July 14, 2017

Jared Kushner Helps Out His Little Brother

Chris Kleponis/DPA via ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Last month Jared Kushner organized a meeting of tech giants to meet with President Trump. Tim Cook was there. Jeff Bezos was there. Larry Page was there. In all, companies with market caps ranging from $9 billion to $770 billion were there.

Plus the CEO of a teensy little startup with a market cap of $0.2 billion. Can you guess who it was? Can you? Huh?

Of course not. You’ve never heard of either the CEO or the company. The answer is Zachary Bookman of OpenGov, a company partly owned by Kushner’s brother, Joshua Kushner. I’m sure Josh’s investment will do well now that OpenGov has gotten this kind of high-profile attention. And that’s what brothers are for, aren’t they?

Jared Kushner is a one-man wrecking crew in the White House. If Donald Trump’s enemies were trying to infiltrate his inner circle and destroy his presidency, they couldn’t do better than Kushner. The only thing that keeps me from thinking Kushner is a DNC plant or a mutant super villain is the fact that he’s so obviously dim that his actions make a sort of demented sense. Eventually he’s going to bring the entire White House down around Donald Trump’s ears, and the whole time he’ll be standing there with that weird, blank look on his face, thinking that everything is still just fine.

The Wall Street Journal has the whole story here. Apologies for the log scale in the chart below. It was the only way to show all the companies on a single axis.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate