If keeping close tabs on the interpersonal relationships of billionaires whom society would objectively be better off without is one of your hobbies, you likely know that things between Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch have been tense for some time now, thanks to Murdoch’s decisions to bury Trump’s 2020 election dreams in a shallow grave and subsequently dump the ex-president for a younger model. Before all that, though, the two enjoyed a robust alliance in which Fox News basically served as state TV during the Trump administration years. And, as we learned late last night, the Australian media mogul was willing to go to great, wildly unethical lengths to keep Trump in power until the very end.
According to a new court filing from Dominion Voting Systems—which is currently suing Fox News for $1.6 billion—in 2020, Murdoch gave Jared Kushner, then the first son-in-law and an adviser to the president, “confidential information about [President Joe] Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy…providing Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public.” It’s not clear which ads Murdoch passed on (or what debate strategy he offered), but as The Washington Post’s Philip Bumpnotes, the heads-up would have undoubtedly been much appreciated:
Campaigns do opposition research on their own candidates to get a sense of what attacks are coming and to prepare for them. Now imagine if they knew with certainty what attacks were coming because the friendly chairman of a right-wing media organization was tipping you off.
Given the way Fox treated Trump while he was in office—like he was the network’s lord and savior, and like its pundits had pledged a blood oath to him in the basement of its Sixth Avenue offices—the company’s owner having shared confidential information with Kushner probably seems neither shocking nor even that bad on the scale of all the bad things the network has done. As a reminder, though, the organization in question purports to be in the “news” business. In fact, once upon a time, it unironically made “Fair and Balanced” its motto (though that was dropped in 2017 because…c’mon). Which is quite rich given that, as Bump also notes, Fox pretty much stood on its own when it came to basically serving as a wing of both the Trump campaign and the Republican Party:
In both the most recent and earlier filings from Dominion, Murdoch is quoted as advocating explicitly for his charges to help boost Republicans. “[W]e should concentrate on Georgia, helping any way we can,” Murdoch wrote to his team in the days before the runoff Senate races in that state—meaning, obviously, that they should help the Republicans win. In the new filing, he’s quoted as writing to the head of Fox News that “we must tell our viewers again and again what they will get” with tax legislation proposed by Trump. He was advocating for acting in service to Trump and Trump’s politics.
Contrast this with other cable news channels. In 2010, MSNBC suspended host Joe Scarborough for having made small political contributions several years prior. “[I]t is critical that we enforce our standards and policies,” the network’s then president, Phil Griffin, said in a statement. Fox News hosts, on the other hand, host Republican fundraising dinners and speak at political rallies. The difference is stark.
Murdoch obviously isn’t going to suspend himself, but unfortunately for Trump, he’s probably also unlikely to provide the same kind of support in 2024.* As we learned back in 2021, it was ole Rupert who gave the greenlight to call Arizona for Biden, reportedly telling his son, of Trump: “F–k him.” While Fox has denied this, the most recently released Dominion filing suggests Team Trump indeed received a chilly reception from the Aussie at the top. During his under-oath deposition, Murdoch said that Kushner called him on election night about the network’s coverage and, with Trump in the background “shouting,” told him, “This is terrible.” Murdoch’s response? “Well, the numbers are the numbers.”
*Unless Trump wins the GOP nomination—then, yeah, Fox will undoubtedly do everything it can to get him elected.
The leaks provided Kushner with “a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public,” according to court documents released Monday as part of the $1.6 billion defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News.
“During Trump’s campaign, Rupert provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, with Fox confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy,” read the filing.
It’s unclear exactly how Murdoch assisted with “debate strategy.”
Dominion is suing Fox News over the unfounded claims pushed by several of the network’s hosts that the company’s voting machines were used to flip the election in favor of Biden.
Elsewhere in the filing, Murdoch acknowledged Fox News hosts “endorsed” conspiracy theories about Donald Trump winning the 2020 election.
Critics described the Murdoch-Kushner news as a “bombshell.”
“These actions by Rupert Murdoch seem illegal,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.). “At the very least, it would appear to be a campaign contribution of significant value, well over federal campaign limits.”
“Trump falsely accused Biden of ‘spying on his campaign,’” commented the progressive PAC MeidasTouch. “Today, it was revealed that Trump and Fox News colluded to *actually* spy on Biden’s campaign. Every accusation is always a confession.”
Fox has repeatedly defended itself amid the lawsuit, claiming it is “more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny.”
Rupert Murdoch gave Jared Kushner access to Biden’s TV spots before they were public…pretty hefty in-kind campaign contribution there. https://t.co/IMZLrgYGEn
These actions by Rupert Murdoch seem illegal. At the very least, it would appear to be a campaign contribution of significant value, well over federal campaign limits. https://t.co/Mb92DUGoAZ
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claims in his upcoming memoir that former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley plotted with former President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner to try to become Trump’s vice president, according to an excerpt of the book obtained by CNN.
Pompeo, in his book “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” takes several shots at potential 2024 Republican rivals, including Haley and former national security adviser John Bolton, as the onetime Kansas congressman and CIA director fuels speculation about his own presidential ambitions.
Pompeo writes that he was told by John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff at the time, that Haley had scheduled a meeting with the president to discuss what she claimed was a personal matter and then came to the Oval Office meeting with Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who were serving as White House senior advisers.
“As best Kelly could tell, they were presenting a possible ‘Haley for vice president’ option. I can’t confirm this, but he was certain he had been played, and he was not happy about it. Clearly, this visit did not reflect a team effort but undermined our work for America,” Pompeo writes in his book.
CNN has reached out to Kelly for comment on Pompeo’s claim.
Haley refuted Pompeo’s allegations on Thursday, saying she “never had a conversation with Jared, Ivanka, or the president about the vice presidentship.”
“Pompeo even says he’s not sure if it’s true,” the former South Carolina governor told Fox News, dismissing the claim as “gossip” and saying “there is no truth to it.”
“What I’ll tell you is it’s really sad when you’re having to go out there and put lies and gossip to sell a book,” Haley said. “I don’t know why he said it but that’s exactly why I stayed out of DC as much as possible – to get away from the drama and get away from the gossip.
But a White House source from that time has backed Pompeo’s claim, adding more context by recalling how Kushner and Ivanka Trump were pushing Haley to be secretary of state to succeed Rex Tillerson, who had objected to Kushner getting involved in foreign relations too often and in ways Tillerson disagreed with.
But the president was not enamored with the idea and went with Pompeo, with whom he got along better and whom he liked more, the source said.
After that switch, Trump began talking negatively about his vice president, Mike Pence, who he thought was too often trying to convince him to back off controversial statements or actions. Kushner and Ivanka Trump began pushing Haley again, the source said. Kelly tried to talk the president out of it, arguing that Pence had helped win him the support of evangelical Christian voters in 2016. Kelly was surprised, the source said, that Pence lasted through the 2020 election.
Pompeo, whose book will be published next week, is also scathing in his assessment of Bolton, who has said he may launch a presidential bid to stop Trump from getting a second term in office.
Pompeo takes issue with Bolton’s 2020 book “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” and claims the former Trump national security adviser divulged classified information and should be prosecuted.
“His self-serving stories contained classified information and deeply sensitive details about conversations involving a sitting commander in chief,” Pompeo writes. “That’s the very definition of treason.”
“John Bolton should be in jail for spilling classified information. I hope I can one day testify at a criminal trial as a witness for the prosecution,” Pompeo writes.
When Bolton wrote the book, there was significant controversy over security reviews of the book before it was published.
“My book was fully cleared in the prepublication review process conducted by the cognizant career NSC Senior Director, whose home agency was the National Archives,” Bolton told CNN in response to Pompeo’s claims.
“Pompeo’s comments tell you more about his character than about my book,” he added.
One of the objectively funniest moments of the period between 2016 and 2020 was when departing UN ambassador Nikki Haley used her 2018 resignation announcement to tell reporters: “Jared [Kushner] is such a hidden genius that no one understands.” If you missed it in real time, you really must take a moment to watch and listen as the words come out of her mouth:
In other words, no one understood what Haley was talking about. Had she recently fallen and suffered a head injury? Did she know that, behind the scenes, Kushner’s Saudi ass-kissing and murder-excusing would pay off in the form of a $2 billion check? Was there another explanation for her deeply flattering and wholly unsubstantiated comment? A new book by one of her former administration colleagues suggests as much!
In a new memoir peppered with broadsides at potential rivals in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, accuses Nikki Haley of plotting with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to be named vice-president, even while she served as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. Describing his own anger when Haley secured a personal Oval Office meeting with Trump without checking with him, Pompeo writes that Haley in fact “played” Trump’s then chief of staff, John Kelly, and instead of meeting the president alone, was accompanied by Trump’s daughter and her husband, both senior advisers.
“As best Kelly could tell,” Pompeo writes, “they were presenting a possible ‘Haley for vice-president’ option. I can’t confirm this, but [Kelly] was certain he had been played, and he was not happy about it. Clearly, this visit did not reflect a team effort but undermined our work for America.”
It’s not clear if Jared and Ivanka were hoping to swap Haley for then VP Mike Pence before Trump’s first term was done, or if they wanted to do so for a second one. (On Thursday, Haley called Pompeo’s assertions “lies and gossip to sell a book.”) As The Guardian notes, Pompeo’s claim is bolstered by contemporaneous reporting that Trump was looking to dump Pence for Haley on a 2020 ticket, which the then president felt the need to deny. In June 2021, Jared and Ivanka reportedly spent a weekend with Haley at her Kiawah, South Carolina, home. A month later, my colleague Gabriel Shermanreported that Jared Kushner’s parents had hosted a private lunch at their Jersey Shore house for friends to meet Haley, where Kushner‘s father, Charles, predicted that Haley would be “the first woman president.”
Trump wrote on Monday that he “specifically asked” his daughter and Kushner not to get involved in his campaign this time around.
“Contrary to Fake News reporting, I never asked Jared or Ivanka to be part of the 2024 Campaign for President and, in fact, specifically asked them not to do it – too mean and nasty with the Fake & Corrupt News and having to deal with some absolutely horrendous SleazeBags in the world of politics, and beyond,” Trump ranted.
He continued: “There has never been anything like this “ride” before, and they should not be further subjected to it. I ran twice, getting millions more Votes the second time (RIGGED), & am doing it again!”
Kushner has reportedly refused to help the former president on his 2024 campaign, according to New York Magazine, and he’s started handing out Trump’s number to people who ask for help whereas he’s acted as a link between 45 and others in the past.
“He was like, ‘Look, I’m out. I’m really out,’” a source aware of the situation told the publication.
Elon Musk may soon be on the lookout for a new chief executive to run Twitter.
After mounting criticism of his chaotic leadership at Twitter, including recent decisions to suspend tech journalists and introduce (and then delete) a controversial policy banning linking out to rival platforms, Musk posted a poll asking whether he should step down as CEO. The poll ended Monday morning with 57% of voters in favor of Musk handing off the top job.
Musk has not commented on the results of the poll. In fact, Musk went an uncharacteristically long time on Monday without tweeting at all. But even if Musk doesn’t immediately honor his own poll, the Tesla CEO will likely only continue to face pressure from the carmaker’s investors to hand the reins to someone else sooner than later. Tesla stock is down 34% since his deal to buy Twitter closed and more than 63% since the start of this year, as investors worry about his many competing priorities. (Musk has also for years mused about finding a successor to run Tesla, with no obvious progress.)
Musk, for his part, said in a tweet Sunday before the poll had closed: “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.”
If Musk were to look for a new Twitter CEO, he’d likely have many willing takers. Already, the list of people who have offered to run the platform includes former T-Mobile CEO John Legere, MIT artificial intelligence researcher Lex Fridman and rapper Snoop Dogg (who could perhaps run Twitter with the help of his friend and entertainment personality Martha Stewart). Tom Anderson, a founder of MySpace, also commented on Musk’s poll about stepping down from CEO, saying, “depends on who you get to run it,” with a thinking-face emoji.
There are also some highly qualified candidates out there — such as former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and CTO Mike Schroepfer, who both left their roles at the social media giant earlier this year — although convincing them to take on the chaos machine that is Twitter could be difficult. Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder, CEO of Block and friend to Musk, has previously said he would not return to run the social network.
The most obvious potential candidates for a new Twitter CEO are the Musk lieutenants who have been helping to run the company since his takeover. The short list likely includes investor Jason Calacanis, Craft Ventures partner David Sacks and Sriram Krishnan, an Andreessen Horowitz general partner focused on crypto and Twitter’s former consumer teams lead.
If Musk does pick someone else, it might allow him to hand over some of the day-to-day responsibility, and accountability, of running Twitter. But one thing would almost certainly not change: Musk remains very much in charge. Musk pushed out the company’s former leadership and board of directors, and as the company’s owner and sole board director, he will ultimately have the power to hire and fire whoever he wants at the company’s helm.
Calacanis, who emerged in the tech world as a reporter during the dot com boom, is an early-stage investor who has backed well-known companies such as Uber and Robinhood. He has also launched several media properties and hosts two podcasts (one in partnership with Sacks).
Calacanis tweeted on Sunday night asking, “Who would like the most miserable job in tech AND media?! Who is insane enough to run twitter?!?!” Calacanis also ran his own Twitter poll asking followers whether he or Sacks should run the company, separately or together, or whether someone else should take over. The majority of respondents voted for “other.”
In April, shortly after Musk offered to buy Twitter, Calacanis told the billionaire in a text message that “Twitter CEO is my dream job.”
Sacks, who along with Musk was among the original founding team at PayPal, has at least some experience managing a social network. He founded and ran enterprise communications platform Yammer, before selling it to Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion.
Sacks has been particularly unflinching in echoing Musks’ talking points, whether it’s justifying a feud with Apple or attempting to stir up outrage about a Twitter account that posted publicly available information about the whereabouts of Musk’s private jet. A Twitter user asked Sacks last month what he and Musk disagree about, and Sacks responded with just one thing: “Chess.”
On paper, Krishnan may be the most obvious choice of the group. He has direct experience working on the Twitter product, having previously helped manage the teams responsible for features of the platform such as search and the home timeline. He also previously worked on mobile ad products for Snap and Facebook.
More recently, he has invested in crypto startups at Andreessen Horowitz, which could give him experience helpful to fulfill Musk’s goal of building payment capabilities for Twitter and making it more than just a social media app.
Krishnan is arguably the least well-known — and therefore perhaps the least controversial — of Musk’s current Twitter leadership team, which could help deflect some of the recent negative attention the company has received.
Some Twitter users have speculated about other possible leaders for the social media company, including Donald Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was spotted watching the World Cup with Musk over the weekend.
Kushner is friendly with the Saudi Royal Family, one of Twitter’s largest investors. Prior to working as an advisor in Trump’s White House, Kushner worked for his family’s real estate development company, and last year he said he would leave politics and start an investment firm. Kushner also previously owned the weekly New York newspaper, the New York Observer.
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, are distancing themselves from Donald Trump because he is “losing value” and it’s not “worth it for them anymore,” according to the former president’s niece Mary Trump.
“Donald is definitely losing value in terms of the party and in terms of politics generally, and Ivanka and Jared are legitimately wealthy people apart from whatever Donald’s doing, so they don’t need him to the same degree they might have,” Mary Trumpsaid Sunday on MSNBC.
“And they probably understand on some level that staying so closely allied with him for so long probably damaged them, at least socially.”
Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and author of two books about the former president, noted that Donald Trump’s inner circle is highly transactional.
“A lot of people again are making the calculation that it just isn’t worth it for them anymore,” she said.
Ivanka Trump, who was a senior adviser in her father’s White House, was absent from his 2024 campaign announcement last month, though her husband attended.
Shortly after the announcement, Ivanka Trump issued a statement saying she had decided to focus on her family and would not be involved in politics this time around.
“While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena,” she said.
Jared Kushner also served in a senior role in the Trump White House. They declined to accept salaries for their posts but did reap hundreds of millions of dollars in outside income in business deals that many criticized as conflicts of interest.
In August 2018, an economic miracle for the ages took place. Eleven years after a 26-year-old Jared Kushner plunked down a record-setting $1.8 billion on an aging Midtown skyscraper (on the eve of the financial crisis, no less), and just six months before the Kushner family would have to come up with the $1.4 billion it owed on the mortgage for the aptly named 666 Fifth Avenue, an alternative investment firm named Brookfield Asset Management came to the family business’s rescue. That rescue entailed taking on a 99-year lease for the place, which had become an albatross around Jared & Co’s necks, and, The New York Times reported at the time, paying a whopping $1.1 billion in upfront rent; coupled with the reported negotiations between Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, and the company’s lenders, to pay less than Kushner Companies was in debt for, the family narrowly escaped a major financial pickle.
That the presidential in-laws were able to emerge from Jared’s historically bad decision to buy 666 was extremely surprising for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that his previous partner had reportedly once said that 666 Fifth “would be worth a lot more if it was just dirt.” Also, there was the fact that the Kushners had spent years attempting to drum up a bailout without success, reportedly being rebuffed by everyone from the richest man in France to the South Korea’s sovereign wealth fund. What, exactly, did Brookfield see in the place?
The prevailing theory at the time was that the deal may have had something to do with Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, which was one of Brookfield’s biggest investors, and Jared Kushner’s work in the White House (as you may recall, Donald Trump tasked Jared Kushner with bringing peace to the Middle East). While Brookfield steadfastly insisted that Qatar knew nothing about a deal to bail out the then president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, not everyone—congressional Democrats in particular—believed that the arrangement was entirely above board. And apparently, they still don’t.
TheWashington Postreports that Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Carolyn Maloney, in their capacities as chairs of the Senate Finance Committee and House Oversight Committee, have “launched an aggressive new effort to obtain information about whether Jared Kushner’s actions on US policy in the Persian Gulf region as a senior White House adviser were influenced by the bailout of a property owned by his family business.” In letters sent to the Defense and State departments Monday night, the lawmakers requestedmaterial they believe could reveal if “Kushner’s financial conflict of interest may have led him to improperly influence US tax, trade, and national security policies for his own financial gain.” And the optics do not look great.
Per the Post:
Kushner played a significant role in policy affecting Qatar. He had helped persuade Trump to strengthen ties with Saudi Arabia during a May 2017 visit to the Arab nation. A month later, Saudi Arabia joined several countries in breaking relationships with Qatar and imposing a blockade, accusing Qatar of financing terrorism. Kushner wrote in his memoir that, contrary to accusations by some in the administration, he was not to blame for the Saudi action against Qatar and “tried to convince them to delay the decision.” He then tried to work to lift the blockade against Qatar, he wrote.
With questions swirling about whether Kushner used his influence to get investors to bail out the Fifth Avenue building, Charles Kushner in January 2018 gave his first interview about the matter, telling the Post that he had purposefully avoided doing business with sovereign investment funds or similar entities, to avoid a conflict of interest with his son’s White House job. A month after that interview, according to emails obtained by the committees, Charles Kushner talked with [Ric] Clark, the Brookfield chairman, about investing in the Fifth Avenue property. An associate of Charles Kushner then emailed Clark with a summary of a proposed deal.
Two months later, Qatar’s leader visited the White House and Trump officials called for an end to the blockade. In their letter, the committees said the Trump administration’s support for the blockade “evaporated shortly after Charles Kushner’s discussion with Brookfield,” but they did not supply evidence that the two events are linked. The following month, Brookfield and the Kushner real estate company confirmed that they were negotiating a deal on the Fifth Avenue building.
In many ways, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s tenure in Washington did not pan out as they had hoped, assuming they hadn’t hoped that working for her father would result in, among other things, Kushner becoming a worldwide punch line; the first daughter being called a “feckless cunt”; the people of New York aggressively (and justifiably) running them out of town; and their reputations generally being destroyed. Still, in other ways, their time in the White House worked out extremely well for them: Namely, Kushner’s four years of Saudi ass-kissing and murder-excusing led to a $2 billion check from the kingdom for his newly formed private-equity firm. Note: That’s on top of the up to $640 million the duo reportedly made in outside income while working as advisers to Donald Trump, thanks in part to their decision to flout conflict of interest laws.
And so it was presumably from this perspective—knowing that they’d probably be one week away from a traveling billboard depicting their faces as boils on the asshole of society, and also that they’d already exploited the office of the presidency to wring out every last dollar they could—that Ivanka took to Instagram last night, just around the time her father was announcing his third run for office, to write that she would not be involved:
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In a statement to what we’re guessing was the only sympathetic outlet she could find, Ivanka elaborated, telling Fox News that she is “extremely close” with her election-denying, insurrection-inciting father. She added: “That hasn’t changed and will never change. I’ve had many roles over the years, but that of daughter is one of the most elemental and consequential. I am loving this time with my kids, loving life in Miami and the freedom and privacy with having returned to the private sector. This has been one of the greatest times of my life.” Noting that her three children “are at critical ages,” she said that she and Kushner are “happy where we are right now, and we will continue to support my father—as his kids.” To close, she said that while she “never intended to go into politics,” she is “very proud” of what she was “able to accomplish” while working at the White House.
On Monday, it was reported that Trump had spent the weekend attempting to convince Kushner and Ivanka to appear with him onstage for his 2024 announcement. Not only did that not happen, but Ivanka wasn’t even at Mar-a-Lago when he delivered it (Kushner appeared in the crowd alongside brother-in-law Eric Trump).
Again, though, there’s no reason to believe that Ivanka’s absence and statements (and Kushner’s alleged handwashing of Trump) are happening because the couple realizes that Donald Trump was one of the worst president’s in history, or that he did many things wrong, or that they’re ashamed of enabling his four-year reign of terror. The only takeaway here is that they understand how deeply unpopular he’s become and that working for him made them look bad by association. They don’t like that—and now, with money in the bank, they’d like credit for taking the weakest of non-stands.
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12 Senate Republicans cross party lines, join the 21st century to support same-sex marriage bill
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Ivanka Trump, the daughter of former President Donald Trump who served as a White House adviser in the Trump administration, said Tuesday night shortly after her father announced his 2024 campaign that she does “not plan to be involved in politics” this time.
“I love my father very much,” Ivanka Trump posted on Instagram. “This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family.”
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were key White House officials in Donald Trump’s administration. But following Donald Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden in 2020, the couple has since moved away from politics.
The House Jan. 6 committee showed video testimony from both Ivanka Trump and Kushner in which they stated that they had tried to convince the former president that he lost the 2020 election, in defiance of his repeated unfounded claims of fraud.
“While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena,” Ivanka Trump wrote Tuesday. “I am grateful to have had the honor of serving the American people and I will always be proud of many of our Administration’s accomplishments.”
Former President Donald Trump, far left, and Melania Trump stand outside St. Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church with family members Barron Trump, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, after the funeral for Ivana Trump, Wednesday, July 20, 2022, in New York.
Julia Nikhinson / AP
Ivanka Trump has posted less frequently than she used to on social media since her father left office in January 2021, although she put up a few posts over the weekend about her sister Tiffany’s wedding. She also shared several posts over the summer recognizing the publication of Kushner’s book and honoring her mother, Ivana, who died in July.
Ivanka Trump is also named in a lawsuit against the Trump Organization filed on Sept. 30 by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The suit accuses Ivanka Trump, her father, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and other company executives of a yearslong scheme to falsely inflate the values of a wide swath of properties across their international real estate empire.
When Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump made the decision to take jobs in her father’s administration, they clearly did so in the belief that it would be a stepping stone to bigger things. What would those bigger things be? Obviously, as two people who think hilariously highly of themselves, the list reportedly included Ivanka becoming the first female president. But even if that particular gig didn’t pan out, the pair no doubt expected their time in the White House to launch them into an even higher echelon of society. In this fantasy, Time would dispense with their “Person of the Year“ issue in order to name them “Duo of the Decade.” Major foundations would beg them to sit on their boards. When wars broke out, Kushner would be the first person four-star generals would call, starting the conversation by saying, “We knew we had to get advice from the guy who brought peace to the Middle East.” Whenever in Ivanka’s presence, world leaders would do whatever the opposite of pulling a “Who the f–k is this and why is she here?” face is. Average Joes would line up around the block just to get a glimpse of the pair, telling their families for years to come what it was like to be in the presence of American royalty.
Unfortunately for Javanka, things did not work out this way and they were basically run out of town. Obviously, though, they’d like to be accepted by important people and beloved by little ones, which is why they’ve spent their time in relative exile trying to convince the world that they want nothing to do with Donald Trump.
First, there was the anonymously sourced report in June 2021 that “the gap between Trump and his daughter and son-in-law [was growing] wider by the week.” Then there was The New York Times story, a year later, declaring that the pair had actually washed their hands of Trump months before the conclusion of his presidency. And now comes word that should Trump run for office again—and it’s looking like he will—they neither want to be there to help nor will they return to Washington should he be reelected.
Senior adviser to the president is not a role Ivanka Trump wishes to resurrect. “(Ivanka) would never go back to that life,” says one of the people familiar with her thinking. “She knows it’s not something that would serve her or her family at this point.” Another person says Ivanka has been “done” with Washington “since the day she left” and that “hasn’t changed.” A third person contends if Ivanka had any interest in taking part in politics again, people would have seen her on the campaign trail, pushing candidates for the midterms. Yet she made zero appearances or public endorsements, despite requests for participation by some of those in tight races, says a person with knowledge….
Trump would also lack the presence of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, once the gatekeeper for Trump in the White House and one of the most connected and influential voices of his administration.
“Jared does not intend to join the campaign and get back involved,” says a source familiar with Kushner’s plans. CNN reached out to a spokesperson for Jared Kushner and did not receive a response.
The person added that that while Kushner would maybe offer a piece of advice here or there, “it would be a far cry from helping in the way he helped before,” saying that the former first son-in-law has “moved on” and is focused on running his private-equity firm (the one that received a $2 billion check from his good pals in the Saudi government).
Whether Jared and Ivanka would actually stay off the 2024 campaign trail obviously remains to be seen, but even if they do it’ll probably be difficult to make people forget the lowlights of their time in politics, which included shrugging off murder by bone saw and making their Secret Service detail go to extreme lengths “to find a bathroom.” In addition to, y’know, sticking by Trump ’til the very end. Both before and after that whole insurrection business!
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As you might have heard, the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia is extremely strained at the moment, on account of an October 5 oil production cut that not only benefited Russia financially, but also increased already-rising energy costs for Americans. Yet one person’s friendship with the kingdom has never been better, and it probably will notsurprise you to hear that that person is former first son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had a happy little reunion with his Saudi pals this week.
On Tuesday, Kushner showed up for the first day of a three-day conference nicknamed Davos in the Desert, which is taking place in Riyadh and is put on by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which appeared to roll out the red carpet for the Boy Prince of New Jersey:
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If the Public Investment Fund sounds familiar to you, that might be because it’s the organization that wrote Kushner’s newly formed private-equity firm a $2 billion check last year. That made the news not just because $2 billion is a very large sum of money, but because the fund’s board—which happens to be led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—reportedly ignored the concerns of the fund’s due diligence panel, which concluded that no one in their right mind would give the former first son-in-law a dime. Among other things, the panel noted that management was “inexperience[d],” that the kingdom would be responsible for “the bulk of the investment and risk,” that Kushner’s fee seemed “excessive,” and that the firm’s operations were “unsatisfactory in all aspects.”
That the fund gave Kushner $2 billion to invest anyway—and at least $25 million to pocket regardless of performance—led many to conclude that the check was a thank-you to Kushner for his defense of MBS over the murder of Saudi dissident and US resident Jamal Khashoggi. (As a reminder, Kushner reportedly urged Donald Trump to support the prince, arguing that the whole situation—wherein a man was kidnapped, killed, and dismembered via bone saw—would blow over. Later, he defended MBS in his memoir, writing that he chose to set aside his concerns about the grisly murder and focus on all the supposedly positive things the guy had done.) While Kushner has insisted that his going to bat for bin Salman had absolutely nothing to do with the large some of money he subsequently received, others are not convinced.
In June, the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into the $2 billion investment. As Rep. Carolyn Maloney wrote in a letter to Kushner that month: “The Committee is concerned by your decision to solicit billions of dollars from the Saudi government immediately following your significant involvement in shaping U.S.-Saudi relations.” She added that, among other things, his close ties with MBS “create the appearance of a quid pro quo for your foreign policy work during the Trump Administration.”
The US Treasury, Commerce, and State departments all previously toldThe New York Times that their top officials would not be attending Davos in the Desert. While Kushner is not the only American businessman to make the trip—the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Blackstone are all there, as is the founder of Bridgewater Associates—he’s definitely the only one who personally helped bin Salman get out of an extremely sticky situation, and might have been rewarded for doing so.
In other Saudi news, Kushner’s father-in-law hosted a heavily criticized Saudi-funded tournament at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, over the summer. In response to outrage from families of 9/11 victims, he falsely and bizarrely claimed that “nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11.” Like father like son-in-law!
During a December 2019 Oval Office interview with then-President Donald Trump, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward asked whether his bellicose rhetoric toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had been intended to drive Kim to the negotiating table.
“No. No. It was designed for whatever reason, it was designed. Who knows? Instinctively. Let’s talk instinct, okay?” Trump said. “Because it’s really about you don’t know what’s going to happen. But it was very rough rhetoric. The roughest.”
Trump then instructed his aides to show Woodward his photos with Kim at the DMZ. “This is me and him. That’s the line, right? Then I walked over the line. Pretty cool. You know? Pretty cool. Right?” the president said.
Trump on his interactions with Kim
Trump’s take on his relationship with Kim – and his admission that he didn’t have a broader strategy behind the threats he made about having a “much bigger” nuclear button – are part of a new audiobook that Woodward is releasing. Titled, “The Trump Tapes,” the book contains the 20 interviews Woodward conducted with Trump from 2016 through 2020.
CNN obtained a copy of the audiobook ahead of its October 25 release, which includes more than eight hours of the journalist’s raw interviews with Trump interspersed with Woodward’s commentary.
Simon & Schuster
The interviews offer unvarnished insights into the former president’s worldview and are the most extensive recordings of Trump speaking about his presidency — including explaining his rationale for meeting Kim, his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Trump’s detailed views of the US nuclear arsenal. The audio also shows how Trump decided to share with Woodward the letters Kim wrote to him – the letters that helped spark the DOJ investigation into classified documents Trump took to Mar-a-Lago.
“And don’t say I gave them to you, okay?” Trump told Woodward.
Woodward said in the book’s introduction that he is releasing the recordings in part because “hearing Trump speak is a completely different experience to reading the transcripts or listening to snatches of interviews on television or the internet.”
He describes Trump as “raw, profane, divisive and deceptive. His language is often retaliatory.”
“Yet, you will also hear him engaging and entertaining, laughing, ever the host. He is trying to win me over, sell his presidency to me. The full-time salesman,” Woodward said. “I wanted to put as much of Trump’s voice, his own words, out there for the historical record and so people could hear and judge and make their own assessments.”
Most of the interviews were conducted for Woodward’s second Trump book, “Rage,” which revealed that Trump told Woodward on February 7, 2020, that Covid-19 was “deadly stuff” but still downplayed it publicly.
While the blockbuster revelations were published in Woodward’s book, the audio clips of the interviews are a stark reminder of how Trump acted as president and provide a candid look into Trump’s thinking and motivations as he gears up for another potential run for the White House in 2024.
In the interviews, Trump shares his views about the strongmen he admires – including Kim, Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – and reveals his overarching conviction that he’s the smartest person in the room.
In a June 2020 interview, which followed the nationwide protests over George Floyd, Woodward asked Trump whether he had help writing his speech in which Trump declared himself the “president of law and order.”
“I get, I get people. They come up with ideas. But the ideas are mine, Bob. The ideas are mine,” Trump told Woodward in a June 2020 interview. “Want to know something? Everything is mine. You know, everything. Every part of it.”
The 20 interviews contained in the audiobook begin in March 2016, when Woodward and his then-Washington Post colleague Robert Costa interviewed Trump while he was a presidential candidate. The rest of the interviews were conducted in 2019 and 2020.
Trump on process of writing his speeches
In the December 2019 interview, Woodward questioned Trump about North Korea’s nuclear program, prompting the president to boast about US nuclear weapons capabilities while seemingly revealing a new – and likely highly classified – weapons system, which was one of the more eye-raising episodes from “Rage.”
Woodward says that he never could establish what Trump was referring to, though he notes that Trump’s comment reaffirmed the “casual, dangerous way” the former president treated classified information.
“I have built a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before,” Trump told Woodward. “We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before.”
Throughout the interviews, Trump references his relationship with Putin, blaming the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s election interference for ruining his chances to improve the relationship between the two countries.
“I like Putin. Our relationship should be a very good one. I campaigned on getting along with Russia, China and everyone else,” Trump said in a January 2020 interview. “Getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing, all right? Especially because they have 1,332 nuclear f***ing warheads.”
In a moment of rare self-reflection, Trump noted that he had better relationships with leaders “the tougher and meaner they are.”
“I get along very well with Erdogan, even though you’re not supposed to because everyone says what a horrible guy. But you know for me it works out good,” Trump said in a January 2020 interview.
“It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know?” he continued. “Explain that to me someday, okay. But maybe it’s not a bad thing. The easy ones are the ones I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with as much.”
Woodward’s audiobook also includes never-before-heard interviews with Trump’s then-national security adviser Robert O’Brien, his deputy Matthew Pottinger, as well as behind-the-scenes audio with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
During a call with Woodward in February 2020, Trump hands the phone over to Kushner to set up interviews with other Trump advisers.
“What I heard from the president is basically that I now work for you, so I will make myself available around that schedule and I will make sure I get you a good list,” Kushner said.
Jared Kushner on plans for Woodward to talk to other Trump advisers
“I want you to know I have no illusions that you work for me. I know you work for Ivanka, right?” Woodward joked.
Kushner laughed. “Okay, fine, you get it. You get it. That’s probably why you’re Bob Woodward. That’s true.”
Throughout the recordings, a cast of Trump advisers, allies and family – including Donald Trump Jr., Melania Trump, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Hope Hicks and others – can be heard in the background. The audio gives an inside glimpse of Trump’s inner circle, like an exchange from 2016 when Trump was asked whether he expects government employees to sign non-disclosure agreements, and his son chimed in.
“I’m not getting next week’s paycheck until I sign one,” Donald Trump Jr. joked.
Donald Trump Jr. on signing non-disclosure agreements
In the epilogue of “The Trump Tapes,” Woodward declares that his own past assessments critical of Trump’s presidency did not go far enough. In “Rage,” Woodward wrote, “Trump is the wrong man for the job.”
Now, Woodward says, “Trump is an unparalleled danger. The record now shows that Trump has led — and continues to lead — a seditious conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, which in effect is an effort to destroy democracy.”
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, testified before the grand jury investigating the aftermath of the 2020 election and the actions of the then-president and others, a source familiar with the testimony confirmed to CNN.
Former Trump aide Hope Hicks also went before the grand jury, according to two sources familiar, testifying in early June.
Some of the questions being asked in the grand jury were about whether Donald Trump was told he had lost the election, according to one of the sources familiar.
Kushner’s and Hicks’ appearances before the grand jury are notable because both were members of the former president’s inner circle. Any indictment from the sprawling probe into the aftermath of the election, efforts to overturn the result or the January 6, 2021, attack at the US Capitol will likely rely, at least in part, on what individuals – from low-level aides to former Vice President Mike Pence – testified to under oath behind closed doors.
A spokesman for Kushner, who served as a senior adviser to Trump during his presidency, declined to immediately comment. The New York Times first reported on his testimony.
Several key Trump White House officials have also testified befoe the grand jury, including Pence, Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, among others.
CNN also previously reported that Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump White House communications director who is now a CNN political commentator, met with federal prosecutors, sitting for a formal, voluntary interview as part of the ongoing special counsel probe, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Investigators from special counsel Jack Smith’s team have also met with several election officials from key battleground states who were targeted by Trump and his allies as part of their bid to upend Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the 2020 presidential election.
As CNN has reported, prosecutors met with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger late last month, and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Arizona GOP official Rusty Bowers revealed to CNN that they have been interviewed by prosecutors in recent months.
Benson told CNN on Wednesday that one of the areas investigators seemed focused on was “the impact of the misinformation on [election workers’] lives and the threats that emerged from that from various sources.”
“Myself and the election officials who have – at request or simply because we have a story to tell – have been speaking to authorities, I think it’s really a reflection of our desire to ensure that the law is followed, and where there’s evidence of wrongdoing, there’s justice that is served,” Benson said.
This headline and story have been updated with additional reporting.
