NYT Editorial Board Compares White House Operations to ‘Occasionally Bankrupt Casino,’ Blasts Jared Kushner

‘Stupidity, Paranoia, Malevolence’

The New York Times Editorial Board has slammed both the White House and Donald Trump’s son-in-law, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, for “stupidity, paranoia [and] malevolence.”

In the board’s “The Problem with Jared Kushner,” a blistering look at Jared Kushner’s communications with Russia and his role in the White House, they asked plainly: “What is Mr. Kushner doing in his job?”

Kushner, now under “scrutiny” from the FBI in their investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, has faced a wave of allegations of late. In December, he reportedly told Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Vladimir Putin’s Russian ambassador to the United States, that he wanted to establish a secret, backchannel line of communication with the Kremlin. Subsequent reports said that he had at least three previously undisclosed contacts with the ambassador.

Kushner’s attorney advised that he had “no recollection” of the matter.

“At a minimum, this pattern of meetings and concealment, whether by design or through carelessness, raises larger concerns about Mr. Kushner’s fitness for the hugely consequential role Mr. Trump has given him,” the NYT Editorial Board wrote, “a vast portfolio of responsibilities that includes negotiating the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and reinventing the federal government.”

They pointed out that Democrats in Congress have called for Kushner’s security clearance to be suspended or revoked, noting that Jared “has told friends that he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, will regularly re-evaluate whether to return to their natural habitat” in the private sector.

Calling into question Donald Trump’s “clannish reflexes and obsession with loyalty,” they made the case that the president should encourage such a move, but likely wouldn’t, as Kushner is “his son-in-law, a man he won’t fire, his closest and perhaps most influential confidant and executive” despite the fact that he’s “struggling with his role.”

“No other White House – no business, except maybe a wholly owned and rather tawdry and occasionally bankrupt casino operation – would be run this way,” the board concluded.

The full piece can be read here.

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Image by The White House via Flickr