After the Kushners made their first ill-advised foray into Manhattan, overpaying for 666 Fifth Avenue just before the market crashed in 2008, Trump helped them avoid bankruptcy in 2011 by steering investors their way. A few years later, when Trump University was being investigated for fraud by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Jared Kushner’s newspaper, the New York Observer, ran a biting 7,000-word piece on Schneiderman.
Once Trump entered the presidential race in 2015, Jared emerged as one of his most trusted advisers. Kushner managed the campaign’s digital operations, and attended the infamous Trump Tower meeting where Russians offered to provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton. During the transition, he met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak as well as Sergei Gorkov, head of Russia’s state-controlled VEB Bank.
Trump rewarded Kushner’s loyalty by giving him expansive power in the White House: from Middle East peace to digital innovation to the border wall. As Jared’s political portfolio has expanded, the Kushner family’s businesses have attracted foreign capital from investors who once shunned them, including the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Trump’s family properties, meanwhile, have raked in tens of millions from influence seekers since he took office.
That blurring of the boundaries between public policy and private business has made Trump’s administration uniquely polarizing and Kushner among its most disparaged figures.
Yet here, too, public sentiment is deeply divided.
Trump has been impeached by the House of Representatives, and his low public approval ratings have buoyed the hopes of Democrats hoping to thwart his reelection bid. Still, Bernstein cautions that the Kushner and Trump families “will do everything possible to lock us in for the foreseeable future.” Trump’s appeal to his fervent base is strong enough that he’s widely expected to prevail at his upcoming impeachment trial in the Republican-held Senate. Many consider him a good bet to win a second term.
And just this month, a poll of Republican voters was released, indicating the party’s preferences in the 2024 presidential race. Two of the top four picks were Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.