The Trump administration continues to seem defined by its incompetence. While President Donald Trump has made grandiose promises like the construction of a border wall blocking off Mexico and the best trade deals ever involving partners like China, these aims have only materialized in starts and stops with a bulk of the Trump administration’s energy spent trying to convince us all that they’re actually doing a great job in D.C. Columnist Molly Jong-Fast decried the Trump administration as full of “failsons,” outlining the case in a new piece for the Daily Beast. In her estimation, the president, his own sons, and even son-in-law Jared Kushner are marked by being born into great wealth and utterly fumbling indefinitely after that.
Jong-Fast wrote, referring first to Donald Trump Jr. and his book Triggered:
‘One is not born a failson. Nor does one simply inherit the status of failson. No—failson status is earned through a display of equal parts incompetence, stupidity, and arrogance. And until his book, no person in America—or maybe even the world, so bursting at the seams with louche heirs and dissolute royals with no throne to sit their pampered arses on—illustrated all the facets of a failson better than Junior.’
To be clear though, as Jong-Fast notes — even the apparent success of Trump Jr.’s book that included a lengthy stint atop the bestseller list of The New York Times doesn’t entirely constitute a victory for the perpetually failing Trumps. That book was bolstered by bulk purchases from at least nine different prominent Republican interests ranging from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) to the Republican National Committee itself. The Times noted these bulk purchases with a mark next to Triggered — which, in classic Trump-ian fashion, Trump Jr. derided as a fake news conspiracy.
Jong-Fast quipped:
‘Yes Junior, The New York Times bulk purchasing policy is actually a conspiracy against you, the president’s large adult failson.’
She also laid out the case against Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, who’s enjoyed a spectacularly large list of responsibilities and a spectacularly small list of accomplishments while in the White House.
She wrote:
‘Jared Kushner is the failson in chief, arguably worse than Junior. After crushing a newspaper and overpaying for the aptly named 666 Fifth Avenue, the failson-in-law decided to take a crack at governmenting. He was tasked with peace in the Middle East and also renegotiating NAFTA, handling the opioid crisis, modernizing the Veterans Administration, spearheading criminal justice reform, and WhatsApp messaging with Saudi Arabian failson Mohammed bin Salman. But when those things proved too complicated for the young polymath, his father-in-law decided to refocus him on the important things, like why Matt Drudge was mad at him.’
She also singled out Eric Trump and Donald Trump Sr. himself. She noted that Eric’s time in the spotlight has been marked by gaffes like him insisting that Democrats “aren’t even people.” Trump, meanwhile, has floated much of his business career on inheritance — and he’s not been very good at it. For at least a couple of years around the early 1990s, he reported more losses than literally any other U.S. taxpayer. Now, the Trumps have brought this bumbling, dangerous incompetence right into the halls of government.
