Ivanka and Jared 2: Tarnished Gold

[mamallama]

If I remember correctly a part of the outrage about the Monica Lewinski affair was that she could be (or was) in the room when Clinton was on the phone with other world leaders.

[GreyhoundFan]

They need to pay for their own damned party:

I guess they couldn't hold it at the stupid hotel daddy owns (and in which Treason Barbie has an interest) because the money would have come out of their own pockets.

[GreyhoundFan]

Treason Barbie decided to quote Jefferson. She's gotten lots of push back. I liked this reply:

 

[Dandruff]

On 10/14/2019 at 8:36 AM, fraurosena said:

This should be added to the long list of impeachable offenses. She is not, I repeat, NOT a member of the administration. She is not a paid official, and she does not have the security clearances needed to even be in the room.

Imagine the kind of sharing that may be going on outside of those rooms.

[GreyhoundFan]

Excuse me, Treason Ken, I seriously doubt that KJU views your daddy-in-law as a father figure:

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Whatever it is she and Jared are doing anywhere is a question that needs to be asked more often. They are quiet and keep to the background most of the time, but they are in the thick of things in the administration. It's scary to think of what they can be orchestrating behind the scenes without anyone knowing about it.

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope Treason Barbie's 2020 collection includes orange jumpsuits:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I don't know if Treason Barbie was going for ironic or hypocritical:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Jared Kushner’s new assignment: Overseeing the construction of Trump’s border wall"

Spoiler

President Trump has made his son-in-law Jared Kushner the de facto project manager for constructing his border wall, frustrated with a lack of progress over one of his top priorities as he heads into a tough reelection campaign, according to current and former administration officials.

Kushner convenes biweekly meetings in the West Wing where he questions an array of government officials about progress on the wall, including updates on contractor data, precisely where it will be built and how funding is being spent. He also shares and explains the president’s demands with the group, according to the officials familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.

The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser is pressing U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the process of taking over private land needed for the project as the government seeks to meet Trump’s goal of erecting 450 miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of 2020. More than 800 filings to seize private property will need to be made in the coming months if the government is going to succeed, officials aid.

Kushner has told other West Wing officials he is in charge of the wall, according to aides, and that it is paramount to Trump that at least 400 miles be built by Election Day.

“The point is to get as much built in the next year so, so the president can say in the face of intense, almost demented opposition he has made reasonable progress,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that seeks to restrict immigration and supports many of Trump’s policies.

Trump campaigned on a promise to construct a wall along the southern border and to make Mexico pay for the project as part of his plan to limit illegal immigration. But Mexico scoffed at paying for a barrier it opposes, and Trump has not been able to get Congress to provide the funding he has requested due to Democratic opposition over what they have called the symbol of the president’s anti-immigrant agenda. The result is that, while some existing barriers have been replaced with sturdier structures, only limited areas of new wall have been constructed.

Now Trump is banking on his son-in-law to turn what has been an in­trac­table problem for his administration into a success.

Mark Morgan, the CBP commissioner, said Kushner had expedited decisions on land acquisitions and construction issues and was key to bringing everyone together in the same room.

“He doesn’t need to know the intricacies of the wall. He understands building stuff. He understands timelines,” Morgan said.

But Kushner has clashed with the career officials who have questioned some of his ideas, like installing web cameras to live-stream construction. He has blamed former chief of staff John F. Kelly and former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for not focusing enough on the wall, senior administration officials said. For their part, former officials have said Kushner displays a lack of knowledge of the policy issues and politics involved in the immigration debate.

The wall adds to Kushner’s growing portfolio of responsibilities, which some of his critics have said border on comical. Since the start of the Trump presidency, Kushner has been entrusted with striking a Middle East peace deal, taking a lead role on trade policy, overseeing criminal justice reform and modernizing the government with mixed results. Kushner is also seeking to again push an overhaul of the legal immigration system after his first attempt failed to gain much support in Congress and has taken on a leadership role in the 2020 presidential campaign.

Some of Kushner’s critics say he can be tone-deaf when it comes to politics and does not understand or respect the value of having multiple agencies work through an official process on a project. But he remains the most influential adviser in the West Wing and enjoys a level of trust from the president that makes him unique within the administration, according to current and former administration officials.

“My hope is Jared can put a more laser focus on the project and the process. Maybe he can light a fire under the responsible agencies, but if recent history is any indication, he will get frustrated before he gets results,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican who has frequently talked with Trump about the project.

Officials closely involved with the border wall project said Kushner has become increasingly involved in the details related to acquiring needed properties and pushing government attorneys to gain control of the parcels as quickly as possible, acting on Trump’s directive to “take the land.”

The White House declined to comment, but Kushner’s defenders in the administration said he is bringing a private sector approach to the project.

Army Corps leaders have expressed concerns about Kushner’s aggressive view of the government’s eminent domain authorities, which allow it to take over private land for public use, telling him they are committed to following established legal procedures.

During a recent meeting with officials at the border, Army Corps Lt. Todd Semonite told them to follow the law and not worry about politics, a person with knowledge of the meeting said.

One person involved in the construction of the wall, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said Kushner has annoyed officials involved in the process because they said he displayed a lack of knowledge about the government procurement process and the “realities” of the project.

“So he took a much more hands-on role in figuring out, mile by mile, how to get more wall up,” this person said. “It didn’t help put wall up faster and cheaper. His interventions actually just created more inefficiency in the process.”

The Trump administration has completed 83 miles of new barriers so far, according to the latest CBP figures, but nearly all of that is classified as “replacement wall,” typically swapping out older, smaller structures for a row of steel bars 18 to 30 feet in height.

Kushner insists the administration remains on target to meet the president’s goal of 450 miles by the end of next year, a pace that will require constructionto accelerate at least fourfold, according to government data reviewed by The Washington Post. The president’s son-in-law has set a goal of 30 to 35 miles of new barriers per month by spring, requiring crews to average a new linear mile of fencing every day.

In recent months, the project has picked up momentum in Western states where crews are able to build on remote desert land already controlled by the government.

Administration officials acknowledge that building in those areas amounts to the lowest-hanging fruit for the border wall project. In Texas, the project is significantly more complex.

There, the border runs more than 1,200 miles along the sinuous course of the Rio Grande, and nearly all of the land where the government needs to build is privately owned.

The Trump administration’s plan includes 166 miles of new barriers in Texas, and nearly all of that will have to be built on private land. For Kushner to meet Trump’s timeline, the government will have to obtain hundreds of privately owned parcels and complete construction in the next 13 months.

The area presents engineering challenges to the administration, as well as real estate ones, because the Rio Grande flood plain requires much of the structure to be installed along river levees, at a significantly higher cost.

Former officials closely involved with the project disputed that Kushner will have an easier time making progress than past officials who ran point on the issue and disputed the claim that Nielsen and Kelly lacked focus or urgency, insisting that the pace of construction has been determined by the availability of funding and the acquisition of private land.

One former Department of Homeland Security official said the administration, to date, has been careful to follow established guidelines for the use of eminent domain. “We weren’t taking people’s land willy-nilly,” said the official.

Another official who defended Nielsen said she struggled to get former defense secretary Jim Mattis to view the wall project as a priority, and his frustration with the president’s plans to use military funding contributed to a lack of urgency at the Pentagon and the Army Corps.

The president’s frequently shifting design requests also sapped momentum, former officials said, and it usually fell to Nielsen to explain why some of his ideas were not feasible. Trump grew irritated at Nielsen’s naysaying and he fired her in April.

Trump regularly changes his mind about the project, according to current and former aides. Growing frustrated with contractors, he has at times encouraged aides to eschew the traditional contracting process — and just go with a firm he knows from New York — which has drawn resistance, these aides said.

Trump has called for irregular requests, like building large ditches, putting pointy spikes or painting the wall matte black so it will be hot to the touch.

After Kushner took control of the project, he elevated the regular meetings to executive-level gatherings at the White House requiring the attendance of cabinet-level officials. He also demanded a new project plan with timetables and construction targets. Kushner has talked with other officials about securing money for the wall — even using military construction funds again, a notion likely to attract resistance from Capitol Hill.

Morgan said Kushner asked detailed questions and “nitty gritty, details” about specific parts of the project in the meetings, which often stretch more than an hour.

“There are very real concerns. We’re being sued on a regular basis on multiple fronts. Land acquisition is a very, very challenging process. We’re trying to become more efficient and get more done. There are real challenges,” Morgan said.

In early January, Kushner asked now-former DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan whether closing border loopholes or building the wall would do the most to curb illegal immigration, and McAleenan said closing loopholes would do far more to curb immigration.

Still, Kushner has told others a wall has to be built because his father-in-law promised it would be.

“Kushner said something to the effect of, we’ve basically wasted two years,” said a person with knowledge of the meeting with McAleenan.

 

[fraurosena]

Well, Jared is eminently qualified to get things done in this administration. Just look at how he has achieved peace in the Middle East. Oh, wait...

[GreyhoundFan]

Interesting: "Ivanka Trump was friends with former British spy Christopher Steele, according to person familiar with the situation"

Spoiler

The former British spy who authored several reports alleging links between Russia and President Trump’s 2016 campaign had been a personal friend of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, a relationship that he said made him “favorably disposed” to the Trump family.

The previously unknown friendship between former intelligence officer Christopher Steele and Ivanka Trump was alluded to in a new report released Monday by the Justice Department’s inspector general, which said Steele had “been friendly” with a Trump family member, a relationship he described as “personal.”

Steele told investigators he had visited the Trump family member at Trump Tower in New York and had once gifted the person a family tartan from Scotland.

A person familiar with Steele’s business Orbis confirmed that the family member was Ivanka Trump.

After first meeting in 2007, they emailed over the years, the person said. Between 2010 and 2012, Steele discussed with Ivanka Trump the possibility that the Trump Organization might hire his business to assist with projects in Russia and China. They remained friends through 2015, the person said.

A White House spokesman and an attorney for the Trump Organization declined to comment. ABC News first reported the relationship between Steele and the president’s daughter.

Steele has been a particular target of Donald Trump’s ire since the revelation that he was hired during the 2016 campaign by Fusion GPS, a political intelligence firm, to research Trump’s ties to Russia on behalf of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

The former spy, who retired from government service in 2009 to open his own business, compiled reports citing unnamed sources who alleged that Trump’s campaign was conspiring with the Russian government to win the election. Steele’s reports, which he described as raw and unverified intelligence, also asserted that the Kremlin held salacious information about Trump.

In January 2017, BuzzFeed published Steele’s dossier online in full, and days later, Steele was identified as its author. Trump has called his work “phony” and “fake news.”

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the FBI considered Steele himself credible but gathered evidence in 2017 indicating that some of Steele’s reports were not reliable.

However, the inspector general also concluded that Steele’s information played no role in the opening of the FBI investigation exploring Trump and Russia in July 2016.

The president’s supporters have suggested that Steele was biased against Trump, noting that Justice Department official Bruce Ohr told the FBI in November 2016 that Steele had been “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not becoming the U.S. president.”

But according to the report, Steele told investigators that when he took on the research assignment, he was not opposed to Trump. If anything, he said, he was “favorably disposed” to the Trump family because of his past relationship with the Trump family member.

A person familiar with Steele’s work for Fusion GPS in 2016 said that the former British intelligence officer told his American clients about his friendship with Ivanka Trump, and they agreed not to discuss it outside their small circle as his work proceeded.

In her role as a senior vice president of her father’s company, Ivanka Trump was particularly involved in its overseas real estate projects. In 2006, she traveled to Moscow to explore the possibility of a Trump Tower in Russia.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Wow. Just wow. "Ivanka Trump claims her father’s administration is ‘pro-family.’ That’s rich."

Spoiler

Huh. Irony isn’t dead after all.

“Under [President Trump’s] leadership, families have never had a brighter future,” Ivanka Trump declared, astonishingly, during a White House summit Thursday on working families. “In every action he takes, the president is putting American families first.”

Well, maybe it’s irony. Or maybe it’s her latest attempt to pinkwash her father’s anti-family (and especially anti-child) agenda.

Given the expanding economy, for instance, you might assume that more American families had gained health insurance under Trump’s tenure. Nope. Under this administration, the share of Americans who are uninsured has been rising.

Even more damning, 425,000 children lost their insurance in 2018.

In fact, the sharpest increase in the uninsured rate was among children whom Ivanka Trump claims the administration prioritizes most: those from low- and moderate-income families. Most are likely eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but are not enrolled.

A number of Trump policies likely contributed to these disgraceful trends. Among them is the new so-called public charge rule, which makes it harder for immigrants to qualify for green cards if they have used certain safety-net programs they’re legally entitled to — or if government officials believe they might ever use these programs.

The rule has been temporarily blocked by courts, but confusion and fear have ripped through immigrant and mixed-status families. Immigrant parents are pulling even their native-born, U.S.-citizen children out of benefit programs to be on the safe side.

The administration is, meanwhile, pursuing other legally dubious policies that kick poor families off Medicaid, including new work requirements. These policies are a solution in search of a problem, given that most Medicaid recipients already work. Onerous and confusing reporting requirements can cause employed beneficiaries to lose their insurance anyway, as Arkansas learned last year.  

A federal court has already struck down such requirements in three states. And yet also on Thursday — as Ivanka Trump was touting a commitment to struggling parents — the administration announced it had approved an especially cruel version of this policy in South Carolina. The state will soon become the first in the nation to impose work requirements almost exclusively on poor parents.

Meanwhile, the administration is pursuing other policies that are shredding supports that struggling families rely on.

Having recently finalized one rule that will result in 700,000 Americans losing food stamps, the administration is pursuing two others that will kick an additional 3 million people off the rolls, based on estimates from the Urban Institute. Nearly 1 million children would lose their automatic eligibility for free school lunches as well.

There’s a long list of other Trump actions egregiously unfriendly to families — including, of course, the family separation policy that ripped some 5,400 children away from their parents, many of them for months. Today, we’re merely sending asylum-seeking families to tent cities in Mexico, where children and their parents can remain together as long as they’re willing to tolerate epidemics, frostbite, kidnapping and sexual assault.

Given this record, how can this administration claim with a straight face that it’s pro-family?

In his remarks at Thursday’s summit, the president emphasized . . . job growth. Which is surely important, though employment under the first three years of Trump has grown at a slightly slower pace than under the final three years of President Barack Obama.

That’s not the only case where the administration has questionably claimed credit for family-related policy achievements.

During a call a day before the summit, a White House aide boasted that Trump had “signed into law the largest ever increase for the Child Care and Development Block Grant.” He neglected to mention that Trump signed that increase only after Democrats demanded it; in fact, his original presidential budget had instead proposed to cut the program. At the summit itself, Trump hailed the inclusion in the defense bill of a new paid-leave program for federal workers — a concession also extracted by Democrats, in exchange for funding his “Space Force.”

To the extent that this White House, at Ivanka Trump’s urging, is more actively promoting nationwide parental leave programs, the bills in question are not truly paid-leave programs at all. Rather, they merely allow workers to take out loans to fund their leave — loans that must eventually be repaid through cuts to either their future Social Security benefits or future child tax credits.

Thursday’s summit may have provided a nice photo op for the president and his daughter. But whatever Ivanka Trump claims, this first family has yet to prove it’s actually putting families first.

The only family this administration puts first is the t-rump family.

[SPHASH]

Jarvanka are a couple of cunts.  Orange Anus throws a Hanukkah party and invites an anti Semitic pastor who said Jews are going to hell.  Why didn't they stop him?  https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/474373-trump-hosts-pastor-who-says-jews-are-going-to-hell-at-white-house?amp

[FluffySnowball]

22 minutes ago, SPHASH said:

Jarvanka are a couple of cunts.  Orange Anus throws a Hanukkah party and invites an anti Semitic pastor who said Jews are going to hell.  Why didn't they stop him?  https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/474373-trump-hosts-pastor-who-says-jews-are-going-to-hell-at-white-house?amp

They’re all birds of a feather happily flocking together. The radical antisemites, the white supremacists, those who hate the Palestinian people and those who claim Mexicans are rapists... They’re all fascists in some way and are drawn to each other. What a disgusting bunch.  

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, SPHASH said:

Jarvanka are a couple of cunts.  Orange Anus throws a Hanukkah party and invites an anti Semitic pastor who said Jews are going to hell.  Why didn't they stop him?  https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/474373-trump-hosts-pastor-who-says-jews-are-going-to-hell-at-white-house?amp

The Jarvankas are soulless sociopaths. They may play Jewish for the camera, but look the other way with things like Charlottesville, Squirrel Hill, and Jersey City. Not to mention the bombings in Texas aimed at people of color and the church murders in South Carolina. 

They may think being Trumps will save them. No, it won’t. Daddy isn’t going to be around forever once he goes, they will end up on trucks just like the rest of us. 

[thoughtful]

15 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

The Jarvankas are soulless sociopaths.

Yep. I think the whole family's religion and philosophy consists of worshipping themselves, money and fame, pretty much in that order. They just put on the trappings of normal society to get what they want.

I wonder if Barron is capable of breaking the pattern -- wouldn't it be nice if he grew up to be an ethical man who wrote a series of tell-all books?

 

[mamallama]

My money's on Tiffany for that role.  Her mother hates Trump and moved across the country to get away from him.  You almost never saw Tiffany until someone pointed it out during the election and she suddenly started showing up.  She probably won't have as much dirt as Barron though.

[WiseGirl]

Raise your hand if you are surprised 

[fraurosena]

Apparently Ivanka's one of those women who fake it.

Ivanka Trump Caught Faking Propaganda Interview At Forum

Quote

Ivanka Trump appeared at the Doha Forum, and instead of being interviewed by a journalist, she faked an interview with a State Department PR person.

Ben Smith tweeted:

Smith also tweeted some of the softballs tossed at Ivanka:

Analysis: The Trumps are cutting out journalists and public accountability at an alarming rate. They have learned from Fox News how to use the appearance of journalism to create propaganda. The president’s daughter was engaged in the creation of propaganda.

Other attendees were interviewed by journalists, but Ivanka Trump chose to sit down with a PR person in the administration who used to work at Fox News.

The Trump administration has destroyed transparency and public accountability from the Executive Branch. Notice how quickly people got used to the disappearance of the White House press briefing. Donald Trump doesn’t hold real one on one press conferences with the media. He does monologues outside the White House where he takes a few questions shouted at him from a distance.

Less overt than the president’s efforts to rig an election is an effort by the Trumps to erode democracy with the destruction of press freedom.

 

[WiseGirl]

Just coming to post the same thing @fraurosena From Aunt Crabby's words to the universe making it come true.

[Howl]

Me too and glad to see y'all beat me to it. 

 The Doha Forum is a global conference in Qatar.  It's a big deal.  Ivanka is a fraud and for all her exposure to domestic and foreign policy, remains an embarrassing lightweight in both realms.  She can't afford for that to be exposed in a setting with foreign policy heavyweights.  

List of speakers for Doha 2019 here. 

[GreyhoundFan]

That's a big nope:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

She needs to get out now.

[47of74]

Agolf Twitler’s daughter was invited to speak at CES. Went over about as well as expected

Quote

Ivanka Trump’s appearance at a major technology conference in Las Vegas has been met with a backlash from industry figures, who denounced her “privilege” and lack of tech qualifications.

The annual CES gathering has long taken criticism over diversity issues. In recent years the CTA has invited more women to speak and sought to curb some of the show’s more sexist aspects, such as scantily clad “booth babes” hired to draw the attention of the mostly male attendees. In 2017, there were zero female keynote speakers scheduled for the second year in a row.

But for critics and activists who have long pushed for broader recognition of the less-heralded women, the inclusion of Donald Trump’s daughter, who is also a White House adviser, sends exactly the wrong message.

“Ivanka is not a woman in tech,” tweeted Brianna Wu, a video game developer who is running for Congress in Massachusetts. “She’s not a CEO. She has no background. It’s a lazy attempt to emulate diversity but like all emulation it’s not quite the real thing.”

The hashtag #BoycottCES is picking up some steam. I know if I was going I’d turn around and say fornicate this. No matter how much money I’d lose in the process