THE MEETING
Kushner attends the
infamous Trump
To we r meeting with
a Russian lawyer to
get “dirt” on Hillary
Clinton, which he
later omits from his
security-clearance
application.44 | Rolling Stone | August 2019
DATA WHIZ
Kushner oversees
Trump campaign
digital operations,
hiring consulting
firm Cambridge
Analytica, which
illegally harvests
data from millions
of Facebook users.BACK CHANNEL
In a meeting with
the Russian am-
bassador, Kushner
suggests setting up
a secret direct line
of communication
between Donald
Trump and the
Kremlin.GOOD INVESTMENT
Kushner is named
White House senior
adviser, steps
down as CEO of his
family’s real-estate
firm, but gives hold-
ings to family rather
than placing them
in a blind trust.LARGE PORTFOLIO
A 36-year-old with no government
experience, Kushner is put in charge of
criminal-justice reform, fighting the opioid
crisis, reforming the VA, acting as liaison
to Mexico, China, and Saudi Arabia,
and brokering Middle East peace.CONFLICT OF
INTEREST
Right after Kushner
meets with a
Citigroup exec to
discuss trade policy,
Citigroup lends
$325 million to
Kushner Cos. and
a partner firm.BAD DEBT
Kushner Cos. seeks
funding from Qatar
for its debt-ridden
666 Fifth Avenue
property; Qatar
rebuffs and Kushner
backs a blockade
of the country
a month later.T
RAVELING HUNDREDS of miles
across Iowa, passing cornfields
and covered bridges, visiting
quaint small town after quaint
small town, listening to the
stump speeches of Democrat
after would-be Donald Trump-combating Dem-
ocrat, only one thought comes to mind:
They’re gonna blow this again.
Imagine how it looks to Republicans. If that’s
too difficult or unpalatable, just look at the
swarm of 24 Democratic candidates in high
school terms.
The front-runner — the front-runner! — is sep-
tuagenarian gaffe machine Joe Biden, who start-
ed running for president in the Eighties and
never finished higher than “candidacy with-
drawn,” with a career delegate total matching
John Blutarsky’s grade-point average, i.e., zero
point zero. The summer’s “momentum” chal-
lenger is California Sen. Kamala Harris, who
spent all year sinking in polls but surged when
she hit Biden with “I don’t think you’re a rac-
ist... but.. .” on national TV.
A third contender is Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
a famed red-state punchline who already has
10,000 Pocahontas tweets aimed at her head
should she make it to the general. Her “I have
a plan for that” argument for smarter govern-
ment makes her a modern analog to Mike Du-
kakis — another Massachusetts charisma ma-
chine whose ill-fated presidential run earned
him a portrait alongside the Hindenburg in a
Naked Gun movie.
A fourth challenger, Bernie Sanders, is a
self-proclaimed socialist born before the Pearl
Harbor attack who’s somehow more hated by
the national media than Trump. A fifth, Pete
Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has
never earned more than 8,515 votes in any
election. The claim to fame of a sixth, Beto
O’Rourke, is that he lost a Senate bid to the
world’s most-hated Republican. It goes on.
The top Democrats’ best arguments for office
are that they are not each other. Harris is risingin part because she’s not Biden; Warren, be-
cause she isn’t Bernie. Bernie’s best argument
is the disfavor of the hated Democratic estab-
lishment. The Democratic establishment chose
Biden because he was the Plan B last time and
the party apparently hasn’t come up with any-
thing better since. Nothing says “We’re out of
ideas” quite like pulling a pushing-eighty ex-
vice president off the bench to lead the most
important race in the party’s history.
The same kind of circular-cannibalism act in
the Republican field four years ago created an
opportunity for one Donald J. Trump, whose
carnival-barker personality smashed the bick-
ering competition like peanuts under a ball-
peen hammer. Trump’s appeal was negative
but elemental. He pulled votes from sick Amer-
ica like a lion ripping organs from an antelope.
He told voters: They’re politicians, I’m not.
They’re paid lackeys offering slogans, while I’m
the boss and I’m telling you what I’ll do.
You need something stronger than anoth-
er political rap to beat this, but if Iowa is any
judge, just a rap is what many Democrats are
bringing. With a few exceptions, all the can-
didates here are giving a version of the same
stump speech, which by itself is a problem —
voters tend to notice this sort of thing.
Then there’s the content, which, to para-
phrase Lincoln, is thinner than a soup made
from the shadow of a pigeon that starved to
death. The Democrats’ basic pitch reads like
a list of five poll topics: kids are in cages; let’s
close the gun-show loophole; this administra-
tion’s policies are an existential threat; some-
thing something Mitch McConnell; and Trump
is (insert joke here).
There are truths there, but in baseball terms,
it’s weak cheese Trump will swat into the seats.
Our walking civil war of a president reached of-
fice on a promise to burn it all down, which, in-
cidentally, he’s doing. A core psychological ap-
peal to destruction needs a profound response.
Slogans won’t work. Poll-and-pander won’t
work. True inspiration is the only way out.The Democrats had years to come up with
an answer to Trump that is fundamental, pow-
erful, and new, solving the problem the elder
George Bush once called “the vision thing.”
What’s mostly been shown instead is more of
the same. Literally more, as in three times the
usual suspects. The sequel even Hollywood
would never make is now showing in Iowa.
Clown Car II: The Democrats. God help us.T
HE QUADRENNIAL ASSAULT upon Iowa
of presidential candidates and na-
tional press is now as entrenched a
piece of Americana as Independence
Day fireworks or booing Roger Goodell. The
state’s status as the first nominating contest
is a byproduct of the last schismatic fiasco in
the Democratic Party, the 1968 nomination of
doomed placeholder-candidate Hubert Hum-
phrey. Reforms after that convention forced
states to space out their political calendars,
and Iowa — thanks in part to a paucity of Des
Moines hotel rooms during its planned conven-
tion week in 1972 — was forced to move every-
thing up in its schedule. The state soon passed
a law requiring its caucuses to stay first in line,
and Iowa has been in the catbird seat for decid-
ing nominees ever since.
Over the years, so many presidential candi-
dates have shown up with their hats in their
hands that Iowans now talk to them the way
New Yorkers talk to cabbies. (Biden’s already
had a “Where’s your walker?” heckler.) It’s hi-
larious to watch. That it may not be the best
place to pick the candidate of a party whose
voters live mostly in cities is beside the point.
Friday evening, early summer, a park in
northwest Des Moines. Washington state gov-
ernor and “climate change candidate” Jay In-
slee is standing near a nest of covered picnic
benches, stumping to a group small enough to
be a Webelo meeting.
A cute brown puppy chews a table leg, while
a suspendered old gent sits with his wife on
lawn chairs they’ve brought with them. HeTHE LONG VIEW: JARED KUSHNER’S SHADY BUSINESS
TIMELINE
2016 2016 DEC. JAN. 2017 APRIL APRILFROM LEFT: BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; JOHN MINCHILLO/AP IMAGES; TTSTUDIO/SHUTTERSTOCK; JABIN BOTSFORD/”THE WASHINGTON POST”/GETTY IMAGES; DOMINIQUE A. PINEIRO/DOD; AP IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCK; BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGESDo you
think Big
Tech com-
panies like
Facebook
and Am-
azon are
monopo-
lies that
should be
broken
up?75%
Ye s25%
NoGo to Rolling
Stone.com
for next
issue’s poll.READERS’
POLL
MARCH