Nicole Kushner Meyer is apologizing for mentioning her brother, Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, during an investment conference in China over the weekend.
“In 2008, my brother Jared Kushner joined the family company as CEO, and recently moved to Washington to join the administration,” Meyer said at the conference aimed at encouraging Chinese developers to invest in a New Jersey real estate project, according to CNN.
.. The program has come under intense scrutiny by both Republicans and Democrats.California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein opposes the EB-5 visa program, arguing that it allows monied foreign nationals to use their wealth to buy visas and U.S. citizenship.
The program — which was extended and sneakily slipped into the latest spending bill — is rife with abuse, leading to fraud convictions
.. GreenTech Automotive, the electric car manufacturer co-founded by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe — funded in-part by EB-5 visas granted to Chinese investors, and pushed through the politically-driven approval process by Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother — failed to make its first payment on a $3 million loan from the state of Mississippi. The company shuttered its Mississippi factory earlier this year.
Trump, Asked About Accusations Against Bill O’Reilly, Calls Him a ‘Good Person’
“Personally, I think he shouldn’t have settled,” Mr. Trump told Times reporters in a wide-ranging interview. “Because you should have taken it all the way; I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”
“I think he’s a person I know well,” Mr. Trump said. “He is a good person.”
.. But the president has a particular rapport with Mr. O’Reilly, whose hectoring braggadocio and no-apologies nostalgia for a bygone American era mirror Mr. Trump’s own.
.. Mr. Trump called it “locker room talk” and apologized for the remarks. Mr. O’Reilly, on air that evening, allowed that the tape was “an embarrassment” for the Republican nominee. But he also criticized The Washington Post, the newspaper that published the footage.
.. But Mr. Trump’s advice to his friend on Wednesday — that Mr. O’Reilly “shouldn’t have settled” — was consistent with the never-back-down ethos of a president, and former real estate magnate, who relishes the counterattack.
.. Fox News’s prime time and morning hosts are blatant champions of the administration — to the extent that NBC News’s chairman, Andrew Lack, recently compared the network to “state broadcasting.”
.. Mr. Murdoch’s former wife, Wendi Deng, is so close with Ivanka Trump that the president’s daughter became a trustee of the Murdoch children’s fortune.
.. Mr. Murdoch, meanwhile, had mentored Ms. Trump’s future husband, Jared Kushner, in the art of media moguldom after his purchase of The New York Observer in 2006.
.. Mr. Trump’s kind words for Mr. O’Reilly on Wednesday seemed a reciprocal gesture of sorts, from a leader who values loyalty.
Mr. Trump Plays by His Own Rules (or No Rules)
the very day that two of Ivanka Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s children were serenading the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at Mar-a-Lago, the People’s Republic of China approved new trademarks allowing Ivanka to peddle jewelry, bags and spa services to a nation of 1.4 billion where she is a role model for aspirational oligarchs.
.. a culture of self-enrichment and self-dealing in which corporate C.E.O.s, lobbyists and foreign officials seeking the first family’s favor hold parties at Mar-a-Lago and at the Trump International Hotel in Washington
.. Mr. Trump struggled for years to close deals across the Middle East; now that he’s president, doors are opening. His family is seeking or holds trademarks in Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, where the president’s sons just opened a golf course in Dubai, and in Jordan, whose King Abdullah II just visited the White House to discuss joint efforts against ISIS.
.. That leaves Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has the legal authority and the resources to investigate and hold the administration to account. Anyone familiar with Mr. Chaffetz’s record of partisan, ineffectual witch-hunting won’t be surprised to learn that he’s done nothing.
.. But that’s hardly a match for an administration filled with people who seem determined to wring every last dollar and ounce of trust from the American people.
Video: Why a Staff ‘Shake-up’ Poses Challenges for President Trump
There are Three Pillars of Political Thought in the white house:
- Economic nationalists: Steve Bannon, Stephenen Miller, Peter Navarro
- Moderate Globalists: Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell
- Establishment Republicans: Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer