Not a good day for the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Read the rest

Evidently the Orange Menace is unimpressed by son-in-law Jared Kushner's attempts to bilk dollars out of his White House job, and longs for his daughter's purported ex-boyfriend.

Via Talking Points Memorandum:

The New York Times reported Saturday that President Donald Trump’s relationship with his son-in-law Jared Kushner has deteriorated over the past few months, and that the president now routinely complains that “Jared hasn’t been so good for me” and that he could have had NFL star Tom Brady as a son-in-law instead. (Short-lived White House communications direct Anthony Scaramucci has claimed that Ivanka Trump and Brady briefly dated.)

Trump has reportedly told his friends and aides that he wishes both Kushner and his daughter Ivanka would return to New York.

Yet the Times reports that because Kushner has outlasted many of his critics and rivals in an administration plagued by factionalism, infighting, and gossip, he isn’t likely to head for the exits anytime soon. On the contrary, he may soon take a more public role, especially now that his security clearance has been restored after months of suspension due to questions about his foreign contacts and financial ties.

Kushner and Ivanka, however, have made little-to-no progress on the policy areas assigned to them, including the Middle East peace process and paid family leave.

Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's downgraded security clearance prevents him from viewing many of the sensitive documents to which he had unlimited access. Read the rest

Described by the BBC as "notoriously" reticent to be heard in public, Jared Kushner — President Trump's son-in-law and de facto factotum of his shambolic administration — was finally obliged to impress his voice upon others in a recorded setting at the MAGA Summer Palace in Washington, D.C. The subject was technology; the result was a better understanding of the fact Ivanka didn't marry him for his diction.

Just take a look at the absolute savaging he's getting from the press.

Who knew Jared Kushner had such a deep voice? pic.twitter.com/Q5GUyrNODR

— David Rudin (@DavidSRudin) June 19, 2017

Even The Daily Mail, bastion of international Trumpkinism, merrily deployed the snarky headline "Sounds like he's giving an 8th grade valedictory."

Kushner sounded like the smartest guy in the room - if the room was in middle school.

'It's probably not fair to observe that finally hearing Kushner's voice is a major let-down. Sounds like he's giving an 8th grade valedictory, wrote Darcy Jae.

At least one person thought that Kushner's voice lost out to the hunky Canadian Prime Minister. 'After hearing Jared Kushner's voice, I understand why Ivanka was staring at Justin Trudeau with those hungry eyes,' sniped Daniel Dresden.

Head left and it goes from insult to injury. The Onion's A.V. Club:

It’s a wheedling, blandly competent voice, which is, all things considered, a fine change of aesthetic pace from Donald Trump’s freewheeling, real-time portrait of senility.

If you think someone with a naturally high-pitched or soft voice cannot project power, or convince, or impress, you never sat in front of Steve Jobs. Read the rest

TPM's Josh Marshall shares how Occam's Razor is coming into play, and the worst case scenario of corruption and scandal is quickly becoming the most likely. The simplest explanation of Kushner's alleged behavior is money from Russia, with love.

Via TPM:

We’ve heard it claimed that this secret channel to Moscow Kushner and Flynn wanted to set up was to discuss the situation in Syria. That is simply not plausible. At least it couldn’t have been just about Syria as there are numerous legitimate ways to do that. If the conversations were about Syria and ISIS, which I find dubious, they must have included other topics which had to be hidden from the US government, the intelligence agencies and US military.

The most plausible ‘bad’ story behind the Trump/Russia mystery has always been some kind of financial preferment to members of the Trump family in exchange for lifting the sanctions put in place after the Russian annexation of Crimea and subsequent low-intensity incursions into eastern Ukraine. This wouldn’t come out of the blue. It would probably come in the context of some ‘deal’ over Syria or Ukraine or perhaps some agreement about global counter-terrorism cooperation. As I’ve written, there is a more ‘innocent‘ explanation as well. It may not be any quid pro quo. It could simply be years of doing business with Russians and people from other parts of the former Soviet Union which has made Trump inclined to see their needs in a sympathetic light. His hostility toward the sanctions regime could also be driven by the fact that, with his dependence on Russian and FSU investments and purchases, they likely hurt him directly.

"What has changed... is that the House of Saud is now dealing directly with a member of the Trump family." Read the rest