Cecile Richards, the former head of Planned Parenthood, has a new memoir coming out and the book provides an account of her secret meeting with Ivanka Trump about abortion. In the book, excerpted in People, Richards talks about her secret meeting with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner about abortion.
Shortly after Trump assumed office Richards accepted an invitation from Ivanka Trump to sit down for a chat. According to Richards, she asked her husband to tag along after hearing that White House princeling Jared Kushner would be in attendance as well.
Richards says she wanted to get the facts straight about abortion and federal funding, including that Planned Parenthood gets reimbursed for Medicaid patients like any other hospital, there’s no line item in the federal budget for “Planned Parenthood,” and that current law prohibits them from using federal money to perform abortions. Unfortunately, Javanka was only interested in one thing: a headline about what great dealmakers they were (sound familiar?).
What transpired at the meeting is a perfect encapsulation of almost everything wrong with the Trump administration. According to Richards’ account, Kushner seems to have done most of the talking. What he proposed—no doubt as some kind of level-headed, commonsense business deal—was that Planned Parenthood should agree to stop performing abortions.
According to Richards,
“If Planned Parenthood wanted to keep our federal funding, we would have to stop providing abortions. He described his ideal outcome: a national headline reading ‘Planned Parenthood Discontinues Abortion Services.’”
Kushner even dangled a little bribe in front of Richards to sweeten the deal. If they agreed to stop performing abortions, then funding could increase but they had to “move fast.”
Not sure why he didn’t just say “ACT NOW AND YOU COULD BE A WINNER”! Wow, Jared, why didn’t anyone else think of that? What a true Business Genius Wunderkind! Give this manchild back his security clearance because we need him to deliver peace in the Middle East! I’m sure both the Iraelis and Palestinians will love his proposal to just, ya know, stop fighting. But for money. WE ARE SO BLESSED THESE TITANS OF INDUSTRY DESCENDED FROM MOUNT OLYMPUS TO GRACE US WITH THEIR DEALMAKING SKILLS.
Obviously, the deal was a non-starter with Richards.
But this is, in a nutshell, almost everything wrong with the Trump administration. Let’s go through the checklist:
1. Ignorant, arrogant political amateurs who act like they know the know the landscape better than stakeholders who have been doing policy work for decades.
*Kushner told her Planned Parenthood “had made a big mistake by becoming ‘political.’”* I love that Kushner basically tried to mansplain Planned Parenthood to the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood.
— Chloe Angyal (@ChloeAngyal) April 4, 2018
2. An apparent belief that everyone has their price and can be motivated by money.
https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/981594277141798912
3. An utter lack of core principles and a desire to achieve a “deal” solely as a public relations gambit.
What’s striking in this story is that for Kushner and Ivanka, the Big Win would have been a *headline* about Planned Parenthood ceasing abortions. Not the cessation of abortions in and of itself.
— Chloe Angyal (@ChloeAngyal) April 4, 2018
They don’t care about the deeply held belief that abortion is a basic human right. And they definitely don’t care about the deeply held belief that abortion is murder. They care about consolidating their own political capital, and nothing else.
— Chloe Angyal (@ChloeAngyal) April 4, 2018
Also, if they’re trying to grease the head of Planned Parenthood like she’s the maitre d’ at Trump’s Fabulous Steakhouse, what are they proposing to people who are less inclined to leak to the press?