Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have one thing that truly distinguishes them from the rest of the Republican administration: considerably tighter skin. They’re like 20-plus years younger than the rest of those old grifters! But make no mistake: That is the only thing that sets them apart from the rest of the corrupt, self-absorbed, and nihilistic crew running our country right now. The Chicago Tribune reports that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner pushed for a “massive” real estate tax break program that would benefit people with all of the same business dealings and interests that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump also just happen to have.
The Opportunity Zone program promoted by Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner — both senior White House advisers — could also benefit them financially, an Associated Press investigation found.
The selling point on this scam program is that offering up tax-break incentives to big real estate moguls (like the Kushners and the Trumps) will spur them to begin investing in low-income areas. That’s great, right? In totally unrelated news:
Six of the Kushner Cos. buildings are in New York City's Brooklyn Heights area, with views of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan skyline, where a five-bedroom apartment recently listed for $8 million. Two more are in the beach town of Long Branch, N.J., where some oceanfront condos within steps of a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant and a Lululemon yoga shop list for as much as $2.7 million.
Sounds like real urban-outreach real estate ventures right there. The fact of the matter is that Ivanka and Jared’s push for this tax break is very obviously a conflict of interest.
Trump and Kushner jointly own a big stake in a real estate investment firm, Cadre, that recently announced it is launching a series of Opportunity Zone funds that seek to build major projects under the program from Miami to Los Angeles. Separately, the couple owns interests in at least 13 properties held by Kushner's family firm that could qualify for the tax breaks because they are in Opportunity Zones in New Jersey, New York and Maryland — all of which, a study found, were already coming back.
What a coincidence! The “opportunity zones” created by the 2017 tax bill would be classified by the Treasury Department as low-income, with investment in such areas eligible for tax incentives and breaks. Maybe a better name for these areas would be “scam sites”?