| This is NOT an April Fool’s column. This is a column about the children of well-known people – especially the children of Presidents of the United States – cashing in on the family name. This is not, by the way, true of the Galen family. In our case it is the father trying to cash in on the fame of the son. The children of former President Donald J. Trump have done very well, both before and during his presidency. Not sure how well they’ve been doing since. An outfit known as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) calculated that Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, “reported between $172 million and $640 million in outside income while working in the White House.” To be fair, I and J took no salary while sitting in the White House complex, but they didn’t need to so long as Ivanka could get the WH switchboard to get President of China (or someone similar) on the phone, and Jared could chat with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, whenever he had a major real estate loan coming due. Nice work, if you can get it, but no one has accused them of illegal activity. Now, to Hunter Biden. Hunter is no slouch at using his family name to make a buck. Or a bunch of bucks. We know Biden-the-Younger was on the board of a major Ukrainian natural gas company, making some $50,000 per month. That is a bunch of borsht. But, at $50,000 per month, Biden would have to served on that board for just over ONE THOUSAND YEARS to make what Ivanka and Jared knocked down during their four years of sitting in the White House. It was Hunter’s service on that board that let President Trump to hold up promised military assistance to Ukraine unless the then-newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, would provide Trump with documents damaging to Hunter. That “perfect phone call” as Trump put it, led to articles of impeachment in the U.S. House. Through it all, according to the Washington Post, “No evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the Bidens has surfaced.” But all that is in the past. This week the aforementioned Donald J. Trump, after cheering Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine, call on his pal (or maybe his master), Putin to, as USA Today put it: “Release any information he has on reports a Russian oligarch gave money a decade ago to President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.” Although Hunter may be in some domestic tax trouble, the paper goes on to say, “There is no evidence Hunter Biden engaged in illicit dealings with Russia.” Most children of former Presidents stay out of the limelight. As far as that goes, most Presidents stay out of the limelight. If you want your kid to make a lot of money on the back of a President (and you are not planning to run) teach them to be a senior advisor (or manager) of his or her campaign. Your kid’s ability to get the WH switchboard to put through a call to the President or a senior staffer to press the case for a client is worth many seats on a Ukrainian natural gas company board. New Topic: I haven’t watched the Academy Awards in, maybe ever. I certainly didn’t watched the program last weekend. The only reason I knew about the Will Smith/Chris Rock one-rounder was because my Twitter feed blew up. The notion that the movie industry would feign being upset by … violence … after making picture after picture where dialogue is only needed to separate the scenes where someone is shot, something is blown up, or both is laughable. The Academy is reportedly considering what to do about the slapping incident. I have a suggestion: Ban Will Smith from sitting in the front row. See you next week. |
Presidential Childern
