Jared Kushner is a man who has many ideas, along with the limp, damp demeanor of a wilting head of lettuce. Unfortunately for him, his ideas are often incredibly dumb and laughably ineffective. Take, for example, his latest great idea—livestreaming the building of Donald Trump’s wall on the U.S-Mexico border, in an effort to build public support for an idea that is not only extremely racist, but deeply unpopular.
More from the Washington Post:
Jared Kushner and other senior Trump administration officials are planning to set up web cameras to live-stream construction of President Trump’s border wall, going against objections from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, according to four people familiar with the White House proposal.
“There will be a wall cam, and it’ll launch early next year,” said a senior White House official involved in the initiative, which aims to rally public support for hundreds of miles of new border barrier Trump wants in place by next year’s election.
Wall cam!
Why Jared thinks a 24-hour livestream of the creation of a monument to xenophobia would be compelling to anyone beyond the most committed of racists is head-scratching. But according to the Post, Kushner, who has been tasked by his father-in-law to lead the messaging effort around the construction of the border wall, came up with the idea in July. Even officials at Customs and Border Protection were aghast, partly because they’re worried that it would potentially show the U.S. government “violating Mexican sovereignty.” Per the Post:
The Army Corps and CBP have told Kushner that construction contractors do not want their proprietary techniques visible to competitors, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal discussions.
Officials at the Army Corps and CBP also were concerned the cameras would show U.S. work crews violating Mexican sovereignty because they sometimes must stray south of the border to maneuver their vehicles and heavy equipment in the desert. Because some of the remote border areas lack network access, the cameras will require their own web connectivity and attendants who could frequently reposition them to keep the lens pointed at the action.
Trump’s plan to build his “beautiful wall” has run into several roadblocks, one large one being the opposition of private landowners in Texas to the federal government seizing their land for the border wall, some of whom have sued the administration in protest over its plans.
But I guess Jared is on it!