“Quite frankly,” as Donald Trump is fond of saying, it comes as no surprise that the former president’s son-in-law and former senior advisor, Jared Kushner, says he has no intention of helping Trump in his 2024.
According to a Friday report from New York Magazine, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago dinner with mercurial anti-Semitic mogul Kanye West (AKA: “Ye”) and white nationalist Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes was the last straw for the former White House whiz kid. Kushner has since ignored requests for “help” or public support, instead handing out his father-in-law’s phone number to supplicants, rather than acting as a go-between.
The outlet reported Kushner as saying: “Look, I’m out. I’m really out.”
The New York Post reported that Kushner’s disenchantment with a third Trump run is shared by his wife Ivanka, who also shows zero interest in stepping back into the political arena with her father. An insider explained to The Post in mid-November:
They both feel they got burned in Washington and don’t want to go back and expose themselves and their children to another bitter campaign.
I have two salient thoughts, here.
First, why should — or would — they, given the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and the never-ending controversies surrounding Trump, many of which are self-inflicted? Second, why would any good parents with young children willingly expose their family to the brutal battle that’s coming?
Here’s more, via The Post:
Kushner attended the campaign kickoff at Mar-a-Lago, but Ivanka did not — raising eyebrows by swiftly putting out a statement saying in part that “I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family. I do not plan to be involved in politics.”
New York mag’s source acknowledged that Kushner had sent a “mixed message” by showing up for Trump’s announcement, calling it “a combination of having respect for a family member and drawing clear lines for your life.”
In unsurprising contrast, Trump told reporter Olivia Nuzzi that despite the notable absence of the Kushners from his 2024 launch, his entire family is “100 percent” behind him.
I think that all members of my family are with me. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to work on the campaign, but they’re always 100 percent with me, [Ivanka] did a very good job, and she was treated unfairly, and I don’t want to see that happen, you know? It’s a nasty business.
Except, in a video clip played during Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 Committee “show trial,” Ivanka said she accepted then-Attorney General William Barr’s conclusion that there was no widespread fraud affecting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election— even as Trump continues to insist it was “rigged” and “stolen.”
