Every so often, Donald Trump or one of his boosters reminds us that poor, poor Ivanka and Jared are working in the White House for free, so how dare anyone criticize them. Yes, the poor dears—their financial disclosure forms show that Trump’s favorite daughter and her husband brought in at least $82 million in outside income in 2017. That’s a little bit more than they would have been paid by the government.
Ivanka got $3.9 million from the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, which means she directly benefited from all of the organizations and foreign governments booking events at that hotel to suck up to her father. She got more than $5 million from the trust that theoretically keeps her separate from conflicts of interest related to her clothing brand, a brand manufactured in countries that might possibly want to stay on her father’s good side. She got $2 million in severance from the Trump Organization. And so on. And maybe just maybe those Chinese trademarks might come in handy sometime.
Jared raked in $70 million from “dozens of companies tied to his family’s real estate company.” You know, the company for which he’s been beating the international bushes for loans to bail them out of a terrible investment he made.
But according to Jared’s father, we should pity and feel grateful to his son and daughter-in-law.
“I look at what my kids have sacrificed to go into government, with the only intent of doing good for this country and for the world, and to help people,” Charles Kushner told the Real Deal. “And what they have sacrificed, and the daily barrage of negative media, and the attacks they get, and they had a perfect, beautiful life and they still have a very good life, but they sacrificed a lot.”
They’ve engaged in international corruption and destabilizing the Middle East, and they’re complicit in children being stolen from their parents … and they’re still pulling in tens of millions of dollars a year. They should be shunned. They should show up at temple or at a cocktail party or at their kids’ schools and people should turn their backs and possibly spit on the ground. Every single day their perfect, beautiful life should be interrupted for a reminder of the evil they’ve participated in and tried to put a perfect, beautiful PR veneer on.