Jared Kushner Flips Out

IVANKA is reclining on her fainting couch. As always, her phone is within reach. JARED, traveling throughout the Middle East, is calling her repeatedly, but IVANKA has yet to answer. REBEKAH MERCER, daughter of supervillain ROBERT MERCER, one of the billionaires who enabled Donald Trump’s rise, sits at the large dining room table, homeschooling the MERCER CHILDREN. REBEKAH has moved in briefly, to ensure that STEVE BANNON, in a fit of alcoholic, nationalist rage, doesn’t quit his job advising TRUMP. REBEKAH does not ever want to move to Alaska to launch a presidential exploratory committee for SARAH PALIN. IVANKA’s phone rings for the seventh time.

IVANKA [declaratively]: What.

JARED [screaming]: Did he really fucking call me a cuck and a globalist? Did Steve Bannon call me those things? Or is it fake news?

IVANKA: The left is too sanctimonious to falsify facts.

JARED: So he did say it.

IVANKA [whispering]: He calls you a Democrat to your face. What do you think he calls you behind your back?

JARED: Do you know what ‘globalist’ is a euphemism for?

IVANKA [honestly]: Steven doesn’t use euphemisms.

JARED [lying]: I’m not coming back until he quits. From everything. Like Gary [COHN, former President of Goldman Sachs, who also advises DONALD TRUMP] promised before I left on this envoy.

IVANKA [thinking about which left-leaning organization’s back channels she will next explore]: Okay.

JARED: That’s all you have to say about this?

IVANKA [trying to manifest a broken connection]: You’re bold when you’re abroad.

JARED: I fucking ate genetically modified food to foster fellowship with that asshole. We ate Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese. That orange shit is still coating my fucking stomach. And it’s giving me an ulcer. [JARED gags as he recalls the cheese sauce. He takes out a roll of Tums, but they’re the white kind, the only kind the generals carried. JARED winces, bites one, gags again, and spits into the sand. He kicks the sand with his dress shoes. Some of it blows up into JARED’s eyes and he shrieks so loudly the generals look up from their maps and plunder to see if he is alright.]

IVANKA: Stop this right now. I told you to tell yourself it’s a béchamel. [IVANKA raises her voice so REBEKAH can overhear.] We’re all so devastated the generals have ousted Steve from the National Security Council.

JARED: Oh my fucking God. You’re not alone, are you?

IVANKA: Mmm.

JARED [whining]: But I need to know what Steve Bannon is saying about me. Talk in code.

IVANKA: I can’t talk in code because you declined your Mandarin lessons.

JARED: And you never fucking learned Hebrew. The language of my people.

IVANKA [realizing the only way she will get JARED off the phone is by giving in to him]: Ekahbay Ercermay isay erehay.

JARED [kicking the sand again]: Rebekah Mercer is in our house? The God damned First Lady of the alt-right is where our children sleep?

IVANKA [still speaking pig Latin]: Annonbay eatenedthray otay itquay.

JARED: Gary promised me he was getting fired. Why does he still have any power whatsoever? After calling me a cuck. Have his walk-in privileges at least been revoked?

IVANKA: I told you I couldn’t talk about this right now. [REBEKAH MERCER walks over to IVANKA and asks her if everything is alright. She shows her an executive order her child has written for homework. The order would privatize Amtrak and permit nuclear waste to be buried underneath the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. IVANKA, complicit but polite, nudges REBEKAH MERCER back to the table.]

JARED [slapping his own face]: My fucking head is splitting. I should’ve brought my French press. The generals drink ration coffee and it tastes like that gross cabin we went to on the campaign.

IVANKA: I’ve already explained it wasn’t a cabin. It was the General Motors plant. And we won Michigan so you’re not to disparage their coffee choices.

JARED [having an epiphany]: What if Bannon wants me to be angry with him? What if this is a trap?

IVANKA [sternly]: Go back to your tent, find your Netflix and watch Bob Ross paint. Right now.

JARED: He wants me to flip out. He’s probably recording this conversation right now. Fuck. What the fuck, Ivanka. Breathe. [JARED breathes rapidly.] My fucking Headspace app. It started updating, and now it’s just, like, hanging there. I can’t open it and I can’t delete and reinstall it either. [JARED cries.] He’s playing three-dimensional chess with us and mom only ever let me beat her at checkers. I don’t know how to play chess.

IVANKA: Three-dimensional chess was a metaphor the left devised because they only know how to self-defeat. [IVANKA mutes JARED.] Bekah, dinner is served at 7. It’s gluten-free and genetically unmodified. I hope you don’t mind. Jared has some allergies and so we’re all on his special diet. It makes it easier for the kitchen staff if they only have to prepare one meal.

JARED [unmuted, still crying]: I don’t know how to play chess.

[STEVE BANNON barges into the room. He is wearing a Confederate soldier’s uniform he has stolen from the Smithsonian. The buttons won’t fasten and it’s covered in vomit and diarrhea, so it’s more like a small dirty cape than a military uniform. STEVE BANNON explains to REBEKAH MERCER that he is not reenacting the War Between the States. It’s red states versus blue states now, he bellows. She rises and asks how she can help.]

IVANKA [talking over STEVE BANNON’s booming slurs, so as not to further trigger JARED]: Why don’t you tell me about a new business you’ve come up with? For daddy’s SWAT team.

JARED [scream crying]: Tell me what else he said about me.

IVANKA [slightly flustered]: Jared. Kushner. Pitch me.

JARED [stifling his tears]: It’s like Chipotle but for Middle Eastern food. You can say if you want kebab or falafel or hummus. And then which toppings.

IVANKA [lying]: Brilliant. [IVANKA shouts so STEVE BANNON can overhear.] And we can commandeer heartland agribusinesses. [IVANKA whispers to JARED.] In order to grow genetically unmodified chickpeas. Instead of corn and animal feed.

JARED [relaxing]: You always know how to calm me down. [JARED smiles at a CIVILIAN BOY who is asking his mother why the tall American boy is so sad.]

IVANKA [while hanging up]: What else are you learning? [IVANKA walks over to the white nationalists in her home and offers them a drink.]

JARED [to himself]: It’s like Aladdin where I am but there’s no genie, and the sand is — Well, I guess I never have touched sand before this vacation. It’s itchy powdery? [JARED turns to the CIVILIAN BOY.] Do you know of a good coffee shop around here?