How Low Can You Go?
Charles Kushner: Trump’s Mechutan
Unlike a majority of Jewish people (especially rabbis) residing here in South Florida, I was neither born nor raised in a Lower East Side family where the parents spoke Yiddish whenever they did not want the children to understand what they were saying. Both I and my slightly older sister Erica (Riki) are 100% Californian. Neither our grandparents nor great-grandparents for that matter were Eastern-European immigrants who came through Eliis Island or Castle Garden and then settled a short distance from their place of disembarkation. Rather, the earliest generations of Hymans, Greenbergs and Schimbergs were born in 19th century Virginia, Maryland and Minnesota. Their children - our great-grandparents - were native English speakers about as far removed from “Tevya, Golda and the girls” as can be imagined. The next generation - our great grandparents - raised their families in places like Baltimore, Richmond, Virginia, Chicago and Kansas City. (Granny Annie, my mother’s mother, was born in 1896 in the same St. Paul neighborhood where just a few days earlier, F(rancis) Scott Key Fitzgerald (F. Scott) had entered the world - not exactly a Yiddishe shetl). As such, neither our great grandparents, grandparents nor parents understood more than 5 words of Yiddish. (I myself did learn a bit of Yiddish with the late Professor Herb Paper out of an urge to be able to read Sholem Aleichem in the original) Indeed, today, whenever we want to speak in front of “Madame” (our soon-to-be 97 year old matriarch) in a language she won’t understand, we (meaning me and Annie) chatter away in Hebrew. (Unlike most America-born, Hollywoodish Jewish great-grandmothers of her generation, she does do reasonably well in French and Italian.) So what in the world does any of this have to do with “Politics & a Whole Lot More,” as the subtitle of this blog has proclaimed for going on 17 years?
To wit: our purpose is to introduce a Yiddish word that takes a paragraph to explain - a word that soon may become as well known as schmuck, mazal tov, meshuggah, chutzpah, glitch, mensch, shtick and yente - all of which likewise take a brief sentence or two to explain. And that word is מחותן (pronounced m’chut’n for a male, מחותנתטע (pronounced m’chutn’steh for a female, or מחותונים (pronounced m’chutonim in the plural. Let’s, for the moment, pay attention to the male version (מחותן) of the term. Derived from the Hebrew word for “groom,” a mchut’n is how one describes the relationship between you and your child’s father-in-law. A simple example (and getting ever closer to the purpose of this little linguistic exercise) would be to explain the relationship between Donald Trump and Charles Kushner - Jared Kusher’s father . . . the one just given a presidential pardon. Charles Kushner is Donald and Melania Trump’s m’chut’n, while Seryl Kushner (née Stadtmauer), Jared’s mother and Charles’ wife, is the Trump’s m’chutn’steh; together, they are Donald and Melania’s m’chutonim. (BTW: For those who speak/understand Spanish, the word consuegro/consuegra is pretty close . . . “the father-in-law/mother-in-law of one’s son or daughter.”). In issuing a pardon to his m’chutan just days before he (please G-d) heads for the exit, Donald Trump has done something which has never happened before in American history and undoubtedly will never happen again.
Ever since George Washington issued the first presidential pardon in 1795 (forgiving two Pennsylvania men sentenced to death for treason after participating in protests known as "The Whiskey Rebellion”) there have been some forgotten doozies. How many recall that in 1868, Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, fully pardoned every soldier who fought for the Confederate Army? Or that in 1989, Ronald Reagan pardoned George Steinbrenner, the loud-mouthed owner of the New York Yankees, who had been convicted in 1974 on 14 criminal counts for making illegal financial contributions to Nixon's reelection campaign two years earlier?
Of course, up until just the other day, President Gerald R. Ford’s pardoning of his predecessor Richard Nixon had been the most notorious such act in all American history. Now mind you, ‘45 isn’t the only president to pardon a family member: Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger (who had pleaded guilty to cocaine distribution charges and served a year in prison). Roger’s pardon was one of 147 issued by the outgoing president on his very last day in office. 45’s pre-Christmas pardons were far, far more than mere gifts to loyalists such as Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and his m’chutan Charles Kushner; they were knockout punches aimed directly at core American principles. For in addition to these particularly noxious characters, there were three former Republican members of the House of Representatives - Chris Collins of New York, Duncan Hunter of California and Steve Stockman of Texas — who were guilty of, respectively, insider trading, stealing hundreds of thousands in campaign money and robbing a charity. These pardons, in the words of columnist/constitutional law professor/professional whistleblower Harry Litman “. . . delivered an especially brutal kick in the teeth to the DOJ.” Generally speaking, in order to receive a presidential pardon, petitioners are supposed to have served their sentences, demonstrated genuine remorse for their crimes and led a productive life afterward. Such requirements are just one more joke to Trump — by a conservative estimate, more than half of his pre-Christmas pardons went to people who did not meet Justice Department criteria.
Ivanka Trump’s billionaire father-in-law Charles Kushner had pleaded guilty in 2004 to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering, and making illegal campaign donations. Moreover, he had confessed to retaliating against his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities, by hiring a prostitute to seduce him. He filmed the encounter and sent it to his sister, the man’s wife. Prosecuted by then U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, Kushner served 14 months of a two-year sentence in federal prison. Christie, who recently referred to Kushner’s crimes as “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was U.S. attorney,” gained enough notoriety and positive publicity that he was eventually elected governor of New Jersey. His involvement in prosecuting the case also got him kicked off the Trump political jet. I guess what they say is true: קיין גוטע מעשה ווערט נישט באשטראפט (keyn gute meshh vert nisht bashtraft - viz. “No good deed goes unpunished”) Prior to 2016, Charles Kushner was a major donor to Democrats in New York. Once Donald Trump started his race for the White House, Kushner switched his allegiance - and donations - to the G.O.P. And yes it is true, he has long been a major contributor to Chabad and other Jewish educational institutions.
But Roger Stone? Paul Manafort? Michael Flynn? Have they shown or voiced any contrition? What have they done to indicate any rehabilitation? Former general Michael Flynn, who served about 2 weeks as Donald Trump’s first National Security Advisor, has, of late, been appearing on News Max and OAN urging his former boss to put the country under martial law in order to get the 2020 election overturned! This is how one earns a presidential pardon? Or, have the Stones, Manaforts and Flynns done something far more important: put cash into the Trump coffers? Although there is as yet no hard proof that a crime has been committed by Donald Trump, the history is both clear and ever-present: the man has consistently used his office as a personal ATM.
There will undoubtedly be more pardons between today and 11:59 a.m. on January 20, 2021. And who knows, perhaps the final pardons - which easily could be issued to many Trumps (Donald, Don, Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Jared certainly come to mind) won’t be signed by the man who, up until he left for Mar-a-Lago just other day, sat behind the Resolute Desk . . . but by Mike Pence who may well become “President for a day” just so he can pardon his former boss. Only time will tell. (BTW: Anyone seeking to purchase a handsome replica of the Resolute Desk, it will set you back $6,118.49. Ironically, the best venue for purchase is Overstock.com, whose former C.E.O., Patrick Byrne, plays a significant role in the conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. And by the way, the Resolute replica is made not in the United States, but rather Indonesia.)
In pardoning his m’chut’n - another billionaire real estate tycoon who got his start because his father was very, very rich - Donald Trump has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the truth of two things:
דאָס עפּעלע פֿאַלט ניט װײַט פֿון בײמעלע (Dos epele falt nit vayt fun beymele - “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” and
When it comes to Donald Trump, the answer to the question “How low can you go?” is נידעריקער ווי די נייַנט קרייַז פון גענעם (nideriker vi di naynt krayz fun genem) . . . “Lower than the ninth circle of hell!”
8 days until the Georgia election;
23 days until Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are inaugurated.
Be safe . . . See you next year!
Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone