There’s that moderating influence again

There’s a wonderful scene in the entertaining Richard Gere vehicle Arbitrage where the desperate hedge fund magnate played by Gere — who needs to sell his fund before his mini Ponzi scheme is detected — cuts a deal with a slightly less scummy exec played beautifully to type by Graydon Carter. Just before they finalize an agreement in principle scrawled on a menu, Gere leans in to whisper in Carter’s ear: “And you’re going to have to make my son a VP.” When Carter laughs in his face, he’s quickly reassured: “No no, he doesn’t have to do anything, he just gets the salary, he gets the office.” I have to say this old timey WASP nepotism seems like a substantial improvement over what the current president of the United States is doing:

This spring, as the United States faced a critical shortage of masks, gloves and other protective equipment to battle the coronavirus pandemic, a South Carolina physician reached out to the Federal Emergency Management Agency with an offer of help.

Dr. Jeffrey Hendricks had longtime manufacturing contacts in China and a line on millions of masks from established suppliers.Instead of encountering seasoned FEMA procurement officials, his information was diverted to a team ofroughly a dozen youngvolunteers, recruited by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and overseen by a former assistant to Mr. Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump.

The volunteers, foot soldiers in the Trump administration’s new supply-chain task force, had little to no experience with government procurement procedures or medical equipment. But as part of Mr. Kushner’s governmentwide push to secure protective gear for the nation’s doctors and nurses, the volunteers were put in charge of sifting through more than a thousand incoming leads, and told to pass only the best ones on for further review by FEMA officials.

As the federal government’s warehouses were running bare and medical workers improvised their own safety gear, Dr. Hendricks found his offer stalled. Many of the volunteers were told to prioritize tips from political allies and associates of President Trump, tracked on a spreadsheet called “V.I.P. Update,” according to documents and emails obtained by The New York Times. Among them were leads from Republican members of Congress, the Trump youth activist Charlie Kirk and a former “Apprentice” contestant who serves as the campaign chair of Women for Trump.

Trump allies also pressed FEMA officials directly: A Pennsylvania dentist, once featured at a Trump rally, dropped the president’s name as he pushed the agency to procure test kits from his associates.

Few of the leads, V.I.P. or otherwise, panned out, according to a whistle-blower memo written by one volunteer and sent to the House Oversight Committee. While Vice President Mike Pence dropped by the volunteers’ windowless command center in Washington to cheer them on, they were confused and overwhelmed by their task, the whistle-blower said in interviews.

“Who needs advance preparation, if something goes wrong I’m sure the Gateway Pundit is sitting on a supply of Hazmat suits.”

Call me old-fashioned, but what happened to the strong, silent Hunter Biden type, who would just quietly take a nicely compensated no-work job rather than insisting on blowing up the whole world?