Jared Kushner told Fox & Friends that Black people must “want to be successful” in order for President Trump’s policies to help them.
Said Kushner: “One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about. But he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful.”
President Trump has told people in recent days that he regrets following Jared Kushner’s “political advice — including supporting criminal justice reform — and will stick closer to his own instincts,” Axios reports.
“One person who spoke with the president interpreted his thinking this way: ‘No more of Jared’s woke shit.’ Another said Trump has indicated that following Kushner’s advice has harmed him politically.”
“The sources said the president has resolved to stick to his instincts and jettison any policies that go against them, including ambitious police reform.”
Washington Post: “The coronavirus response being spearheaded by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has relied in part on volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with little expertise in the tasks to which they were assigned, exacerbating chronic problems in obtaining supplies for hospitals and other needs.”
White House adviser Jared Kushner tried to sell his Middle East peace plan to the Palestinians by making an ultimatum in a CNN interview.
Said Kushner: “The Palestinian leadership have to ask themselves a question: Do they want to have a state? Do they want to have a better life? If they do, we have created a framework for them to have it, and we’re going to treat them in a very respectful manner.”
He added: “If they don’t, then they’re going to screw up another opportunity, like they’ve screwed up every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.”
New York Times: “Unlike the behind-the-scenes role he played in the 2016 campaign — where he was seen as a key figure but, campaign aides said, never took a title and avoided blame — Mr. Kushner is positioning himself now as the person officially overseeing the entire campaign from his office in the West Wing, organizing campaign meetings and making decisions about staffing and spending. His more prominent role comes after much of 2019 was spent bogged down by the Russia-related investigations that had dogged the president since he took office.”
“The portfolio marks a sharp departure from Mr. Kushner’s focus in the early days of the administration, when he sought to be a central driver of administration Middle East policy, acting at times as a shadow secretary of state who circumvented official channels of power within the State Department.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) fiercely defended Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in the wake of President Trump’s attacks on the Maryland Democrat and the Baltimore-area district he represents, The Hill reports.
Said Pelosi: “The president without — and this comes as no surprise — really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But maybe he could ask his son-in-law, who’s a slumlord.”
“In a now-viral tweetstorm on Saturday, President Trump characterized Rep. Elijah Cummings’s Baltimore-based congressional district as a ‘rodent infested mess’ where ‘no human’ would want to live,” the Washington Post reports.
“His criticism rang with a particular irony in Baltimore County, where presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner owns more than a dozen apartment complexes that have been cited for hundreds of code violations and, critics say, provide substandard housing to lower-income tenants… Tenants of Kushner properties reported mouse infestations, mold problems and maggots.”
Washington Post: “Kushner is the hidden hand of Trump’s 2020 campaign — rarely glimpsed in its Northern Virginia headquarters but signing off behind the scenes on everything from spending to digital initiatives to top-level hires.”
“He has asked Bill Stepien, a senior political adviser to the campaign, to provide him with a 10-year plan outlining how Republicans can win inner-city voters. He speaks daily — and often multiple times a day — with Parscale, and has recommended digital and media vendors for the campaign. Campaign aides who want to brief Trump often go through him. And when Kushner suggested that the campaign bring on Kayleigh McEnany as its national press secretary, Parscale made the hire.”
“Some allies liken Kushner to a de facto campaign manager, saying his role in Trump’s reelection bid is akin to Karl Rove for President George W. Bush or James Baker for President George H.W. Bush. Some of his critics agree — but also say that Kushner lacks the political savvy of those two experienced hands, and that his position smacks of nepotism.”
Gabriel Sherman: “What is a problem for the campaign, though, is the escalating cold war between Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. for control of the reelection, five sources close to the White House told me in recent days. Brad Parscale is the nominal campaign manager—but Jared and Don Jr., who both have good relationships with Parscale, are jockeying to be the ultimate decision makers.”
“The tensions between Don Jr. and Kushner amplified beneath the glare of the Mueller investigation… Don Jr. has told people he suspected Kushner was behind the initial leak of Don Jr.’s infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russians to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.”
Said a source: “Don Jr. and Jared really dislike each other. Don was telling people Jared leaked it to hurt him. No one could figure out how it leaked. It was a closely guarded secret.”
“Jared Kushner’s family averted disaster last year when a Canadian asset manager swooped in to buy their skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, which had been hemorrhaging millions of dollars. Now they’re facing a similar crisis a few blocks away,” Bloomberg reports.
“At the former New York Times building on West 43rd Street, a graying property in Times Square, the pattern is uncannily similar: Buy at a steep price, pile on too much debt, run up big losses, fight with tenants and flirt with default.”
“It’s the latest example of overreach for a family that built a fortune on suburban rental properties, only to have its urban ambitions stymied.”
“A real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner has received $90m in foreign funding from an opaque offshore vehicle since he entered the White House as a senior adviser to his father-in-law Donald Trump,” the Guardian reports.
“Investment has flowed from overseas to the company, Cadre, while Kushner works as an international envoy for the US… The money came through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that guarantees corporate secrecy.”
Jared Kushner wouldn’t answer Jonathan Swan directly when asked if he disapproves of President Trump’s promotion of birtherism:
SWAN: Have you ever seen him say or do anything that you would describe as racist or bigoted?
KUSHNER: So, the answer is un — uh, no. Absolutely not. You can’t not be a racist for 69 years, then run for president and be a racist. What I’ll say is that, when a lot of the Democrats call the president a racist, I think they’re doing a disservice to people who suffer because of real racism in this country.
SWAN: Was birtherism racist?
KUSHNER: Um, look I wasn’t really involved in that.
SWAN: I know you weren’t. Was it racist?
KUSHNER: Like I said, I wasn’t involved in that.
SWAN: I know you weren’t. Was it racist?
KUSHNER: I know who the president is, and I have not seen anything in him that is racist. So, again, I was not involved in that.
SWAN: Did you wish he didn’t do that?
KUSHNER: Like I said, I was not involved in that. That was a long time ago.
Aaron Blake: “So for Kushner to dismiss it as trivial is to bury his own head in the sand. Kushner may not be a senior White House adviser without it. But of course, he didn’t really dismiss it; he actively sought to distance himself from it — which pretty much says it all.”
Jared Kushner told Axios on HBO that he doesn’t know whether he’d call the FBI if he were to receive an email today like the one before the campaign’s Trump Tower meeting, which had the subject line: “Re: Russia – Clinton – private and confidential.”
Kushner said this after a tense exchange about the email he received to set up the infamous Trump Tower meeting.
New York Times: “They are there before 7 a.m. to catch Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner departing for work. After switching shifts midday, they are also there at 8 p.m., when the couple usually return home. This repeats itself most days, including weekends and holidays.”
“Neighbors don’t seem to mind or even take notice. That’s because Kalorama already has its share of high-profile officials, with as many black town cars and Chevy Suburbans idling on its leafy drives as one might see in gangster’s cortège.”
“The paparazzi stay sandwiched between the Secret Service detail guarding the Trump-Kushner residence and another detail guarding the Obamas, who live a block away… Still, it’s a somniferous situation for the photographers, who camp out in their cars for hours at a time for a few seconds of activity.”
“Shortly after Donald Trump’s 2016 election, Paul Manafort wrote to Jared Kushner to ask the incoming administration to consider giving a ‘major appointment’’ to Manafort’s banker,” Bloomberg reports.
Replied Kushner: “On it!”
“That email exchange, which was admitted as evidence during Manafort’s tax-fraud trial last year, gained new significance Thursday with the unsealing of a federal indictment in New York. The new filing accused the banker, Stephen Calk, of extending loans to Manafort as part of an effort to bribe his way into a plum administration job.”
Playbook: “In the last two weeks, Jared Kushner has launched two initiatives: his big-time immigration plan, and an economic plan for the Middle East, aimed at empowering the Palestinians.”
“What’s the common thread here? In both cases, a debate about the merits was drowned out by an apparent lack of preparation — and coalition-building — by Jared’s crew in the White House.”
“On immigration, House Republicans and Democrats were caught flat-footed by the plan, and Jared’s team — deeply distrustful of everyone in the White House — didn’t have paper immediately to explain what they were trying to do.”
“As for Mideast peace, one of the immediate storylines that emerged was that the Palestinians said they were not consulted about the Palestinian economic empowerment summit that’s a month away in Bahrain. That led Middle East reporters and longtime Israel watchers to immediately doubt Jared’s plan.”
“Jared Kushner struggled to answer questions about his plan to overhaul the immigration system in a closed-door meeting with Republican senators Tuesday, winning little support for the proposal,” the Washington Post reports.
“Publicly, senators emerged from their weekly Capitol Hill luncheon, applauding the White House senior adviser’s pitch to move U.S. immigration toward a merit-based system that prioritizes highly skilled workers, a task he undertook at Trump’s behest.”
“But privately, Republican officials said Kushner had difficulty answering questions from a friendly audience, prompting Trump’s other senior adviser, Stephen Miller, to interrupt and take over the conversation.”
Jared Kushner is “preparing to sell ambitious fixes to two of the most stubborn problems of the past 50 years,” Politico reports.
“With a headlong plunge into immigration reform and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Kushner is presenting his political inexperience as an asset, telling lawmakers he is free of preconceived notions that stymied previous attempts. His air of breezy self-assurance in the private meetings he is conducting to tease his plans at times astounds the battle-scarred veterans of past such efforts. Critics complain, too, that his briefings are often woefully short on detail.”
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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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