Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner thinks his father-in-law popular vote loser Donald Trump has gotten a very bad wrap from the traditional media, so he's going straight to the top and complaining to the parent company of one outlet to complain. There's at least four extremely troublesome things in that single sentence, but let's start with the obvious—what the fuck is the WH doing whining to a corporation about bad press from their owned subsidiary when that corporation is right now under federal review for a proposed merger?
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Kushner met with top executives at Time Warner—the parent company of President Trump’s least-favorite media organization CNN—to express his concern about “unfair coverage slanted against the president.” Kushner has discussed the matter of the less-than-flattering-but-definitely-accurate coverage with Time Warner VP of corporate marketing and communications Gary Ginsberg in a meeting at the White House as well as with Jeff Zucker, CNN Worldwide President.
Tangled up in this messy bit of news is the fact that AT&T is close to buying Time Warner in a massive $88.4 billion deal that’s still awaiting government approval—a deal that Trump swore during the campaign would not happen. Also, Zucker was instrumental in Trump’s success. As the president of NBC Universal, he put The Apprentice on air, giving the bloviating moron that now runs our country a national platform, setting the stage for his star to rise.
Clearly, Kushner has all the subtlety of the horrific family he married into. Apparently he is just as fine with using the power of the White House for personal gain and beefs as his in-laws. Kushner specifically was complaining about two CNN pundits, conservative Ana Navarro and liberal Van Jones. Navarro leaped to respond with scathing tweets calling him "Little Jared" and "baby boy," laughing out loud that "Little boy Kushner, tough guy who's supposed to achieve Middle East peace, is complaining about me to CNN. Boo-hoo!"
That's an extremely satisfying response from Navarro, but also a smart one. She's blown this story up to the point that CNN can't dump her without making it and Time Warner look craven and ridiculous.
