cometcomma
Banned
Trump’s first Sunday in office, following a tumultuous Saturday, was a more delicately managed day. (Among other mollifying maneuvers, Trump tweeted “peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy.”) So many observers were surprised when Kushner and Ivanka Trump not only emerged from the Sabbath to attend the annual Alfalfa Club dinner, which Trump himself had skipped, but also when Ivanka posted a photo of herself in a metallic silver Carolina Herrera gown, tucked into the tuxedo-ed arm of her husband, who had his hand on her posterior. Around the world, innocent citizens were decrying the erosion of human rights. The Trumps, however, seemed delighted and impervious. Many quickly noted that the photo had been taken while an octogenarian couple was being detained for hours, and families fleeing persecution in Syria were turned away. It all felt quite Marie Antoinette (#letthemeatcake proliferated across Twitter and Instagram). A meme quickly circulated of Ivanka in her silver gown next to a photo of a young Syrian refugee—the sort of girl her father’s order will deny entry to—in a silver emergency blanket. (A source close to the family noted that Kushner and his wife were aware of the fallout from the executive order only in an oblique way until after sundown and the photograph was posted to social media.)
When the Kushners decided to relocate to Washington, on the heels of Trump’s surprise win, they stepped out of a comfortable life in New York and their respective family real-estate empires. The potential for the young couple, ostensibly a gate to the president, appeared enormous. But after a week, it appears that the de facto First Couple may have underestimated the potential pitfalls. Less than a fortnight into his new post, Kushner appears unable to control both his father-in-law and those around him. (On the same day as Trump’s visit to the Pentagon, the White House acknowledged International Holocaust Remembrance Day in a statement that omitted mention of the Jews.) Ivanka, meanwhile, may be impeded in her attempt to lobby on behalf of working women by various measures, from Trump’s executive order to dismiss parts of the A.C.A. to his derision of the Women’s March, that appear to have set them back. The question is whether the couple’s combination of unbridled ambition and inexperience will cause them to influence the president as never before, or whether they will be among the first to go.
Throughout the campaign, Jared Kushner wore a number of hats. A 36-year-old political novice who took over his family’s real-estate company at the age of 25, when his father went to prison on 18 counts of tax evasion and witness tampering, Kushner has been credited with spearheading the Trump campaign’s successful digital operations and orchestrating some of his father-in-law’s most central personnel decisions. But his most pivotal role within Trumplandia may have been his ability to manage the more severe messages being pushed out by the likes of Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller. As one source put it to me last week, Kushner has been the “secure line” into the White House.
Kushner, after all, reportedly brokered a meeting with Trump and Rupert Murdoch, once an outspoken critic, and got the nation’s biggest technology C.E.O.s to show up to a meeting at Trump Tower last month. At an event at Morgan Stanley headquarters in December, according to New York Magazine, Kushner told the 400 executives that his father-in-law may have been “easy to hate from afar,” but he was much more moderate at close range. He reassured anyone concerned over campaign rhetoric about Muslim bans and wall-building that a President Trump would find a “rational” position on immigration.
Trump has not embarked on a moderate position, of course, regarding either issue. And, according to a source familiar with the situation, Kushner’s influence on his boss may be flagging. Last week, Kushner spent 24 hours trying to broker a meeting between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. The source said that Kushner was even considering flying to Mexico in order to convince Peña Nieto, who had butted heads with Trump over various issues, to travel to the White House. Ultimately, Peña Nieto agreed—a feat Kushner presented to his father-in-law on Wednesday night. It was his first real victory in the West Wing in his role as senior adviser, and it would be a major step toward turning one of Trump’s main campaign promises into a reality.
Less than 12 hours later, though, it all fell apart. After Peña Nieto reiterated that Mexico does not plan to pay for Trump’s proposed wall, Trump tweeted that if Mexico is “unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.” Just like that, the meeting was canceled. “Kushner was fucking furious,” the source told me. “I’d never once heard him say he was angry throughout the entire campaign. But he was furious.” (A representative for the Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Kushner also appears to have already endured the physical toll of the job. He has become pale, the source noted. His body language and his demeanor toward Trump had changed, and he had lost a noticeable amount of weight from his already slight frame in just a week. (Another source who knows Kushner said that he typically forgets to eat when working long hours. Nevertheless, Politico’s Playbook on Monday spotted him picking up pizza in Dupont Circle on Sunday evening.)
Ivanka Trump’s initial foray in D.C. has not been much easier. Upon arrival in the swamp, she herself had mapped out a plan to hold some sort of vague policy role related to women, children, and families. It’s a note she struck repeatedly throughout her father’s campaign—talking about affordable child care and equal pay and earned tax credits from the Republican National Convention stage, on the stump, and in interviews. The fact that she commented on little else—neither his Muslim ban nor Mexican wall nor “nasty women” jabs nor comments about sexual harassment—irritated many who wanted her to be a moderating figure on her father. But she methodically stuck to her strategy with remarkable, almost unbelievable discipline. That discipline led marketing experts to tell me days before the election that her brand would easily recover from her father’s campaign, if he had lost. She had adroitly attached herself to one idea that would resonate with her female customer base.
Trump’s history of self-awareness and discipline merely exacerbated the fallout from her photograph. How could someone so keenly aware not realize that this post seemed tone deaf? Yet, to some, it appeared to be part of a pattern. Ivanka Trump remained publicly silent over the Inauguration weekend when millions of women marched outside her father’s new front door. She was quiet when Trump moved to peel back portions of Obamacare that cover health care benefits for children, and provide a number of provisions that economically impact working mothers—including the cost of contraception, breast pumps, and regulations that require workplaces to provide lactation rooms and allot time for pumping within the work day. “The photo made me feel like maybe she is more like her father than I’d initially thought,” the source who noted Kushner’s role in the Mexican visit negotiations told me. Another source familiar with the couple told me that while the post was “idiotic” and showed her “naiveté in not understanding her surroundings or circumstances,” there is a major difference between the father and daughter. “She can adjust her behavior accordingly, and she’s open to doing that,” the source told me. Another source familiar with the situation noted that Ivanka feels terrible about the post, and does not want something like this to happen again.
Unlike the campaign, Kushner and Trump’s futures are no longer entirely in their own control. Both have hitched themselves to her father’s wagon and, just 10 days in, are starting to see signs that it might not work out well for their own ambitions. Trump, after all, is about Trump. “It’s a very difficult line to straddle here, but the question is whether the Trump strategy might end up strangling her,” the source familiar with the couple told me. “It puts her in a really difficult situation.”
When the Kushners decided to relocate to Washington, on the heels of Trump’s surprise win, they stepped out of a comfortable life in New York and their respective family real-estate empires. The potential for the young couple, ostensibly a gate to the president, appeared enormous. But after a week, it appears that the de facto First Couple may have underestimated the potential pitfalls. Less than a fortnight into his new post, Kushner appears unable to control both his father-in-law and those around him. (On the same day as Trump’s visit to the Pentagon, the White House acknowledged International Holocaust Remembrance Day in a statement that omitted mention of the Jews.) Ivanka, meanwhile, may be impeded in her attempt to lobby on behalf of working women by various measures, from Trump’s executive order to dismiss parts of the A.C.A. to his derision of the Women’s March, that appear to have set them back. The question is whether the couple’s combination of unbridled ambition and inexperience will cause them to influence the president as never before, or whether they will be among the first to go.
Throughout the campaign, Jared Kushner wore a number of hats. A 36-year-old political novice who took over his family’s real-estate company at the age of 25, when his father went to prison on 18 counts of tax evasion and witness tampering, Kushner has been credited with spearheading the Trump campaign’s successful digital operations and orchestrating some of his father-in-law’s most central personnel decisions. But his most pivotal role within Trumplandia may have been his ability to manage the more severe messages being pushed out by the likes of Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller. As one source put it to me last week, Kushner has been the “secure line” into the White House.
Kushner, after all, reportedly brokered a meeting with Trump and Rupert Murdoch, once an outspoken critic, and got the nation’s biggest technology C.E.O.s to show up to a meeting at Trump Tower last month. At an event at Morgan Stanley headquarters in December, according to New York Magazine, Kushner told the 400 executives that his father-in-law may have been “easy to hate from afar,” but he was much more moderate at close range. He reassured anyone concerned over campaign rhetoric about Muslim bans and wall-building that a President Trump would find a “rational” position on immigration.
Trump has not embarked on a moderate position, of course, regarding either issue. And, according to a source familiar with the situation, Kushner’s influence on his boss may be flagging. Last week, Kushner spent 24 hours trying to broker a meeting between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. The source said that Kushner was even considering flying to Mexico in order to convince Peña Nieto, who had butted heads with Trump over various issues, to travel to the White House. Ultimately, Peña Nieto agreed—a feat Kushner presented to his father-in-law on Wednesday night. It was his first real victory in the West Wing in his role as senior adviser, and it would be a major step toward turning one of Trump’s main campaign promises into a reality.
Less than 12 hours later, though, it all fell apart. After Peña Nieto reiterated that Mexico does not plan to pay for Trump’s proposed wall, Trump tweeted that if Mexico is “unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.” Just like that, the meeting was canceled. “Kushner was fucking furious,” the source told me. “I’d never once heard him say he was angry throughout the entire campaign. But he was furious.” (A representative for the Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Kushner also appears to have already endured the physical toll of the job. He has become pale, the source noted. His body language and his demeanor toward Trump had changed, and he had lost a noticeable amount of weight from his already slight frame in just a week. (Another source who knows Kushner said that he typically forgets to eat when working long hours. Nevertheless, Politico’s Playbook on Monday spotted him picking up pizza in Dupont Circle on Sunday evening.)
Ivanka Trump’s initial foray in D.C. has not been much easier. Upon arrival in the swamp, she herself had mapped out a plan to hold some sort of vague policy role related to women, children, and families. It’s a note she struck repeatedly throughout her father’s campaign—talking about affordable child care and equal pay and earned tax credits from the Republican National Convention stage, on the stump, and in interviews. The fact that she commented on little else—neither his Muslim ban nor Mexican wall nor “nasty women” jabs nor comments about sexual harassment—irritated many who wanted her to be a moderating figure on her father. But she methodically stuck to her strategy with remarkable, almost unbelievable discipline. That discipline led marketing experts to tell me days before the election that her brand would easily recover from her father’s campaign, if he had lost. She had adroitly attached herself to one idea that would resonate with her female customer base.
Trump’s history of self-awareness and discipline merely exacerbated the fallout from her photograph. How could someone so keenly aware not realize that this post seemed tone deaf? Yet, to some, it appeared to be part of a pattern. Ivanka Trump remained publicly silent over the Inauguration weekend when millions of women marched outside her father’s new front door. She was quiet when Trump moved to peel back portions of Obamacare that cover health care benefits for children, and provide a number of provisions that economically impact working mothers—including the cost of contraception, breast pumps, and regulations that require workplaces to provide lactation rooms and allot time for pumping within the work day. “The photo made me feel like maybe she is more like her father than I’d initially thought,” the source who noted Kushner’s role in the Mexican visit negotiations told me. Another source familiar with the couple told me that while the post was “idiotic” and showed her “naiveté in not understanding her surroundings or circumstances,” there is a major difference between the father and daughter. “She can adjust her behavior accordingly, and she’s open to doing that,” the source told me. Another source familiar with the situation noted that Ivanka feels terrible about the post, and does not want something like this to happen again.
Unlike the campaign, Kushner and Trump’s futures are no longer entirely in their own control. Both have hitched themselves to her father’s wagon and, just 10 days in, are starting to see signs that it might not work out well for their own ambitions. Trump, after all, is about Trump. “It’s a very difficult line to straddle here, but the question is whether the Trump strategy might end up strangling her,” the source familiar with the couple told me. “It puts her in a really difficult situation.”
This is but one of the many ridiculous and costly PC/identity politics provisions within the (misnamed) Affordable Care Act that turned me off to it - and I was in favor of health care reform.
