Slumlord Virus

Jared Kushner has been in the news a lot lately. That’s because Trump, his father-in-law, apparently trusts this family slumlord more than anyone else in the White House. Kushner is, of course, married to Trump’s favorite daughter Ivanka, in a marriage that could be rightly called ‘the marriage from hell.’ That’s because it joined two families whose founders both made their fortunes in New York real estate, and of the shadiest kind. Kushner’s father actually landed in jail because of his illegal activities. That’s when son Jared, whose way into Harvard was purchased by his father’s dirty money, took over as CEO. And as is detailed in the first segment of the Netflix documentary Dirty Money, and in Michele Goldberg’s recent piece in the NY Times, Jared made a bigger mess of things than his father. The documentary, titled “Slumlord Billionaire,” is well worth watching for its detailed account of how these rich slumlords operate (they use every nasty trick to drive tenants out of their buildings so they can either jack up rents beyond rent-control levels, or sell the apartments as high-priced condos—a vicious, nasty business), but Goldberg sums up Jared’s reign pretty nicely:

“Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.” (M. Goldberg, NY Times, “Putting Jared Kushner in Charge is Utter Madness,” 4/2/20.) 

She also points out that even the job where one might have expected Jared to succeed—parlaying the family real estate business into a bigger and better operation—failed: 

Kushner paid $1.8 billion — a record, at the time — for a Manhattan skyscraper at the very top of the real estate market in 2007. The debt from that project became a crushing burden for the family business. (ibid).

He also failed at his attempt to buy his way to a better press, purchasing the once-thriving New York Observer and running it, too, into the ground. Perhaps this is another reason why Trump feels such affinity for Jared: both have inherited millions and both have managed to bankrupt themselves over and over. Nothing like bankruptcies to form an affectionate bond between two losers. 

            So when Jared arrogantly decided that he could be the one to craft a breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, Trump gave him the portfolio. And after three years of alleged work (no doubt consulting most with his two Mideast buddies, Benjamin Netanyahu, indicted,  and Mohammed Bin Salman, murderer of journalist Jamal Khashoggi), Jared came up with a plan that also failed miserably. Anyone with any experience in this endeavor could’ve told Jared right off, that, with his biases, this would be the result. But Jared plunged ahead, promising that his plan would bring a long-lasting peace if only the Arabs would not sabotage themselves as always. When the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, saw the plan, he rejected it immediately, adding that the Palestinians now would not consult with the US at all. And no wonder. The plan not only calls for the Palestinians to de-militarize, putting themselves totally under Israeli military control, but also essentially endorsed Israel’s hated and illegal settlements in Palestinian territory. In effect, the Kushner plan tried to buy off the Palestinians with promises of economic activity, in exchange for their fully giving up any hope of Palestinian statehood. It’s almost like Kushner’s strategy for evicting tenants from his slum housing. 

            Given all this, who else would Trump be expected make his czar in charge of the Covid-19 pandemic? Why his fellow slumlord and business failure, Jared, of course. And the results have, again, been predictable. Jared had begun, even before his appointment, by assuring his father-in-law that the demands for equipment by New York governor Andrew Cuomo and NY hospitals themselves were “alarmist.” Trump promptly echoed his son-in-law, who claimed that he had “all this data about ICU capacity” and, having done his own ‘projections,’ (this from a man who knows nothing about medicine or hospitals) concluded that “New York doesn’t need all the ventilators.” Once Kushner was made virus czar in charge of expediting the supply of medical equipment, including tests, masks, ventilators, and the like, however, he changed his tune, and took off in the direction that a Kushner, naturally, would be comfortable with: the private sector. He allegedly chose this route in order to bypass the bureaucracy that was blamed for the delays (not mentioning that Trump himself was the person responsible for crippling the Pandemic Response team in place when he arrived, and most federal agencies that could have, and should have been prepared for such an emergency). But no matter.  Kushner apparently put together a team that virtually took over FEMA (his authority apparently now exceeds that of Alex Azar, Trump’s HHS Secretary), and set about pursuing his cronies in the private sector to get to work to expand test access, produce much needed medical supplies (the US industry producing such things had depleted most of it supplies by sending millions of dollars worth of masks, gowns, ventilators, etc. to China in January and February when the president was dismissing the severity of the crisis as a “hoax”). And the team did apparently get some companies to ramp up production. They also managed to airlift emergency medical supplies to the U.S. and streamlined other needed measures. But they have also failed to set up a system where all coordinate and know what others are doing. Nor have they been zealous in vetting the private interests of the companies they pick, opening the way for price-gouging. They have thus been dubbed the “slim-suit” crowd by veterans at FEMA, and a “frat party that has invaded the federal government.”

            But perhaps Kushner’s most egregious failure so far (and hospitals and health care workers have never really received the basic supplies that they need, most hospital workers remaining disappointed and fearful about having to limit themselves to one mask and one gown per day—if they are lucky—which means re-using equipment constantly and endangering themselves and their families) has been his mishandling of the national stockpile of PPEs. In a now-notorious April 2 press briefing, Kushner said of “our” Strategic National Stockpile that “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.” But government spokespeople and reporters have contradicted Kushner and criticized him severely for suggesting that states should have built their own stockpiles rather than begging the feds for supplies:

The Strategic National Stockpile describes itself as having "the nation's largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out. When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency.” (Catherine Garcia, The Week, 4/3). 

Of course, Kushner’s father-in-law supported him in his lie, having even less respect for the truth than his slumlord relative. He (Trump) tried to describe the investigations into his son-in-law’s  statement as another partisan “witch-hunt,” and then added, 

“By the way, the states should have been building their stockpiles. We’re a backup, we’re not an ordering clerk. Whoever heard of a governor calling up the federal government and saying, ‘Sir, we need a hospital?’”

            And then, to compound the death-dealing falsification of this whole mess, the president* had his minions alter the wording about the Strategic Stockpile on the US Health and Human Services website. It now reads:

The Strategic National Stockpile’s role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available.

As the Yahoo News article on this skullduggery pointed out, where the official website originally said that the stockpile “ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most,” the new version says that the federal stockpile’s role was only meant to “supplement state and local supplies.”

            So essentially what we have is the most massive sidelining and crippling of federal agencies meant to serve in just such emergencies in history (a Republican project begun in earnest by Ronald Reagan), and their replacement by a presidential in-law whose resumé is marked mostly by failure, and whose instincts dispose him to favor his friends and associates in the private sector. It is also to ridicule and hamstring the state officials, particularly in “blue” states like New York and California, where his father-in-law doesn’t poll so well. The net result is a system that is still failing to get supplies and testing where they are most needed, and to further eviscerate the very agencies that were meant to function in such emergencies—those requiring massive government response. That it has also given new meaning to the word “nepotism” is a mere side effect, but one not without consequences, in this case, life-and-death ones. But do not think that will make a difference to a slumlord. As we have learned over and over again from this president*, the slum business demands having a blind spot when it comes to ‘trivial’ life-and-death issues.

Lawrence DiStasi