Jared Kushner traveled to Iraq last week to meet with senior Iraqi leaders, US advisors, and forces on the field in the country. Official images of US president Donald Trump’s son-in-law, senior advisor, and Middle East peace envoy in the company of general Joseph Dunford were published on the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s (which Dunford chairs) Flickr account the next day. Kushner and his tight-fitting bulletproof vest quickly became an object of mockery on the internet.
But one take was particularly brilliant: Task and Purpose, a news website dedicated to US veterans, told the story of Kushner going to war in form of children’s literature. Task and Purpose readers apparently loved the story—it has so far been shared over 58,100 times.
The piece, “Jared Kushner goes to Iraq! A picture story,” is penned by Adam Weinstein, a navy veteran who also worked as a civilian contractor in Iraq from 2008-2009. The story pokes fun at the US president’s 36-year-old son-in-law, now charged with making decisions on top security issue—and posing for photos in Iraq—despite having no foreign policy nor military experience. The story really gets going here:
One day, Joe had a question for Jared. “Would you like to see the war?” Joe asked.
“Golly, would I!” Jared said.”
Weinstein says the pictures are typical of civilian officials’ “grip’n grin” photo-ops in the field with US servicemen, but Kushner’s position is of particular note. “Our readership skews pretty conservatively,” says Weinstein. “Even among a lot of people who are supporters of the Trump administration that read us, they can see the humor in this post, and think some of the questions that’ve been asked, are probably worth asking.”
The story was inspired by an earlier piece on Buzzfeed about president Trump and his “big boy truck,” Weinstein says. He also found inspiration in his own 4-year-old child, to whom he reads children’s stories every night.