The past couple of weeks have been challenging for our president and his team. The man who promised so much winning we’d tire of it, and who pledged to only hire the very best people, called one of those people – the now-departed Rex Tillerson – “dumb as a rock.”  I guess he didn’t know that before? And General Kelly, the man that many Trump defenders cited as the “grown-up in the room” is soon leaving the room. And, of course, the Mueller team dropped more damning documents. The president promised an 87-plus page rebuttal before Mueller’s next document was even filed, so there’s that. 

So you’d think I’d write about one of those important stories, but as it turns out, there are lots of smarter people already writing on that, so I want to talk with you about a story that caught my eye as, well, worsethan those POTUS stories: It turns out that Jared Kushner has been chatting on the phone with an old buddy, and we as Americans should be shocked and outraged.

You will recall that Mr. Kushner is the son-in-law of the president, and who, without a meaningful portfolio of experience, has been placed in charge of a whole range of important government policy areas, including Middle East peace, government reform, the opioid crisis, criminal justice reform, liaison to China, Mexico, and the Muslim community. Not bad for a failing real estate investor.

And presumably, wearing one or more of those hats, Mr. Kushner, it is reported, decided to chat up the current de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly known as MSB, about how said MSB can best weather the storm created by the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

Now, if you are a supporter of Mr. Trump and his team, you might think this is just good outreach to an important ally. But if the reports are correct, what Mr. Kushner did was, in fact, not a good thing at all, and I’d like to think he would lose his job over it. He won’t, of course, but he should.

Why?

Well, simply put, a very senior government official should not be telling the leader of another nation how to – literally – get away with murder. Given the relentless attacks on the free press our president has conducted, perhaps it is not surprising that his son-in-law might not see anything wrong with what he did, but let’s look at that, shall we?

The job of an American diplomat is to push for policies that will aid the goals of the United States, to include the practical (such as trade) and the more ethereal (such as promoting democracy). The House of Saud has been, at best, an off-again, on-again partner in economics and diplomacy. But it isassumed that an American policy maker will always put America first, to turn a phrase. 

It’s bad enough when a private citizen (cough…Paul Manafort…cough) works for a foreign power, but it is truly shocking when an actualgovernment employee does it. It does not appear that Mr. Kushner was trying to advance U.S. interests in these calls. Rather, he was advising MSB on how to get past the small inconvenience of a journalist being murdered and apparently dismembered by our “ally” and get back to important things, like drilling for more oil and bombing things in Yemen. 

Back a lifetime ago, when I worked a couple of summers on the National Security Council staff at the White House, there was a fairly standard way in which calls to foreign leaders would be handled. The appropriate staffer – the real expert – for, say Saudi Arabia, would draft a memo of talking points (what to say, and perhaps more importantly what notto say) for the boss making the call. It was not unusual for that staffer to be in the room when the boss made the actual call. It appears that Mr. Kushner did none of that, but freelanced his way through a diplomatic crisis. That is, as they say, no way to run a railroad.

Back in my day (wow, does that make me sound old), the political folks above us (like Mr. Kushner) understood that they were, very likely, notexperts in all areas, and they would actively engage with the staffers who knew the critical things likely to come up in any phone call. Again, Mr. Kushner appears to have just called his friend to coach him through the pesky murder coverage. That’s not only wrong, it’s dangerous for our nation and the world. Tired of winning yet?