In the annals of terrible White House staff work, the decision to send Jared Kushner out there alone and unarmed against Jonathan Swan of Axios is going to rank right up there with Alexander Haig's one-man coup d'etat after Ronald Reagan was shot, and whoever it was that handed Ollie North Manucher Ghorbanifar's phone number. When he was not being transparently ill-informed, the Dauphin was being transparently dishonest. And in all cases, he looked like a misbegotten princeling in some kind of weird internal exile, one with pool privileges, private jets, and the ability to speak for a country he can't begin to understand. This is what we mean.

Swan: So you agree with him on economics, on foreign policy. Where do you stand on abortion?

Kushner: Again, I was not the person who was elected.

Swan: So you agree with the president’s position?

Kushner: I’m here to enforce his positions. His position is the one that as a staffer in the White House, we’ll work to push.

I am not animatronic.

Swan: Do you believe the Palestinian people deserve their own independent sovereign state with a capital in East Jerusalem?

Kushner: There’s a difference between the technocrats, and there’s a difference between the people. The technocrats are focused on very technocratic things, and when I speak to Palestinian people, what they want is they want the opportunity to live a better life. They want the opportunity to pay their mortgage...

I am not a native English-speaker.

Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump bring a dose of American meritocracy to the United Kingdom. Chris Jackson Getty Images

Swan: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she calls, she has called President Trump a racist. Have you ever seen him say or do anything that you would describe as racist or bigoted?

Kushner: So the answer is no. Absolutely not. You can’t not be a racist for 69 years and then run for president and be a racist. What I’ll say is that when a lot of the Democrats call the president a racist, I think they’re doing a disservice to people who suffer because of real racism in this country.

Swan: Was birtherism racist?

Kushner: Um, look, I wasn’t really involved in that.

Swan: I know you weren’t! Was it racist?

Kushner: Like I said, I wasn’t involved in that.

Swan: I know you weren’t! Was it racist?

Kushner: Um, look, I know who the president is, and I have not seen anything in him that is racist. So, again, I was not involved in that.

I am not entirely conscious much of the time.

The sad point behind this debacle is this: Jared Kushner doesn't care if he sounds like three geese trying to honk the Messiah. He doesn't care that he's supposed to be doing all these important jobs and clearly doesn't know any more about the Middle East than he knows about the sacrificial rituals of the Aztecs. This is not a drawback in anyone's effort to rise in this administration*. Marry the boss's daughter is an extra, for sure. But this guy was born to be a Trump.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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