Hakeem and Jared?

We may never know what they actually talked about. New crypto legislation to enrich the Kushners? Permission to build the godawful arch, even if the Democrats sweep the midterms? I can’t imagine any conversation I would want them to have, but Hakeem and Jared got together anyways, never bothering to ask my permission.

Tell me it doesn’t make you sick to your stomach.

I get the part about bi-partisan dialogue. I even get the part about bi-partisan lawmaking. It’s theoretically right for the parties to get together and talk about ways to bring the country forward. Except for the fact that the Republicans are no longer a party, but a demented beast with a genetic impairment that will never allow them to function normally again. I used to think that dialogue was good, that there was real value in talking to one’s opponents and looking earnestly for the middle ground. Now, with the advantage of short-sighted rage, all I want is for Democrats to win.

Add to that the Jared ick factor: the intrusion of an arrogant, trust-fund nepo baby into the affairs of a once-great international superpower. You will recall with me the Abraham accords. You will recall with me the peace talks in Iran. The team of Kushner, Witkoff and Co. has been about as effective in diplomacy as Neville Chamberlain, the man who handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler. They are to Donald Trump as capos to a mob boss, except the mob-boss in this case is a failed street thug who never quite made it into the Big Five Families.

That doesn’t mean that Jared has failed. Just the opposite: when it comes to money, he has succeeded brilliantly. Capitalizing on his disregard for ethics, he has brought together greed and government in a way that makes him stink with lucre. He is one of the prime beneficiaries of Saudi wealth, a kind of side hustle to shuttle diplomacy for his father-in-law.

Very occasionally he fails publicly. The resort project in Serbia came to nothing, but he simply refocused his attention on Albania and a wildlife refuge near an abandoned military base The regime was only too glad to help until its citizens erupted in a so-called Flamingo Rebellion. They simply didn’t want Jared messing with the environment. My own guess is that the regime will win. Albania is simply too impoverished to resist a carpet bagging American carrying bundles of cash.

So what did Hakeem and Jared talk about? We may never know what passed between them, but Jeffries says it was something about affordability. The likelihood of that is lower than low, but I’d like to cut the future Speaker some slack. In the meantime, he is busy defending his sit-down. Called to account, he referenced the Trump Family Cartel and promised that friends could always investigate friends when the health of American civilization is at stake.

Meanwhile, it already sounds swampy to me. Jared Kushner is not merely polarizing. He is a contaminating force in American politics, and Jeffries should know better than to meet him for coffee. Call me a purist, but he should disavow this relationship. For a future Speaker, the optics are already terrible.

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The new generation of AI slop detectors already make it possible to tell human writing from machine writing. Or so they say. In the meantime, please trust me that no electronic crutch was employed in the writing of this piece. If that means that it’s not as good as assisted prose, so be it.