Did Jared Kushner Really Make This Haughty Claim About Donald Trump To Staffers?
During the four years Donald Trump spent as president, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was one of his most trusted advisers, even though, like Trump, he had no political or government experience at all before the 2016 election that found Trump defeating Hillary Clinton. In fact, Kushner was one of Trump's top advisers on his first presidential campaign — "If Trump was the CEO" of the campaign, "Jared was effectively the chief operating officer" (via Forbes) — leading the former president to believe he could trust Kushner for almost anything.
When Trump became president, he gave both Kushner and his wife, Trump's daughter Ivanka, positions as senior White House advisors. Although Ivanka's advisory duties remain vague, Trump put Kushner in charge of everything from achieving Middle East peace and building Trump's border wall to solving the coronavirus pandemic, according to Vox. Kushner didn't achieve either of those major goals, but he still had Trump's ear through much of his presidency. In fact, Kushner apparently saw himself as being the person with the most influence over his father-in-law.
Jared Kushner thought he could wrap Donald Trump around his fingers
Stephanie Grisham's new tell-all book "I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House" offers the writer's accounts of her experiences during the four years she spent in various roles, including as White House press secretary and as Melania Trump's chief of staff. According to Raw Story, Grisham wrote about one time where Kushner decided they needed to have a war room to combat allegations about Trump during his first impeachment hearings in 2019. Although Trump had nixed the idea, Kushner insisted it had to happen and that he could make his father-in-law agree with it.
"In [Trump's] mind, if we made a big, visible effort to defend him, he would look guilty," Grisham wrote (via Raw Story). "The real problem, of course, was that even if we assembled the finest communicators in the land and put together talking points that would make Rachel Maddow proclaim Trump's innocence, it wouldn't make a bit of difference; Trump would go out and tweet whatever he wanted, or he'd let Rudy Giuliani go say something bonkers."
Grisham recalled that Jared gave a bit of a wink to staffers about getting the war room telling them, "Let me take care of the president." According to Grisham, Trump didn't even think Kushner was such a genius that he could accomplish all the tasks he gave him. In the end, he put Kushner in these roles for one reason: to make Ivanka happy.