*Now* it's a problem
The taboo against protesting at public figures' houses was broken a long time ago.
The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg uses the spectre of Trump cultists protesting outside an election official’s home to make a point about media double standards:
Perhaps you remember the terrible ordeal suffered by the White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the Red Hen in 2018. She was awaiting her entree at the Virginia farm-to-table restaurant when the co-owner, appalled by Sanders’s defense of Donald Trump’s administration, asked her to leave. This happened three days after the homeland security secretary at the time, Kirstjen Nielsen, was yelled at for the administration’s family separation policy as she tried to dine at a Mexican restaurant in Washington.
These two insults launched a thousand thumb-suckers about civility. More than one conservative writer warned liberals that the refusal to let Trump officials eat in peace could lead to Trump’s re-election. “The political question of the moment,” opined Daniel Henninger in The Wall Street Journal, is this: ‘Can the Democratic Party control its left?’”
Somehow, though, few are asking the same question of Republicans as Trump devotees terrorize election workers and state officials over the president’s relentless lies about voter fraud. Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, described her family’s experience this past weekend: “As my 4-year-old son and I were finishing up decorating the house for Christmas on Saturday night, and he was about to sit down and to watch ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas,’ dozens of armed individuals stood outside my home shouting obscenities and chanting into bullhorns in the dark of night.”
[…]
So far, what happened to Benson doesn’t appear to be turning into a big cultural moment. There’s no frisson of the new about it; it’s pretty routine for Trumpists to threaten and intimidate people who work in both public health and election administration.
The radically different way the media treats boundary-pushing on the left and on the right is about more than hypocrisy or double standards. It is, rather, an outgrowth of the crisis of democracy that shields the Republican Party from popular rebuke. There’s no point asking if the G.O.P. can control its right. It has no reason to.
If any prominent Republicans have condemned the protest - the armed protest, no less - at Benson’s home, I haven’t seen it, nor am I holding my breath waiting for it. I’m surprised Trump hasn’t tweeted his support yet. (Maybe he will, by the time this is posted.)
And yet…if Goldberg thinks this kind of thing is only directed at Democrats by the right, and if it’s something that just started happening, Bless Her Heart.
The mayors of Seattle and Portland both had their homes set upon by angry demonstrators earlier this year, and guess what? They weren’t Trump supporters.
Then there was Minnesota state representative John Thompson leading an angry protest outside the home of the local police union (also demanding that his news-reporter wife be fired, because reasons).
Before that, demonstrators from “Smash Racism DC” protested at Tucker Carlson’s home, chanting “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!” (The late, unlamented Think Progress decided he had it coming.)
You don’t have to like Carlson, police union heads or insufficiently progressive mayors to think this is a bad idea. Wade into fever swamps on the internet, and you’ll see many people justifying it because the protest targets’ policies “literally” threaten their lives. If that’s the case, we should just give up on democracy altogether and let everyone fight it out in the streets until there is just one winner.
Before anyone accuses me of “both sides-ism,” I don’t think both sides are morally equal. The lefties haven’t been showing up armed - not yet, anyway - and don’t have increasingly cultish political parties backing them up. But when a tactic is normalized, you can’t expect only the good people to use it.
Related: longtime readers may remember when I criticized The Lincoln Project for encouraging people to harass lawyers. Well, look who’s doing it now:
Mickey Kaus, yet another veteran blogger who’s taken the Substack route, has a theory about Jared Kushner’s cockroach-like survival in the Trump White House despite a list of screwups longer than a CVS receipt. Being married to the President’s favorite child helps, but as usual, it’s all about the money:
The theory goes like this: Trump's empire has always been built on insecure ground, specifically a mountain of debt. The brand took a hit when half the nation decided to go into the Trump-hating business. Then came the pandemic, which struck hotels and office buildings, core Trump specialties, especially hard. In the near future Trump faces large, urgent, financial and legal challenges. “He has hundreds of millions of dollars coming due” and ”doesn't have an apparent stream of cash coming in.” Trump is “personally responsible” for $421 million, according to the NYT. And there’s no more Apprentice.
By comparison, Jared's businesses -- the empire built by his father, Charles Kushner--are probably in better shape. I'd rather be renting out apartments than high-rise offices, wouldn't you? The major existential threat to the Kushners' fortune had been the 666 Fifth Avenue tower for which they’d paid an exorbidant price. But they've now been bailed out of 666 by Canada’s Brookfield investment firm in a deal that may or may not have relied on funding from Qatar (which Jared, coincidentally, is now visiting, trying to resolve a boycott against it by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others). The Kushner companies have been able to obtain loans -- including large U.S. government-backed loans -- that Donald might never have managed to get without damaging adverse publicty.
Jared was worth $324 million in 2018, according to the New York Times,. The Times also says he and his wife have “investments, mostly in real estate … worth at least $204 million and as much as $783 million.” But that's just Jared & Ivanka. The Kushners are a close-knit family; it's probably best to view them together, as a family empire -- hence the title of Vicky Ward's revealing takedown, Kushner Inc.. Along with Jared there's Charles, who got rich developing New Jersey garden apartments before going to prison for a lurid attempt to silence his brother-in-law -- but who then returned, with some of his new prison buddies, to pull the strings on the 666 deal and other projects. If that's not enough financial heft, add in Jared's brother Josh, who may be the family's biggest business success -- he has started companies like Thrive (media), Oscar (health care) and Cadre (real estate). According to Ward, there's some evidence -- in the form of an alleged profit-sharing agreement between Josh and Jared -- that millions flow, family-style, from one Kushner to another. Presidential pardons also, in all probability.
If you're Trump, looking ahead, you are thinking of how you're going to keep your gold-logo enterprise going — or maybe even start a personal media empire (which will require billions in capital). And Jared begins to look less like the son-in-law you didn't really want and more like a potential savior who might help keep the entwined families afloat in a way nobody else can. Think of it this way: you were a bank, would you rather loan more millions to Trump himself -- who brings scrutiny and, often, embarrassment, and who doesn't seem wildly diversified -- or to the implicit combined might of Trump-Kushner-Kushner-Kushner?
That financial reality couldn't help but give Jared a lot of power in the White House over the last four years. If Jared didn't want to ignominiously retreat back to NYC -- if he wanted to control all the important personnel and the important, high-impact initiatives ... it wasn’t easy to tell him no. Trump needs him at least as much as he needs Trump. Who's going to prop Trump up in 2021, or 2025? Tom Brady?
Trump has been bailed out by someone for his entire life, starting with his father. It would be very on-brand for him to have his son-in-law keeping the lights on for him once he’s evicted from the White House.
For the record, I still say Kushner was one of the better (or, at least, less awful) people working in that Administration. I’d rather have he and Ivanka advising the President than Don Jr. or Steven Miller. Also, I haven’t yet seen Jared calling for public executions of political enemies, unlike (checks notes) a lawyer acting on behalf of the President of the United States.
Remember two weeks ago, when the conventional wisdom was that Sidney Powell was too crazy even for Donald Trump?
No matter what Trump’s handlers say and do, the fact is you’re always welcome on Team Trump as long as you accept him as your Lord and Savior.
Armed protesters at private homes feels uncomfortably close to the Salem witch hunts or public stonings. We’re supposed to have learned from history that uncontrolled, emotionally charged actions don’t help with finding facts and tend to get people hurt. Society as a whole should understand by now that protesting at private homes takes the focus away from where it should be - the person’s job and how they are doing it. No one is going to do better at their job when they have to worry about the safety of their children.
When basic privacy is invaded, fear and aggression kick in. Both protesters and their targets may react irrationally. Public grievances, regardless of their merit, belong in public settings. This helps to keep emotional aspects under control and hopefully puts the focus on facts and rational behaviour.