Keeping Kushner would make Trump's Russia nightmare permanent - By Eugene Robinson
It’s hard to write about Jared Kushner without going straight to the Icarus cliche — hubris, flying too close to the sun, falling into the sea. I once wrote that he was the only one of President Trump’s close advisers who couldn’t be fired, but Kushner’s father-in-law would be smart to prove me wrong.
It is possible, of course, that Kushner was acting on Trump’s orders when he allegedly suggested setting up a secret communications channel with Moscow using Russia’s secure equipment. In that case, Trump’s reluctance to cut him loose would be understandable — and the Russia scandal would lead directly to the president himself. If not, are family ties keeping Kushner employed at the White House? Or is it Trump’s mounting sense of persecution and his reluctance to let an aggressive media push him around?
Whatever his motivation, Trump is allowing the Russia scandal to become not an extended nightmare but a permanent one. And all the Twitter tantrums in the world won’t make it go away.
It is, of course, ironic that Kushner was originally seen as the benign, socially acceptable face of Trumpism. He and his allies were supposed to constitute the reasonable and responsible faction in the West Wing, as opposed to the alt-right barbarians clustered around Stephen K. Bannon. But while Bannon’s name has not come up publicly in the Russia investigation, at least thus far, Kushner is now reportedly a focus of the FBI probe.
And with good reason. At a December meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Kushner reportedly suggested using secure equipment at the Russian Embassy or one of the Russian consulates to open a secret communications channel with the government of strongman Vladimir Putin. This is wrong on so many levels.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/keeping-kushner-would-make-trumps-russia-nightmare-permanent/2017/05/29/0ea838c0-44a5-11e7-98cd-af64b4fe2dfc_story.html
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