In a scathing expose published by Vanity Fair, "feared duo" Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are dragged down from the presidential pedestal, opened up and dissected.
"Ivanka, like her father, relies on her name and image to propel her fortune," says VF. "Kushner, while less comfortable in the spotlight, has a stable of advisers and staff who report to him as the czar of a shadow government known as the White House Office of American Innovation.
Several "West Wing advisers, personal friends and various other associates" of Jared and Ivanka spoke on the condition anonymity for the profile that delves deeper into the duo's actual function and how they are being perceived in D.C. The story highlights "the contrast between the world they want to appear to inhabit and the one they actually do" and refers to the pair as the "exiles on Pennsylvania Avenue." It also investigates "the family-business nature of the Trump administration, which favors Kushner and Ivanka above all others."
"Washington is a place where you are judged by what you achieve, not by what you say you care about," VF writes.
Here are 11 jaw-droppers from Ivanka and Jared's takedown.
They handled Charlottesville terribly.
The day after the Charlottesville riot, "Ivanka tweeted, 'There should be no place in society for racism, white supremacy and neo-nazis.' Kushner was silent about the white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville, where many of the so-called Unite the Right protesters chanted anti-Semitic taunts such as 'Jews Will Not Replace Us.' Ivanka has had nothing more to say publicly, not even after a widely viewed Vice News broadcast about the protests in Charlottesville featured a white nationalist who said he faults the president for giving 'his daughter to a Jew.'"Ivanka Claims She 'Didn't Ask For' the Fame, Political Spotlight - But She Actually Did
"The way Ivanka sums up her current position is by now famous: 'I didn't ask for this.' It's a statement she has made on television and in conversation with friends, as if the election of her father to the presidency is a kind of disappointment, one for which she cannot be blamed—indeed, as if she had not served as a surrogate throughout the campaign and her husband had not been deeply involved in managing it. Still, Ivanka and Jared seemed to readily embrace their roles as the translators of the Trump presidency to their old elite circles in Manhattan, most of whose members were dismayed by his win.""Politics is new to Jared and Ivanka, but it isn't just politics that they are navigating. They are in a new town that 'punctures their self-esteem on a daily basis,' a New York friend of theirs told me. They know they can never have their New York life back as it existed before Donald Trump started his campaign, nor do they want to give up the power of their current positions in Washington. The future unfolding before them looks nothing like the future they may have imagined five years ago. Ivanka may be disingenuous when she says she 'didn’t ask for this,' but she is right to say that she didn't ask for this—that is, for the actual situation in which they find themselves: powerful, in a sense, and yet ineffectual; emotionally essential to Donald Trump, but lacking the skills to assist; impossible to fire and reluctant to leave; compromised ethically and perhaps legally; and facing reputational or familial harm no matter what they decide to do."
Jared and Ivanka put their own reputation above all else.
"Increasingly you hear chatter in Washington that Jared and Ivanka won't last, not because they are at risk of being pushed out, but because they will save themselves from a damaged White House. One well-connected strategist in New York told me that the two were eyeing a move at the end of the school year in 2018. A person close to the couple said they weren't planning that far ahead. 'When they decide it's more important to protect their own and their children's reputations than it is to defend their indefensible father's, that's a sign the end is near,' one influential Republican donor told me."
Ivanka and Jared's motives are questionable.
"Ivanka met with Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio about climate change. She met with Queen Rania of Jordan to talk about women's empowerment. She memorably sat in on a meeting with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, one of the many times the Trump family has flouted the rules and customs of the presidency. She was in the early stages of honing a platform of issues that she hoped would define her time in Washington. Kushner was engaged in his own constant stream of meetings, some of which he would reveal in later statements to Congress. During those heady weeks after the election, Ivanka realized that her previous life—running her own clothing-and-accessories brand and working alongside her brothers in their father's real-estate company—was gone forever. The decision to move to Washington, where Ivanka and Jared occupy a $5.5 million home in the Kalorama neighborhood, just blocks from the Obamas, was as much driven by Jared's deep role in the campaign as it was by Ivanka's determination to remain at her father's side. Ivanka initially planned to simply move to Washington with her family and work as an advocate for favored causes. But then she saw the potential opportunity to wield more clout.""While their divestments were certified by the Office of Government Ethics, neither of them chose to divest themselves entirely of their corporate assets before moving to Washington, an invitation to perceived conflicts of interest that Kushner himself has been particularly dogged by. Before taking on his official role, he had engaged in discussions with both Chinese and Qatari firms to help refinance the Kushner Companies' signature building, 666 Fifth Avenue. He also secured a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank for a separate property as the bank was settling a Russian-money-laundering case with New York regulators. These episodes have invited uncomfortable questions about his motives and his ties to unsavory governments."
They are sellouts.
Kushner "reportedly told one former associate, who had brought up the ugly rhetoric of the campaign Kushner had helped run, that he did not 'give a shit' if the associate didn't want to do business with Kushner anymore. 'I haven't had anything to do with them since they moved,' said one New York friend, 'and it is because the day that man gave an inaugural speech, what am I going to say? 'What the fuck is wrong with you?'""When they lived in New York, Kushner used to remind Ivanka that 'we're in the zoo, but let's try hard not to be part of the animals.' He often would add, 'You want to be watching.'"
They're more concerned with breaking records than with fixing the country.
"People who have spoken with them say the couple habitually points out that the average tenure of a West Wing aide is 18 months—a tenure they intend to outlast. At the same time, neither has committed to staying the duration of the Trump presidency, which both must realize may well be cut short."They're even bad dinner-party guests.
"The couple recently attended an off-the-record dinner at the home of Atlantic Media's owner, David Bradley, the sort of soirƩe Bradley holds on a regular basis with newsmakers and prominent Washington reporters and columnists. 'They were terrible,' one attendee told me. The couple kept to platitudes and pabulum, as they often do in public conversations. People close to Kushner and Ivanka say that they have come to Washington for a limited time to work, not make inroads into the social scene, much less put down roots."They have no actual say in what happens at the White House.
"Ivanka has tried hard to persuade associates and others that she is focusing on a few issues—job creation and women's empowerment, including paid family leave, child-care tax credits, workforce development, and STEM education—and should be judged only on the success or failure of these, not on the broader positions of her father's administration. But if her main value in Washington is her access to her father and she is unable to sway him, then she is simply a 35-year-old former real-estate and retail executive in over her head.""'Trump is emotionally dependent on his son-in-law and his daughter...but they can't do anything for him,' said the Washington veteran. 'All they can do is make him feel better about what his life has come to.'"
They have zero self-awareness.
Kushner and Ivanka don't have the necessary self-awareness—don't understand how to behave when you roll into Washington as the creature of someone else. Most such people take a seat a little off to the side, at least until they get their bearings. 'What is off-putting about them is they do not grasp their essential irrelevance,' this veteran told me. 'They think they are special.'"They're good at waging war against anyone who may be detrimental to Trump.
"Kushner supported Anthony Scaramucci as communications director because he was seen as someone who was not only blindly loyal to the president but also able to 'break the cartel' of Reince Priebus, as Kushner recently told an associate. Kushner viewed Priebus, who was removed in July, as having a stranglehold on the communications shop, deploying Sean Spicer and his acolytes to combat negative stories about himself.""'[Ivanka] tries to charm you at first, and then there'll be the cutting remark in front of her father,' the former adviser added. Kushner, though he tries to be casual and jokes with other staffers, can have even more of an edge. Once, when Priebus asked Kushner what his team of Cordish and Liddell had been up to, Kushner retorted, according to someone who heard the exchange, 'Reince, we aren't getting paid. What the fuck do you care?'"
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