Should Donald Trump hamstring the U.S. economy, rip off the consumer, despoil the landscape, give succour to America’s enemies and promote junk science – all in order to keep a “seat at the table” with people who despise him and think he’s an idiot?
.. distinguished physicist Will Happer:
Climate policy, however, poses a grave threat. Yes, those who engineered the Paris Agreement will be upset if the United States withdraws. Withdrawal will also outrage the many who profit from climate alarmism. But remaining in the Paris Agreement will not sit well with many of those who voted for Mr. Trump in part because of his campaign promises to withdraw from the agreement. These voters rightly perceived that the agreement would benefit a privileged international elite, at the expense of the common people of the United States and of the rest of the world.
.. But Trump is still wavering over the Paris climate agreement, which senior members of his administration, including Jared Kushner, daughter Ivanka, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are urging him not to quit.
.. Steve Milloy:
.. Exxon, Milloy explains, like most Big Oil companies has effectively been hijacked by green activists.
.. Exxon Mobil’s job is to create wealth via production and sale of oil and gas — not to participate in the dubious pursuit of returning the atmosphere to pre-Industrial Revolution conditions.
Meet the Real Jared Kushner
He’s a lot tougher than he looks.
.. It was Kushner who reportedly pushed for the firing of FBI Director James Comey over the objections of Bannon. And it was Kushner who was the lone voice urging for a counterattack after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the appointment of a special prosecutor, according to the New York Times.
.. Because he is soft-spoken, slim and handsome, with degrees from Harvard and NYU and a family that donates to Democrats, he couldn’t possibly be the same guy knifing his West Wing rivals and urging the president to go to war with the Justice Department and the FBI.
.. He’s tough. In an exceedingly polite way, he is as tough as anyone is in New York City real estate.”
.. it turned him into a person who was determined to operate in much the same way but just be quieter about it,”
.. He would compensate his lack of knowledge by saying stuff like, ‘Let’s just blow up the whole concept of digital.’ It would sort of sound interesting for a second and then you would just forget about it and get on with the work.”
.. At the end of the year, when she went to collect her performance bonus at his real estate office for meeting agreed upon metrics on page views and audience growth, Kushner told her that they couldn’t pay, citing financial concerns, and asked her to “take one for the team.”
.. Kahlon described her former boss on Facebook thusly: “We’re talking about a guy who isn’t particularly bright or hard-working, doesn’t actually know anything, has bought his way into everything ever (with money he got from his criminal father), who is deeply insecure and obsessed with fame (you don’t buy the NYO, marry Ivanka Trump, or constantly talk about the phone calls you get from celebrities if it’s in your nature to ‘shun the spotlight’), and who is basically a shithead.”
.. In February 2014, when New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman began an investigation into Trump University, he was treated to a front-page hit piece in the Observer in which he was caricatured as a sociopath from “A Clockwork Orange.”
.. Wildstein faces up to 27 months in federal prison for his role in shutting down Fort Lee traffic as part of Christie’s “Bridgegate” scandal .. he received a note from Kushner, telling him, “I thought the move you pulled was kind of badass.”
.. It has always been part of the Kushner Way: unfailingly polite and urbane on the surface while searching for the soft underbelly to stick the knife in.
.. “He is obsessed with this notion that the whole New York City real estate world is antiquated. He wants to do things differently,”
.. It is hard to do any deal in New York because you are in this sea of hyper-aggressive people. He is like alkaline in that sea of aggressive people.”
.. nearly going into foreclosure in 2011 and now with only 70 percent of the property occupied—far below the Manhattan average of the low 90s—and after losing $10 million in 2015 after debt payments. The Kushners now face a looming $1.2 billion debt payment on the building that has sent them scrambling to find other investors. Real estate experts remain mystified by the purchase, doubting the building will ever be profitable for the amount that Kushner paid.
.. One appraiser pointed out that you would often hear of Kushner making deals in the real estate press, but rarely read about those deals panning out with rental income or occupancy rates that exceed expectations.
.. As for the Observer, rather than use a storied journalistic institution for an entryway into the right rooms of Manhattan, Kushner wanted to see the paper turn profitable—something that had never occurred in its previous decades of existence.
Jared Kushner to Cooperate in Any Probe Into Meetings With Russians
Senior White House aide’s meetings with two key Russians have drawn the interest of agents
Officials said Mr. Kushner met in December with Mr. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. Mr. Kushner subsequently had an aide handle another meeting requested by Mr. Kislyak, during which the ambassador sought to arrange a meeting between Mr. Kushner and Sergei Gorkov, the head of Vneshekonombank, or VEB, the officials said.
That meeting between Mr. Kushner and Mr. Gorkov took place in December, a senior administration official said earlier this year.
.. The U.S. in 2014 had imposed sanctions against the Russian development bank as part of penalties that followed Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine. The Treasury Department sanctions prohibit certain specified financial contacts with the bank and others on the sanctions list.
A senior administration official said earlier this year that Mr. Kushner didn’t know the bank was under sanction and “wasn’t there to discuss business.”
.. “The meetings took place in the format of a roadshow for Vneshekonombank’s 2021 strategy with representatives from major banks and business circles in the U.S.,” including the head of Kushner Cos., Mr. Kushner’s real-estate firm, the bank said.
Report: Russian bank whose CEO met secretly with Jared Kushner helped finance Trump’s Toronto hotel
A Russian state-owned bank under US sanctions, whose CEO met with President Donald Trump’s son-in-law in December, helped financed the construction of the president’s 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto, according to a new report.
.. Mr. Shnaider injected more money into the Trump Toronto project, which was financially troubled. Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer, Symon Zucker, said in an April interview that about $15 million from the asset sale went into the Trump Toronto project.
.. The Trump Organization has distanced itself from the Toronto project, which faced financial difficulties last year. The organization “merely licensed its brand and manages the hotel and residences,” it told The Journal in a statement.
.. The project was initially a joint venture between Trump and Shnaider
.. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a top White House adviser, met with the Vnesheconombank CEO Sergey Gorkov in December, The New York Times reported in late March.
.. At the time, Kushner was trying to find investors for an office building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
.. the meeting was reportedly orchestrated by Russia’s ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, who also met with Kushner in December