stephen Miller, to interrupt and take over the conversation.”
Jared Kushner is “preparing to sell ambitious fixes to two of the most stubborn problems of the past 50 years,” Politico reports.
“With a headlong plunge into immigration reform and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Kushner is presenting his political inexperience as an asset, telling lawmakers he is free of preconceived notions that stymied previous attempts. His air of breezy self-assurance in the private meetings he is conducting to tease his plans at times astounds the battle-scarred veterans of past such efforts. Critics complain, too, that his briefings are often woefully short on detail.”
Jared Kushner said that the Mueller probe was “more harmful” to the United States than Russian election interference Mueller was charged with investigating, Politico reports.
Said Kushner: “You look at what Russia did, buying some Facebook ads and trying to sow dissent. It’s a terrible thing. But I think the investigations and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years has a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple Facebook ads.”
“Jared Kushner has finally officially registered as a member of the Republican Party, voting records show, despite working as a senior adviser for his father-in-law, President Trump, since the early days of his administration,” Vice News reports.
“It wasn’t until Sept. 20, 2018, that Kushner changed his New York City voter registration to ‘Republican’ from ‘no party’ on an updated registration form to vote in the midterms.”
Bloomberg: “Saudi Arabia and Egypt are unlikely to throw their weight behind the proposal being drawn up by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and adviser, and White House Middle East peace negotiator Jason Greenblatt, according to interviews with key diplomats and analysts in Washington.”
“One diplomat described the initiative, which has yet to be made public, ‘hocus pocus’ and doubted whether Trump — who has raised questions about whether he supports a Palestinian state — cares about a negotiated settlement.”
“The House Oversight Committee on Thursday said it had obtained evidence that White House officials, including senior advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, used personal email accounts and messaging applications, a pattern the panel said appeared to violate laws governing White House records,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Philip Bump notes the use of WhatsApp “is particularly problematic because messages are encrypted between users, meaning that unless Kushner and Ivanka Trump stored copies of their messages or the recipients turned the messages over to the government, there’s no way to record what was said.”
“House Democrats are discussing investigating the cash infusion the Kushner Companies’ flagship New York office tower received in summer 2018,” Axios reports.
“Jared Kushner’s family real estate business provides Democrats with a new opening to investigate a senior White House official’s indirect connection to foreign money. Kushner has been helping conduct Middle East policy on behalf of the U.S. government.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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