“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.”
It affected my perspective, I respect Attorney General Barr, so I accepted what he was saying.
In addition, Donald Trump Jr. reportedly told then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that his father needed to “condemn this s–t ASAP.”
We need an Oval Office address. He has to leave now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.
Per The Post, when Trump was asked about the fallout from the West-Fuentes dinner, he declared:
I don’t need anybody’s advice! I don’t need any advice! I’m pretty good. I think I’m pretty good at doing advice.
Yeah, well, so did I think I was pretty good at “doing advice” — before I wisely came to the conclusion that heeding my own advice often led me to do things I shouldn’t have done, or refuse to do things I should’ve done. I believe that reality is shared by most if not all rational intelligent people.
Anyway, a former Trump advisor told New York Magazine:
There’s nobody around him who wants him to do it. Forget Jared and Ivanka — Don Jr. doesn’t want him to do it! The only person who wants him to do it is Eric’s wife, Lara, because she’s so ambitious.
Interesting take on Lara Trump; I think she does a pretty good job on Fox News.
The Bottom Line
So here’s the thing. I don’t know who’s telling the truth in the whole Trump saga, and who’s not — and neither does anyone reading this article nor do keyboard warriors who summarily dismiss all negative news about Donald Trump by declaring “Fake news!” and such — but I do know this:
“Fake news,” or not, “rigged” and “stolen” election or not, the 2024 GOP primaries are going to be brutal as hell, and anyone with a modicum of objectivity who’s paid any attention at all — beginning with the 2016 primaries, continuing throughout Trump’s presidency, and in the aftermath of the 2020 election — knows that the Republican Party will be left in shambles by Donald Trump if he’s not the 2024 nominee.
While some already proclaim “It’s about time!”, some Democrat — perhaps even Joe Biden — will sit in the White House for another four years. God knows the last two years have shown us what that portends.
See: “cut off your nose to spite your face.”