Jared Kushner Has Won and The New York Times Knows It

This week's profile of Trump's son-in-law seals the deal

Javanka in January, in Los Angeles, keeping up with their many recent party appearances.

While reading the New York Times long interview with Jared Kushner this week, I felt something unfamiliar: defeat.

I don’t know how else to say this but it’s time to face the reality: Jared Kushner has won.

It seems clear to me that he’s the single biggest winner from the Trump White House, not just financially but, staggeringly, reputationally.

In the last three or more years he’s swung from being a social pariah — unwelcome in New York and in many blue-chip business circles, as well as being investigated by various committees in Congress for the appearance of conflicts of interests — to a figure of both media fascination and global influence. He’s even become someone the elites in politics and in “mainstream media” need to suck up to.

That’s because in addition to raising $3 billion-worth of foreign investments - many from foreign governments’ funds – at a scale and speed that, according to the Times, is unprecedented for a former White House Advisor, this last year has seen Kushner become an international Svengali at lightning pace.

He brokered a meeting in New York between the Prime Minister of Qatar and some of New York’s most important businessmen; he advises the Trump think tank, America First, on policies for a potential second Trump administration; he was in Israel with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and visited the site of the October 7 attacks; he sounded off on Fox News about the problems with the First Amendment on college campuses; he appeared for a three hour interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast – a calculated PR strategy, which worked, or so he told the Times, because it attracted new potential investors to his fund from the Silicon Valley crowd who listen to Fridman. He’s spoken at numerous business conferences and he makes sure to keep up regularly with his buddy, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

Kushner on the Lex Fridman Podcast in October

Socially, he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, go to so many grand parties they are like Waldo in that world. They’ve popped up almost weekly at the world’s most lavish celebrations in India, California, and the Middle East, where they hobnobbed with the Prince and Princess of Wales. (Ivanka also showed up for Kim Kardashian’s birthday party. Whether that puts her up or down on the snakes and ladders board is, I guess, subjective.)

Javanka in India last month

But what struck me about this latest New York Times profile of Kushner is how he’s even got the Times so obviously under his thumb.

Let me explain: The piece has three big bylines: Eric Lipton, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman. These are all people whose work I admire but – and it’s a big but – they all need “access” to people around Trump now – and in the future – should Trump become President again, which, according to polls, is very possible.

So aside from unveiling a single new investor, Terry Gou, in Affinity, the Kushner fund, the “news” in the piece is a few direct self-serving quotes from Kushner, who posed for photographs and allowed the Times into his minimalist Miami office.

It’s an arrangement that seems to have given Kushner the upper hand, given the blandness of what he is quoted saying.

One typical quote?

“Following the laws and the rules is something we always do,” he said. “Perception, I’ve learned that from my time in politics, is important. But I can’t control what everyone is going to write or say about me.”

And:

“One of the reasons I think firms like us as investors, they know that if Affinity comes in we’re a mark of kosher. Because again, we’re a highly scrutinized firm. We operate very professionally.”

Right.

What is more concerning is that there are a considerable number of passages implying that the journalists had not been allowed quote him directly.

For example:

Mr. Kushner has said he does not intend to return to the White House. But pressed on whether he would definitively rule out going back to government, he spoke instead about how happy he was in his life right now.

And on Congress’s investigations:

Mr. Kushner said he understood that he could not avoid scrutiny. But he said repeatedly that he was confident he was acting ethically and legally and did not worry too much about what have become regular attacks from Democrats in Congress and ethics watchdogs.

The danger of this paraphrasing is that readers are not being given the full picture of what he actually said.

I know from experience that Kushner’s word-choice can give his real meaning away. He once told me what he thought of journalists. He said, “If they were more talented they’d be in real estate making money.”

You could charitably paraphrase that as, “Mr. Kushner said he believes journalists are missing out on more lucrative job opportunities elsewhere.” Which has an entirely different meaning – and does not tell you who Mr. Kushner really is.

So, I’d like to know from the New York Times reporters what he actually said.

The much more helpful thing about the profile are the photographs, which sit there like stamps of Kushner approval, which is surely what they are.

They kick off with a shot of Kushner himself, grinning, smug, cool, hipster-ised, in casual clothes and sneakers, and a salt and pepper beard.

The messaging is clear: “What? Me? Worry?”

Then there’s a photograph of a framed Time Magazine cover of Kushner titled “The Good Son” with a scribble on it from Trump that reads: “Jared - Amazing Job.”

Beneath that is a scribble from Kushner’s father Charles that reads, “Jared I am very proud of you. I love you with my heart and soul. Dad.”

Charles Kushner, you’ll recall was a convicted felon, since pardoned by Trump, whose real estate company had a problematic loan coming due in 2018, which was bailed out in the nick of time by a company whose second largest shareholder is the government of Qatar. Jared was leading foreign policy in the region at the time, which took a pro Qatar-turn. Congress has investigated the appearance of a conflict. Jared has denied any wrong-doing.

Also hanging on the walls are all sorts of other framed White House mementos, all stating that Jared is wonderful and he saved the world. One is signed Mike Pompeo. Several are congratulatory messages from Trump.

So, basically, Jared’s office doubles as a self-congratulatory shrine. His world is a place of light and confidence and money.

Presumably, he thinks that if we journalists were “more talented,” we too could go into government with zero experience, run foreign policy, make foreign contacts and then get really rich, really quick – just like him. And then, possibly, rinse and repeat.

Presumably, this is why he tells the Times journalists - without irony - of all the foreign partners he says are now wanting to partner with him: “If they think they’re going to get special treatment from Trump because they’re doing a deal with me, they’re wrong,” he said. “That would be stupid.”