LF: Kim Kardashian Heads to the White House

Title: Kim Kardashian Heads to the White House
Source: Vanity Fair
URL Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/201 ... hite-house-visit-prison-reform
Published: May 30, 2018
Author: Emily Jane Fox
Post Date: 2018-05-30 22:39:44 by Hondo68
Keywords: prison reform, Keeping Up with, the Kardashians
Views: 14373
Comments: 61

Keeping Up with the Kushners: With Jared Back on Top, Kim Kardashian Heads to the White House

After months of back-channel talks between Kim Kardashian and Jared Kushner, the high priestess of reality television is coming to the White House. By late afternoon on Wednesday, Secret Service agents will wave Kardashian and her attorney through the southwest appointment gate to the West Wing, where they will meet Kushner to discuss prison reform before he walks with them to sit down with President Donald Trump, likely in the Oval Office, along with White House counsel. According to a person familiar with the meeting, Kardashian plans to ask Trump to pardon a woman serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense. (White House staffers have joked about who will get to accompany her to the West Wing, and what they should wear for the occasion. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

Prison reform is an issue near and dear to Kushner, whose father, Charles, spent more than a year in a federal prison camp in 2005 and 2006 on charges of tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering. The experience left an indelible mark on the young Kushner who, for years, carried a wallet his father made for him in prison; when he joined the White House as senior adviser, he vowed to help improve the system that his father had come through. And so, while other initiatives in his once-dizzying portfolio have fallen by the wayside, Kushner has made significant progress in getting Republican lawmakers on board with the effort, bringing law enforcement officials and Evangelical leaders to the White House, taking meetings on Capitol Hill, and hosting dinner parties with key Washington power players at the home he shares with his wife, Ivanka Trump. He pushed Congress to support a bipartisan bill known as the First Step Act, which aims to better prepare inmates to re-enter society by incentivizing participation in job-training and drug-treatment programs, and which would also give nonviolent offenders more options to serve the ends of their sentences in halfway houses or home confinement. (Kushner’s father left prison 10 months early, and finished his two-year sentence at a halfway house in Newark, New Jersey.)

“If we can start showing that we can make the prisons more purposeful and more effective at lowering the recidivism rate over time, that may help the people who are trying to make the argument for sentencing reform,” Kushner said at an event in the East Room earlier this month. President Trump promised: “Get a bill to my desk, and I will sign it.” Last week, the House passed the First Step Act in a 360-59 vote.

Kardashian, a more recent prison reform evangelist, appears to be approaching the White House meeting with equal seriousness. She will not be bringing the camera crew for her reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, nor will she bring a publicist or her sisters, according to the person familiar with the situation. (Her husband, Kanye West, who recently tweeted a photo of his red Make America Great Again hat, will not be present either, though there have been talks about him making a White House appearance of his own at a later, to-be-determined date.) Instead, Kardashian hopes to make a legal argument to President Trump for why he should pardon Alice Johnson, a 62-year-old great-grandmother serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense. More than 21 years after Johnson went to prison, Kardashian came across Johnson’s story on Twitter earlier this year and reached out to Ivanka, who connected her to Kushner, according to the source. In an interview earlier this month, Kardashian said that, if given the opportunity, she would “explain to [Trump] that, just like everybody else, we can make choices in our lives that we’re not proud of and that we don’t think through all the way.”

Kardashian’s plea, and Kushner’s push for reform, are at odds with the Trump administration’s own policies. In one of his first moves as attorney general, Jeff Sessions rescinded an Obama-era memo that increased leniency for low-level drug offenders, instructing federal prosecutors to bring punitive charges that could trigger precisely the sort of tough mandatory sentencing that condemned Johnson to life without parole. The president, however, has proven amenable to personal entreaties—especially when celebrities are involved. Last week, Trump hosted Sylvester Stallone, Lennox Lewis, and Deontay Wilder in the Oval Office, as they asked him to pardon Jack Johnson, the legendary boxer who, in 1913, was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for the purpose of prostitution or any other “immoral” reason. Johnson, who was widely believed to be convicted because he was black, served a year in prison. After Trump agreed to pardon Johnson, he said in a statement that he was pleased to be able to “correct a wrong that occurred in our history,” before throwing in a jab to his predecessor. “They thought it was going to be signed in the last administration, and that didn’t happen.”

The Kushner-Kardashian summit marks something of a turning point for the First Son-in-Law. It will be Kushner’s first major act since he was granted a permanent, top-level security clearance last week, after more than a year of negative headlines about why his clearance had been delayed and then downgraded. Among White House tea-leaf readers, the news was received as evidence that perhaps Kushner’s legal exposure in Robert Mueller’s investigation might not be as severe as many had believed it to be, and gave credence to the idea that his standing in the West Wing might be somewhat restored. Those in Ivanka and Kushner’s social orbit in New York joked with each other about how much money they stood to lose on various bets they had made over when Kushner would be indicted by Mueller.

But Kushner and Ivanka are not focused on the chatter, or their old friends in New York—at least not on Wednesday. They plan to host Kardashian for dinner at their home after her presidential sit-down, a private evening with the most famous sibling of America’s other First Family.

Come now. They had lots of reasons to lie. Like getting probation for actually moving and supplying the product. They could all blame her, saying they were just following her orders by phone on what to pick up and where to deliver it.

Even so, her sentence seems pretty harsh by the sentencing guidelines and by the standard set in similar crimes committed at the time and punished by the courts.

They had a deal. Why jeopardize it by telling 10 different stories? The truth is less complicated.

Trafficking 3,000 kilos of cocaine is off the chart of any federal guideline I could find. She got (I think) life plus 25 years. I guess that means her corpse will be incarcerated.

I'm afraid Trump is ready to make that deal. Our opinions don't count as much as a Kardashian's, it seems.

The black folks have to keep on the move so Trump doesn't show up and try to take a photo with them.

Trump would love to cripple the Dems by slicing off another 10%-20% of the black vote. He already did better in 2016 than most GOP candidates and his support is growing, including Kanye. Van Jones worked with him. Kanye kinda defends him.

So, yeah, Trump absolutely wants to cut deals with blacks if he gets some credit for it. And that's what is finally happening.

I can see why. Blago got an excessive sentence and I hate Martha Stewart with a passion but she was totally railroaded while others who did much worse stuff didn't even get their wrists slapped. And everyone knows it.

There's some speculation that this is Trump's way of telling Manafort & Cohen that he's got their backs. So STFU, and you'll get your pardons.

The HotGas take was similar, that Trump is choosing those cases in particular to blur the lines of legitimate prosecution and miscarriages of justice. And that he is doing this to undermine Mueller and the FBI and lay the groundwork for a possible pardon of Flynn and/or Manafort.

I have always wondered whose soup bowl she had pissed in. She got a tip on the stock market that kept her from losing millions,and she acted on it to protect her assets.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

Having interest in nobodies like the Kardashian’s, is like following the “royal” unimportant nobodies in the UK.

It was nowhere near a total of millions. It was like $40K. And she lost most o it anyway.

They really got her for lying to the feds and she got out of a Club Fed after five months or so.

It was one of those ghastly NYC political prosecutions with the D.A. sending out his goons to handcuff her and frogmarch her to a booking with every media outlet in town tipped off to show up and take non-stop photos. Even Harvey Weinstein didn't get such a full treatment for his rape hobby as what they gave Martha Stewart.

Again, don't think for a second that I like Martha Stewart. But I did really like her "guest appearance" on South Park some years back, showing how to eat a turkey.

Please inform Donnell directly of your displeasure. Thank you for finally noticing that Trump is a maroon.

There is something wrong at the genetic level with anyone that doesn't like South Park.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

Vindication at last for D-Sousa. This was the all-time most outrageous case of select partisan-political hit by the 0bama's SS.

When Trump wins in 2020, the gig is fully up for the entire 0bama-ValJar-Klintoon-Holder Gangstas.

And he's no longer an ex-felon. So that makes a difference in his life in a lot of ways. Even things like getting a credit card are impacted by a felony record that resulted in prison time. Other stuff too.

Ok, I get that perspective and principle, but what's important here is THE. BIG. PICTURE. Let that go for a moment. We have entered a new political paradigm to consider whether we like it or not.

The visceral reaction to Kardashian's invitation to the WH is much the same as that of Kanya West: An eyeball roll + snicker...

...Until you consider the PR value and clout of co-opting the value of the Kanya-Kardasian Fan Base. And other Hollywood reinforcement.

If we are engaged in a cold Civil War (which many believe IS the case), this IS 5-D Chess in action. Trump's tactic is attempting to deliver blows to the Left's flank, trying to create a break in their Social Media "Maginot Line". (This war is not being fought with bullets and bombs.)

Yes, we can easily be dismissive about this move by Trump as PT Barnum stuff, but after all -- Contemporary Politics HAS become "Show-Biz", hasn't it? Trump should weaponize his celebrity. ON OUR BEHALF. The Left has long weaponized show-biz to influence the sheep, hasn't it?

Trump didn't become a Gazillionaire, defeat the Uni-Party/NWO, and get elected President of the USA by becoming predictable and complacent.

DiSouza took a yuge risk and hit for the Right Side of this Culture War/Civil War. President Trump *knows* this. He also know the DiSouza case was a similar witch-hunt.

I tend to agree with your overall assessment and opinion, although I have no hate for Martha Stewart. She's been very successful at what she does and my friend's mom is a big time fan of hers. She got railroaded.

I stole your PT Barnum reference in my previous post ;-)....Because it's too good analogy.

Yes, there IS obviously a pattern here to his pardons; They are calculated to create sympathies and alliances within the Show-Biz/Minoritah communitahs. (5-D Chess)

They're "dumbing down" the standards for prosecution of unrelated crimes, for lying to the FBI about inconsequentials, for maliciously selective prosecution, etc.

He already pardoned Scooter Libby. With the Martha Stewart and Blagojevich pardons, he'll further blur a lot more lines. And create even more doubt about whether Mueller can accomplish anything if Trump looks ready to drop pardons all over to anyone they go after. Including himself (unless he decides to schedule a sedated medical exam to hand the presidency to Pence for a few hours and when Trump wakes up he discovers Pence pardoned him).

We should watch the Dersh. This kind of strategy using pardons really sounds like something he would cook up. And he is everywhere these days, slugging away for Trump. I'd bet that Dersh is passing notes or making calls to Giuliani, offering advice and legal theory. Why wouldn't they solicit his opinion? He is a top legal scholar even in retirement.

Trump WILL grow on these Hollywood types and celebs...as he reminds them, "SEE? I'M ONE OF YOU!"

As I;d suggested, he's attempting to out-flanking circumventing the engines that drive public relations: TV, Celebrity, and especially Social Media.

Yes, as well as, "maliciously selective prosecution, etc." in the cases he's pardoned.

But Rome wasn't built in a day either. Trump can only advance the football down the field.

Eventually legislators are left to dealing with their own conscience and obligation. (A long shot, admittedly.)

Of course draining them of their profiteering on the backs of American taxpayers, "sweetheart-deals" that inexplicably make them multi-millionaires, and outright TREASON as they sell out our security is the goal. Trump threatens "business-as-usual", which is one major reason they have targeted him.

He is denting the Plantation Vote. But more importantly, exposing the Dem game while changing blacks perception of themselves and why, "WE ALL MUST VOTE DEM".

The Blago pardon might be more about releasing him (along with the Hounds of Truth over Cihi-Town politics as well as his relationship in Chicago with Zero.)

Blago knows where the bodies are buried. This is another shot over the bow of the USS ZERO.

No, they will never accept him again. One of the rules of Hollyweird is that you don't ever get to come back once you've been thoroughly expelled from the herd.

They'd rather have Mel Gibson or some of the #MeToo rapey guys like Weinstein or that serial child molester Polanski than Trump.

Trump loves that role as the Decider. He revels in it. It's just like his old Apprentice show. People groveling (especially celebrities groveling) and wanting stuff from him which he will grant or withhold for incomprehensible reasons. And all of it on TV of course. LOL

Yeah, that was an obvious BS prosecution. She did nothing out of the ordinary. Ego-maniacal Comey is said to have been behind this whole circus and used the Stewart prosecution as career Viagra.

I agree that *most* won't; He knows that. But he's already set up enough defections to hurt the Left's cause. He's accomplishing the same of Black support. If he converts just 10%, that's all he needs to do. Any more is a bonus.

One of the rules of Hollyweird is that you don't ever get to come back once you've been thoroughly expelled from the herd.

The power and clout of the Presidency can't be dismissed (especially not Trump's.) Trump changed the Dem-GOP paradigm when we didn't think it possible. Maybe he can do the same of Hollywood. Trump is The Big Dawg.

They'd rather have Mel Gibson or some of the #MeToo rapey guys like Weinstein or that serial child molester Polanski than Trump.

Sure appears that way. I'd submit that their cult is facing defections now that widespread abuse and hypocrisy AND political-insanity-run-amok has been exposed. These people need Daddy. For SOME Trump is it.

He does, doesn't it? Fun to watch. Glad he's on our side. The Left has good reason to fear this guy's charisma.

What would change a lot of black votes is campaigning for complete school choice so that state and federal money follows the student wherever their parents choose to send them in public or private schools, something black parents desperately want and something the Dem party is absolutely committed to preventing.

It's the one real wedge issue the GOP has with black voters. This is what they want and that the Dems refuse to give them. And black voters are somewhat restive, realizing how little the Dems did for them overall despite having 0bama in office for 8 years, a House majority and 60-vote Senate for 2 years, and strong position in the Senate throughout even after they lost the 60-vote majority. And what did blacks get for all that? Well, kinda nothing really. And they know it.

The Plantation is a little restive. They're asking themselves if they can cut a better deal even with the hated GOP. And Van Jones and Kanye/Kim really do help make that more thinkable, more doable. This is the reason why the libmedia has been so insanely determined to oppose Trump on everything, so as to resist "normalizing" his presidency. IOW, make him so radioactive that anyone who does deal with him gets branded an Uncle Tom, even a Lefty of impeccable standing like Van Jones. Now some of them talk about him like he's Clarence Thomas's long-lost twin, part of a matching porch monkey set for Da White Man. Or in this case, Da Orange Man.

Trump already got that. Hitlery got 88% of the black vote, Trump got 8%. (0bama got 93% in 2012, meaning that Milquetoast Mitt didn't do as well with black voters as The Amazing Donaldo. And don't think Trump doesn't relish that fact too. He loves this stuff, loves all the "winning".)

The improved economy, the tax cuts, rising wages, record low black unemployment have undoubtedly pushed Trump's support to 10%-12% by now. It's not unthinkable that Trump could garner 15% of the black vote now.

But seriously offering school choice legislation by the GOP could drive those numbers as high as 20%, 25%, or even 30%. And that, numerically, is the death toll of the Dem party. It could cripple the NEA entirely as a major Dem subsidiary. They can't win about half of their current Blue seats in Congress without that uniformity of black voter support.

The generic answer is no. But they can cut a deal with the King, and he'll make the GOP do his bidding. Trump is the key, not the GOP.

Not true really. Various elements of the GOP have tried for years to ram through school choice. They had it for a while even in DC, then 0bama came to power and re-enabled the teachers' unions and ruined it all. A lot of blacks were pretty unhappy to be forced back to their old inferior neighborhood schools so the suburbs could go back to being accidentally all-white and lavishly funded.

In fact, Trump isn't all that interested in the issue. I can name a number of GOP elected officials who have championed this cause for many years. A few have even bankrolled private schools for inner city kids (Mitch Daniels did it with some fellow-Presbys, for instance).

And school choice fits well for private schools and homeschools as well. So the GOP is broadly in favor of all these things over urban schools that are primarily run for the benefit of the teachers' unions and administrators and that fail their mission miserably, year after year.