We Don't Need Governor Josh Shapiro As Vice President Because We Already Have a Jewish American President
Is this the real Art of the Deal election?
As you know, I don’t really think Donald Trump wants to be President and nothing — not even near assassination — has changed my view.
If you wanted to lose an election maybe you’d go to an audience that historically votes strongly against you — say the National Association of Black Journalists —and pissing them off so much that they maximize their vote against you. Speaking, hypothetically, of course.
Axios laid it out:
"It was awful," one House Republican said of the interview, telling Axios it raised concerns about whether Trump can contain his impulses while running against the first woman, Black and Asian American vice president.
Sen Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said of the Trump campaign: "Maybe they don't know how to handle the campaign, and so you default to issues that just should simply not be an issue."
"That was not a demonstration on how to win over undecided voters," another House Republican said.
Uh huh. Repeat after me: Donald Trump does not want to win.
And if you wanted to raise a lot of money from a community that was distrustful of you — say the Lower Merion Jeff Yass-affiliated Likud-friendly Jewish diaspora network, for example — maybe you’d let them think that you’ll let them pick your Vice President before picking who you really wanted all along. Speaking, hypothetically, of course.
The bag secured, the pick selected, the victory secured? I guess we’ll see.
For what it’s worth I’ve been told that it’s Tim Walz, not Josh Shapiro.
Which is good because I’m sorry but I will not vote for Kamala Harris if Josh Shapiro is on the ticket. My conscience will not allow it.
In a moment where Israelis are assassinating people to cover up for their crimes a left wing Likud figure like Shapiro should not be a heart beat away from the presidency even if he does do a good Obama impression.
But in the real world you watch who people marry — especially late in life — and what they really do for work and how they go about it.
Just what does a deal making attorney and a prosecuting attorney have in common?
The Art of the Deal, of course. The real one.
While Jared Kushner may have been our first Jewish president Doug Emhoff is our first Jewish American president. That American-ness is essential to understanding what’s going on in the Jewish-American community as we watch them turn away from Netanyahu in disgust. How else to take the would be First Daughter Ella’s embrace of the Palestinian cause?
Donald Trump is not taking it well, agreeing that the would be First Gentleman “crappy” and a “horrible Jew.” Trump struggles here in much the same way he struggles to really embrace what it means to be American.
There’s something very American about our First Gentleman being on his second marriage. I wish him and his wife well on what is soon to be their tenth wedding anniversary this August.
In fact there lessons all around on how to be happy from the Harris-Emhoff union, something all of us could learn from.
Their engagement was a relatively simple affair. (I didn’t know that Governor Jerry Brown married Anne Gust when he was 67!)
I think it’s a rather beautiful thing that Kamala Harris’s stepkids call her Momala and that she had the grace to include her husband’s first wife — a shiksa no less! — in her political endeavors speaks well of the kind of inclusion she could bring to the country. It’s altogether touching to hear her stepdaughter Ella talk about how she loves her “three parents.”
If a second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience Doug Emhoff may have gotten his full. Maybe that’s what Kamala means seeing what can be unburdened by what has been. Isn’t that the slogan of every second wife? What can be unburned by what has been indeed! The American Dream comes in many forms but the California one usually comes after a few bad decisions. (I’m divorced and not remarried — at least not yet — so I’m in between burdens or burdening, I guess.)
So who is Doug Emhoff?
In article after article we’re assured that Doug Emhoff is just a totally normal guy man. He’s just like you! His name is Doug! Who could dislike someone named Doug, or even “Dougie” as Kamala calls him?
Uh huh.
So what’s Doug doing representing patriotic Armenian-American gun traffickers like who were moving weapons from Eastern Europe and South Africa to Nigeria to fight the Islamist group Boko Haram?
(Whatever Ara Dolarian did he was apparently free enough to go to Bulgaria to get married less than two years after pleading guilty, making you wonder if this was yet another Bill Barr targeting of our assets abroad.).
I’ve always seen the Harris-Emhoff marriage as something of a political union between Northern California and Southern California — a necessary and sufficient thing to unite the two great bits of the Golden State.
Throw in an Armenian-American from Central California and a courthouse wedding in Santa Barbara — they were both 49! — and voilà, you united all the major parts. (Alas where is my father’s San Diego?)
In recent years California’s been too dominated by Northern California and so it’s somewhat telling that Kamala’s political future only really took off once she married a rich Southern California lawyer. Good for her. Get it girl.
Now I am an instigator in Jew-on-Jew fights, provided they are justly done and in a courtroom where they are traditionally practiced as in the American way. After all, I did hire Jewish American Bernie Kleinman to represent me against Rudy Giuliani Jewish attorney Ron Giller in the Clearview.AI lawsuit.
To be sure I like to have a few Jews around to do Jew-jitsu whenever some bad juju comes around as if often the case in Netanyahu’s America. Good Jewjew beats bad juju, most times, at least in this country in this moment.
It’s awfully hard for the Israelis to target your half Jewish stepchildren like they did with Hunter Biden.
Now I’m accused — by the IDF front the Antidefamation League no less! — of being a hater of the Jews writ large. This is news to me and to the Jews in my life who I cherish and poke more than a bit of fun at. My hatreds are particularly and well-honed, thank you very much. I’d never waste my hate on a group; I prefer the targeted, well-tailored individual hatred approach. Can’t just be wastin’ my hatin’ on groups!
My general heuristic here is that if the family came before the 20th century they tend to be Jewish, subsumed into the general American melting pot. The old saw was that the Jews who earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans. In that way, that’s the sort of Jew that Emhoff is.
For what it’s worth I think it’s becoming clear that the Harris presidency is the real Art of the Deal presidency that we were promised explicitly by Trump and implicitly by Biden.
President Harris will broker a deal with the Silicon Valley criminals — some of whom I understand are good people; First Gentleman Doug Emhoff will handle the Israeli ones — all of which are monsters.
You can think of this is as the Fed election with different criminal parts of both the Democratic and Republican Party having to negotiate how they pay tribute and how they make good.
Nobody loves “Law and Order” more than the abandoned biracial daughter of immigrants who became a prosecutor. Then U.S. Attorney Chris Christie used to say “It’s not the Department of Prosecutions, but the Department of Justice.”
Nobody loves rules more than the Jewish descendant of Polish Jews who ran from the pogroms and worked as a Hollywood attorney.
Having sat across the table from my share of attorneys — some good, some bad, some who wanted my money, or even to put me in prison (don’t worry it was a sting against corrupt cops) — might I offer a magic phrase that works very well with nearly every attorney I’ve encountered?
“Well, counselor, how might we begin?”
Ask for a whiteboard. Bring your check book and your banking information. And, of course, a good attitude.
This is America and we do deal making all the time here. Chop, chop.
Interesting thought that Trump doesn’t want to win re-election, but if true, what about all his legal troubles, how will he handle that as a disgraced two-time loser without the protection of the highest office in the land?