The Family Business: Nepotism, Incompetence, and the Death of Americans
Thursday’s White House coronavirus pandemic brought a new twist. For weeks on end we’ve been delivered fresh hell after fresh hell, one indecipherable and infuriating Donald Trump performance after another. On a Monday maybe he would brag about his ratings during a generational pandemic and on Tuesday maybe he’d discover “a new tone.” In the face of societal dread and existential rage, the briefings have been just more and more added abuse, more insult to injury.
But Thursday, Trump found yet another way to make things worse. Son-in-law Jared Kushner was shoved in front of the world looking like a terrified prep-school senior accepting a scholarship from a governor bought and sold by his billionaire father. But this dead-eyed, trust-fund power broker is now in charge of one of the most consequential American projects since the storming of the beaches of Normandy.
“Some governors you speak to or senators,” Kushner would say, addressing his oversight of the distribution of ventilators needed to save hundreds of thousands of lives, “and they don’t know what’s in their state. You have to take inventory in your own state and you have to show that there’s a real need.”
And: “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 the state’s stockpile that they then use, so we’re encouraging the states to make sure that they’re assessing their need, that they’re getting the data from their local, uh, their local situations…”
You have to assume that many had glazed over during the disastrous performance, but anyone who couldn’t look away surely felt a creeping and loom sense of horror.
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When Donald Trump first met his future son-in-law Jared Kushner, he must have recognized part of himself in the young man. The son of a wealthy, unscrupulous real-estate investor, Kushner had been handed everything his entire life and had failed his way millions upon millions of dollars.
No doubt, Trump’s recognition of himself in Kushner is what created an unearned confidence in Kushner’s abilities to solve literally every problem in the world. Without so much as a shred of experience or proof of results, Kushner has been put in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the organization of government, an array of jobs and tests he has failed one time after another, and now the fight against a generational pandemic.
Kushner’s experience is in real-estate and he has failed. Gifted his father’s empire, like Trump, Kushner quickly ran the business into the ground and only survived because America cannot stand to let inheritors of riches and fortunes see the consequences of their actions. Before being appointed a senior adviser to the President of the United States of America, Kushner has been a non-entity in politics, a walking, talking zero who just happened to marry a woman whose father would become the most powerful man in the world.
It is…horrifying.
Moments like this only emphasize the pure madness at the heart of the Trump Experiment. Trump, himself, only entered into politics because television hosts and producers kept asking him what he thought of current events because he was reliably entertaining. He was a buffoon, a crass and disgusting old man who said crass and disgusting things about presidents and wars and the economy when he wasn’t saying crass and disgusting things about tabloid feuds between actors and actresses. That he could film scenes for The Apprentice and look professional with an army of stylists and editors buffering the world for him is the only qualification he’s ever been able to boast honestly.
And Kushner. In him, Trump not only sees himself, but the golden touch of success. For Trump, America is a meritocracy in action and result, and anyone with money or power must have earned it. In fact, Trump’s philosophy has long been one of genetics, that certain people are born successful and touched by God. It is eugenics in action, so to speak, and that philosophy has run through every fascist society in the history of man.
Now, because Kushner had the good sense to be born into wealth and marry into wealth, Trump sees someone capable of anything. After all, Trump believes politics and governance were so easy he could simply swoop in on one of his helicopters and save the world easy-peasy. Success breeds success breed success.
But this fantasy is not only fantasy, it’s now tragedy in motion. The Trump Administration is a family business, a banana republic-style crime family so focused on looting the country for money and resources that a few thousand Americans will die here, and a few hundred thousand there. Kushner could never match this task. It’s one that even a seasoned veteran of government would struggle under the weight of. But asking Kushner to handle the logistics of federal response like a father-in-law asking his son to clean out the shed is going to lead to more than just failure. It’s going to kill Americans.
We cannot look away from this horror. It is not fodder for jokes. It is not just “Trump being Trump.” It is a decision that will kill people you know, people you love. They will die terrible, agonizing deaths, alone, away from you and anyone who knows them, attended to by exhausted and terrified healthcare providers who will be waiting for the president’s son-in-law to send them a few rotted masks and gowns. It is a crime perpetrated against the American people and it is quickly becoming the family business.
Jared Yates Sexton is a political analyst whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere. He is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed Its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. Currently he serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.