Stupid Party

Kushner Searched for an Economic Adviser on Amazon

Written by SK Ashby

Vanity Fair published an expansive profile of the Bannon Kushner War which I hesitate to reduce to a single anecdote, but this is too good to pass up.

Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly turned to Amazon to search for an economic adviser when the campaign had no advisers.

At one point during the campaign, when Trump wanted to speak more substantively about China, he gave Kushner a summary of his views and then asked him to do some research. Kushner simply went on Amazon, where he was struck by the title of one book, Death by China, co-authored by Peter Navarro. He cold-called Navarro, a well-known trade-deficit hawk, who agreed to join the team as an economic adviser. (When he joined, Navarro was in fact the campaign’s only economic adviser.) Kushner operated in much the same way when it came to crafting Trump’s tax plan—calling up someone for help out of the blue. Given the initial absence of pros who could do the job properly, he also tried his hand at writing speeches. Responding to criticism from the boss (“Jared, this is terrible!”), Kushner said, according to a person familiar with the episode, “I’m not a fucking speechwriter. I am a real-estate guy.”

Look, I love Amazon as much as the next person, but I just don't know if we should select advisers from the best-sellers list.

Nothing you could possibly imagine is as dumb as the Trump regime truly is.