The Company He Keeps
“A man is known by the company he keeps”
Former First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner took a private jet to Quatar last Sunday to witness the World Cup Final. Carbon footprint? What carbon footprint?
He was joined in a Luxury Box by Elon Musk. Clever social climbers know that the way to look good is to hang with someone less-popular than you are. Other than Vladimir Putin and Hitler’s corpse, none of the 8 billion humans currently occupying Planet Earth is more despised than Elon. “Lookin’ good, Jared”
Seated alongside Jared and Elon was Mansoor al-Mahmoud, CEO of the Quatar Sovereign Wealth Fund. He coughed up some $9 billion for five 80,000 seat capacity soccer stadiums that will serve a country of 300,000 citizens when the World Cup is over. That was not even Mansoor’s worst investment this year. He also loaned Elon Musk some $375 million to take Twitter private. Twitter is going great guns since Elon took over, isn’t it? Meanwhile, we are paying nearly $4 per gallon for gas.
Mansoor did not begin making bad investments this year. In 2007, The Kushner Company cleverly bought a Manhattan office building for $1.8 billion. In 2008, the real estate market crashed. Jared’s building was now worth less than 1/3 its mortgage. In 2018, Brookfield Asset Management magically bailed the Kushner’s out by assuming the remaining $1.2 billion on the mortgage. Brookfield is controlled (you guessed it) by the Quatar Sovereign Wealth Fund. Who was President in 2018? Who was his daddy-in-law’s “Senior Advisor”? Is that “draining the swamp”?
Completing the group in that most luxurious of Luxury Boxes was Recep Erdogan, President of Turkey since 2014 and for as long as he likes. Turkey banned “foreign” social media from the country including Twitter. Rumor has it that Twitter (and only Twitter) may be allowed back in if it includes a Content Approval Staff to Recep’s liking. Both Recep and Elon can write off their expenses for this trip to Quatar as a “business trip”. As if Donnie is the only one who plays the Tax Avoidance Game.
Come to think of it, Jared might be the least-objectionable of that group.
By Ed Dufton
