Let’s get this out of the way first. There was nothing, nada, nil, zero, and zilch to gain for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries by meeting with Jared Kushner. When I heard this news, I thought it was a joke.
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It wasn’t, and I immediately thought, here we go again.
During the 2024 presidential election, my blood would boil when I’d see Kamala Harris spending her limited campaign time courting Republicans and appearing with Liz Cheney instead of pouring every ounce of energy into firing up the Democratic base that actually delivers votes.
Now, as the party splinters, and the number one imperative is to bring the party together and get Democratic voters jazzed up about voting on Nov. 3, with less than 70 days left to go, Jeffries meets with an enemy like the party has never experienced before. Every single Democrat I’ve heard from over the last 24 hours has basically said, “WTF.”
Exactly!
In case you haven’t heard, let me rehash the horror story. Jeffries met privately with Kushner in New York City in recent weeks, a session convened, according to multiple reports, in a space offered by a mutual friend, to discuss “areas of common ground” like housing, immigration, and the cost of living.
I want to stop here and rail, but I’ll continue.
Kushner reportedly suggested Jeffries also sit down with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Speaker Mike Johnson, when asked about it, shrugged. “I don’t know what that’s about,” he said, before insisting Republicans would hold the House anyway.
Well, they just might, if Jeffries continues to waste precious time with the sworn enemy.
Jeffries, who could be Speaker of the House in five months, had a secret meeting with Donald Trump’s son-in-law about areas of common ground, i.e., housing, immigration, cost of living? And that’s why a “WTF” is the appropriate response.
Hakeem, why don’t you make sure that you will be Speaker first, instead of making a presumption and then inexplicably meeting with a person who is not an elected representative, doesn’t give a flying f— about housing, immigration, and the cost of living, and who is as crooked as a coat hanger?
Come on, seriously, what does Jared Kushner know about the cost of living?
Kushner has no formal role in the Trump administration. He holds no Senate-confirmed post, answers to no oversight committee, and also inexplicably gets deployed by his daddy-in-law to negotiate nuclear weapons with a religious extremist government that he knows absolutely nothing about.
And just like his daddy-in-law, for Kushner it’s all about the money, all the time, always. His post-White House — and current —career has been built on very shady and perhaps illegal multibillion-dollar investment deals with the very Gulf monarchies he once “negotiated” with as a government official during Trump’s first term.
And just like his daddy-in-law, Kushner is all about Jared Kushner. So it begs the question: exactly what is he angling for by getting close to the guy who might be banging the gavel and handing out subpoenas come January?
Because that’s the other half of this story. If Democrats take the House in November, Jeffries becomes Speaker, and House Democrats get the authority to investigate this administration for the first time in four years.
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Kushner, whose business dealings with foreign governments have drawn scrutiny for years, has every incentive imaginable to build goodwill with the man who could decide how aggressively that investigative power gets used.
Maybe that’s cynicism. Maybe it isn’t. But Jeffries can’t be that gullible, can he? He owes Democrats a thorough explanation of why he’s wasting his time meeting with the divisive and untrustworthy Kushner, and not devoting 100% of his time to making sure the Democrats come out on top in November.
Instead, Democrats got a vague statement about Republicans’ “my-way-or-the-highway approach” to governing. Jeffries didn’t even deny the meeting happened. I worked on the Hill for years. If this meeting was suggested, I would have yelled pretty loudly into Jeffries’ ear, “No,” almost as loud as Melania yelled into Donald’s ear during the Grand Prix race in D.C.
I keep thinking about what Nancy Pelosi would have done here. She understands power, she understands optics, and she understands the need for complete and total devotion to the party. I can’t even imagine her taking a meeting with Kushner two months before the election.
There isn’t even a hypothetical on this. She knows Kushner cannot be trusted, and she knows he is the last thing the party needs to worry about right now.
To me, that’s the deeper problem with this moment in the House Democratic leadership. It’s an absence of visible fight. Jeffries is smart, disciplined, and, by most accounts, a genuinely decent man. But this is a moment that calls for something sharper than decency.
In other words, Michelle Obama’s..love her to pieces, but … “they go low, we go high’” goes right out the window right now.
With that said, Democrats need a leader who makes Republicans nervous and galvanizes the base, not one who takes happy and conciliatory meetings with a Trump-family billionaire.
Kushner has no real government job; he uses his family connections to extract money from Gulf autocrats and fund deals of highly dubious integrity. The only interaction House Democrats should have with him – and in the future – is subpoenaing him, getting him in front of oversight committees, and grilling him mercilessly.
If Jeffries wants to lead a Democratic House next year, then make sure his fellow Democrats have all the ammunition they need for this moment right now. And that they WIN.
Why, oh why, oh why, Hakeem, do you think meeting with Kushner meets this moment?
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