Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré is best known as the no-nonsense commander of Joint Task Force Katrina. He coordinated military relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf region in 2005. Honoré reflected on the Trump administration’s pandemic relief operations with David Begnaud of CBS This Morning.
“The Ragin’ Cajun” didn’t use the words FUBAR or SNAFU, but that’s the gist. Watch:
Enter presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner who made an appearance Thursday at Donald the Fabulist’s pandemic mini-rally. Kushner’s involvement feels like “Revenge of the Nerds” remade as an epidemic movie for rich, spoiled frat boys. Except it’s not a comedy. It’s Titus Andronicus in business suits. Everybody still dies. But if no one’s head gets baked into a pie, Donald Trump will declare himself the strongliest president ever.
This White House has redefined incompetent. Like his father-in-law, Kushner’s only qualification for any job is being born rich. That accident of birth preceded the accident of democracy that landed him adjacent the apex of American executive power.
Michelle Goldberg describes Kushner this way:
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.
With hundreds of thousands of lives on the line, Kushner now fancies himself an expert at pandemic response. He’s made his own projections on medical equipment needs. He believes he knows more about disaster response than governors with years of experience in governance, Goldberg explains:
“Undeterred, he has now arrogated to himself a major role in fighting the epochal health crisis that’s brought America to its knees. … This is dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.”
Kushner allegedly runs a shadow coronavirus task force of business friends operating in violation of multiple laws. He denied that again Thursday despite reports he has control over Federal Emergency Management Agency dispersal of equipment. Some shipments have gone not to outbreak hot spots but to states that have made no formal requests. Equipment goes to whichever governor the president has spoken to on the phone.
A senior official tells the New York Times that Kushner’s team resembles “a ‘frat party’ that descended from a U.F.O. and invaded the federal government.”
“What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody … you’re trying think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis,” Kushner told reporters in a gobsmacking display of his own and his father-in-law’s lack of self-awareness.
Experts have no idea how the White House derived its projected coronavirus death toll of 100,000 to 240,000. Like everything else these incompetents attempt, it seems to have been made up on the way to the podium.
If there’s any silver lining to this black cloud, it’s that neither Trump nor Kushner has ever made a pie. Not that that would stop them from trying.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.