Last June, more than two years after his father-in-law assigned him the task of bringing peace to the Middle East, Jared Kushner held a big kickoff conference in Bahrain to unveil the economic portion of his plan—and it did not go well. For starters, Palestinian leadership boycotted the entire event, feeling that the plan was missing a few key details, such as, just as an example, solutions for control of the West Bank and Palestinian statehood. Kushner, ever the real estate agent, gave a speech in which he spoke of transforming the Gaza Strip into a tourist destination, failing to mention Israel and Egypt’s 12-year blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory, in addition to Israel’s 52-year-long occupation of the West Bank, which restricts trade and labor movements. When the Boy Prince of New Jersey touched on politics, it was to offer the savvy take that if everyone just stopped “doing terrorism,” it would “allow for much faster flow of goods and people.” Not surprisingly, the whole thing was panned by experts, one of whom described Kushner’s plan as “the Monty Python sketch of Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives.” Undeterred, Kushner got on a call with Arab and Israeli reporters and, putting on his salesman cap, explained that his vision was 100% workable if Palestinian leadership would stop being so “hysterical and stupid.”

Was this the greatest way to convince people to get on board? Probably not! Yet, incredibly, Kushner apparently thought it was exactly the right approach, and we know this because on Tuesday, after the White House unveiled its full vision for peace in the Middle East—which calls for no evacuation of settlements, limits Palestinian presence in Jerusalem, and includes no path to statehood beyond the vague mention of a “future State of Palestine”—he repeated it again, except this time he cranked the a-hole from a 12 to a 45.

Appearing on CNN, Kushner told Christiane Amanpour that critics of his plan—of which there are a comically huge number—must “divorce [themselves] from all of the history” and focus on the deal he has outlined for them. And speaking of history, Kushner posited that if this whole thing fails, it’s not going to be because a glorified slumlord somehow didn’t get it right but because Palestinians are morons who don’t know what’s good for them. Sayeth Kushner:

You have 5 million Palestinians who are really trapped because of bad leadership. So what we’ve done is we’ve created an opportunity for their leadership to either seize or not. If they screw up this opportunity—which, again, they have a perfect track record of missing opportunities—if they screw this up, I think that they will have a very hard time looking the international community in the face, saying they are victims, saying they have rights. This is a great deal for them. If they come to the table and negotiate, I think they can get something excellent.…

The Palestinian leadership have to ask themselves a question: Do they want to have a state? Do they want to have a better life? If they do, we have created a framework for them to have it, and we’re going to treat them in a very respectful manner. If they don’t, then they’re going to screw up another opportunity like they’ve screwed up every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.

Don’t worry, there’s footage of Kushner making this statement, so it can be played back for all eternity:

Oh, and lest anyone start dredging up that tired argument that maybe a guy who has screwed up nearly every job his father has ever given him or paid for him to land, and who couldn’t obtain a security clearance without his wife begging her dad for it, wasn’t qualified to take on this project in the first place, KNOW THIS:

Also, this:

No further questions.

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Report: The White House Is trying to shutdown Bolton’s book

It’s almost as though they’re worried it contains incredibly incriminating information that could proves the president’s guilt. Per CNN:

The White House has issued a formal threat to former national security adviser John Bolton to keep him from publishing his book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. In a letter to Bolton's lawyer, a top official at the National Security Council wrote the unpublished manuscript of Bolton's book “appears to contain significant amounts of classified information” and couldn’t be published as written. The letter, which is dated January 23, said some of the information was classified at the “top secret” level, meaning it “reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security.”

“The manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information,” the letter read. The White House had no comment. Neither Bolton nor a spokesman for the publisher, Simon & Schuster, responded to a request for comment…. Reports from the New York Times suggest that Bolton’s book details a time last August when the president directly linked $391 million in security aid to Ukraine with that country’s government launching investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

After the Times published its account of the book, Trump lashed out at Bolton on Twitter claiming he never said the aid was tied to investigations, a statement that can likely be considered another one of his patented lies. He also insisted Democrats never asked Bolton to testify, which obviously isn’t true at all. In related news, the White House is currently devising a plan to keep Bolton quiet, should Democrats secure the necessary votes to hear from witnesses.

Republicans confident they can get this thing wrapped up before the weekend

Why wait ’til next week to acquit a guilty man when they can fast-track it now?

Republican leaders signaled they were regaining confidence on Wednesday that they would be able to block new witnesses and documents and bring the trial to an acquittal verdict as soon as Friday, after revelations from John R. Bolton threatened to knock their plans off course. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Senate Republican, told reporters that if they were successful in holding off new witnesses, Republicans planned to move directly to a vote on the two articles of impeachment themselves. “Yes, that’s the plan,” he told reporters in the Capitol.

“I’ve heard enough,” Barrasso said, adding: “I’m ready to vote on final judgment. This has been fully partisan, fully political.” Mitt Romney, who reportedly “made a strong pitch” to hear from witnesses during a closed-door lunch on Monday, maintained he would vote to hear from relevant parties but was unsure which other Republicans would join him. “I’m sure there’ll be others,” he said. “How many there will be on my side of the aisle, I just don’t know.”

Nothing to see here

Elsewhere!

75% of Americans support calling witnesses—but maybe not the same witnesses (Washington Post)

Jeff Bezos’s iPhone had Apple’s state-of-the-art security, and that may have helped its alleged hackers (Washington Post)

Goldman Sachs vows to slash traders in first-ever investor meeting (NYP)

Anti-human-trafficking groups refuse to attend Ivanka Trump’s White House summit (Washington Post)

Is Bitcoin Gold Rush 2.0 Just Around the Corner? (Hive)

Facebook Growth Slows, Prompting Concerns Company Has Peaked (Bloomberg)

A Disturbing Number of People Think Coronavirus Is Related to Corona Beer (Vice)

“Men who own Mercedes and BMWs are more likely to be assholes” (Fast Company)

Rescued owl was “too fat to fly,” Suffolk sanctuary says (BBC)

— Is the DOJ’s Hillary Clinton investigation a bust?
— Do the Russians really have information on Mitch McConnell?
— The mystery of the Trump chaos trades, Iran/Mar-a-Lago edition
— Why Trump has a huge advantage over Dems with low-information voters
— The Obamoguls: propelled by still-potent political hope, Barack and Michelle have gone multiplatform
— New evidence suggests disturbing scheme by Trump’s Ukraine goons against Marie Yovanovitch
— From the Archive: The death and mysteries in Geneva of Edouard Stern

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