In a Time of Crisis, Kushner Is an Idiot. Son-in-Law Like Father-in-Law

You can leave it to Trumpian relatives to piss on good news in troubling times.

One day after major league athletes boycotted games in support of the Black Lives Matter protestors in Kenosha,  a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth offer this up to the America public: “Look, I think that the NBA players are very fortunate they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off from work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially. So they have that luxury, which is great.” Those were the words of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

He, like most of the Trumpian world, missed the point.

First, they don’t have the luxury. They risked offending fans, many of whom looked to the playoffs as a means of forgetting about the pandemic, the sour economy, racial injustice, and the Trump administration’s mishandling of all three. That means revenue, which in turn affects income.

Second, most face consequences identical to that of George Floyd, Jacob Blake, and Breonna Taylor (unfortunately, the list goes on and on) every day. They might ask of you: When was the last time your limo was pulled over for no reason at all?

Third, they were not born into a family with a multimillion real estate empire like the Kushner’s. They didn’t have the luxurious senior year of high school when their fathers donated $2.5 million to Harvard. Yours did, and then you were admitted.

They didn’t have the resources to buy 666 Fifth Avenue that drained resources of the Kushner’s.

They didn’t marry the daughter of a real estate developer, who drove six casinos into bankruptcy and who couldn’t get financing from one New York Bank, driving him overseas to places like Russia to get financing.

They didn't land a cushy and powerful government job because they are the son-in-law to the president.

Boy, aren’t the NBA players just plain ole lucky?

Kushner arrogantly added: “Look, I think with the NBA, there’s a lot of activism, and I think that they’ve put a lot of slogans out. But I think what we need to do is turn that from slogans and signals to actual action that’s going to solve the problem.” That’s true, and I’m sure every boycotting professional athletes agrees. They voted with their careers. They could ask if Jared and Donald have done the same.

So, Jared, when are you and Donald going to come up with programs and legislation to deal with America’s systemic racism?

Never, at least based on the last night of the Republican National Convention. As noted in the New York Times: "Seldom if ever has a political party spent so much time during a convention insisting in explicit terms that its nominee was not a racist or a sexist, and that its standard-bearer was, perhaps despite public appearances, a person of empathy and good character."

To paraphrase Hamlet, “Methinks thou protests too much.”

The whiteness of some Republicans bleeds through the rhetoric.  Senator Thomas Cotton of Arkansas, a critic of the Black Lives Moment, spoke at the convention. He offered this phrase of unison: “We need a president who stands up for America, not one who takes a knee.”

This is the Republican Party of Donald Trump. At a time of rising anxiety about racial injustice among all Americans, Donald has a staunch BLM critic ridicule a symbol embraced by the BLM movement and others as a protest against racial inequity.

So, Jared, what were you saying about the players being lucky.