September 27, 2017--Whatever Happened to Jared Kushner?

Has anyone seen Jared Kushner lately? Or for that matter, Ivanka?

I ask because wasn't he the president's chief advisor and wasn't she his external conscience? Jared was in charge of foreign affairs, especially tasked to bring peace to the Middle East (I think Trump said that would be quick and easy) and she was supposed to keep him from being too inappropriate and outrageous. We see how well  that's working out.

I suspect Jared is spending all his time defending himself as special counsel Robert Mueller closes in on his deep involvement with the Russians as they worked collaboratively to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign and, oh yes, dealing with what we just leraned--that Jared hypocritically has been using a private email account during his thus-far White House assignment. So, the Middle East will have to wait but Rex Tillerson maybe can finally become secretary of state.

As for Ivanka, she has her hands full explaining why her fashion business still has most of her stuff fabricated in China. And, also, why she too used a private email account for White House business.

Some of us, early on in the Trump administration, hoped that Jared and Ivanka would act to protect Trump from himself, from his worst impulses. And thereby protect the rest of us from the consequences of his words and behavior.

I wrote a piece back in March, "Ivanka Time," in which I hoped with gathering desperation that she had enough emotional leverage to get him to cut down on the crazy tweets and think twice before addressing the press and the public. That she would be a moderating force.

I speculated that she and Jared had a life of their own that didn't depend on being Trump's favorite daughter or son-in-law and that as he began to spin more and more out of control that they would take him aside for an intervention--to tell him, like it is, how he was losing the support of even some members of his base and was alienating independent-minded Americans.

That they might even, tearfully, tell him that if he failed to ratchet back some of his most inappropriately extravagant behavior they would have to consider leaving Washington, their advisor jobs, and him.

They have lives in New York, friendships with sane and rational people, and they might say, I hoped, that they can't stand with him to the end as he self-immolates. That they couldn't see their own and their children's lives destroyed.

I acknowledge that was wishful thinking. And so here we are. He has had one of his worse weeks--he has inflamed the situation with the North Koreans and we are close to a cataclysmic war, he has ignored Puerto Rico's desperate plight (it will be almost another week before he visits the devastated island), and for the past six days he has been obsessed with the National Football League, tweeting at least 20 times about his outrage that some players in protest against persistent racism have been refusing to stand for the National Anthem. And of course the Mueller investigation ticks closer and closer to him.

So, Ivanka and Jared have slipped from sight. Who can blame them.