New book exposes Jared and Ivanka as the clueless, entitled phonies they are.

[Nomad]

Who Do Jared and Ivanka Think They Are?

A new book probes the Kushner family’s secrets.

By Michelle Goldberg
March 18, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/o...orruption.html

Many high achievers, particularly women and people of color, suffer from impostor syndrome, the fear that they don’t belong in the rarefied realm to which they’ve ascended and that they will soon be found out. Even Michelle Obama, who is, according to a Gallup poll conducted last year, the most admired woman in America, has said that she feels it. “I share that with you because we all have doubts in our abilities, about our power and what that power is,” she told students in London in December.

Well, maybe not*all*of us. I’ve just finished Vicky Ward’s “Kushner, Inc.,” a scintillating investigation of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s White House sojourn, which comes out on Tuesday. It’s full of damning details: contempt for the entitled, venal couple may be the one thing that unites all of D.C.’s warring factions. Still, the first daughter and her husband remain psychologically mysterious, at least to me. Why don’t they have impostor syndrome, given that their total lack of qualifications for the jobs they are doing makes them actual impostors?

According to “Kushner, Inc.,” Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council, has told people that Ivanka Trump thinks she could someday be president. “Her father’s reign in Washington, D.C., is, she believes, the beginning of a great American dynasty,” writes Ward. Kushner, whose pre-White House experience included owning a boutique newspaper and helming a catastrophically ill-timed real estate deal, has arrogated to himself substantial parts of American foreign policy. According to Ward, shortly after Rex Tillerson was confirmed as secretary of state, Kushner told him “to leave Mexico to him because he’d have Nafta wrapped up by October.”

As political actors, the couple are*living exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a psychological phenomenon which leads incompetent people to overestimate their ability because they can’t grasp how much they don’t know.

Partly, the Jared and Ivanka story is about the “reality distortion field” — a term one of Ward’s sources uses about Kushner — created by great family wealth. She quotes a member of Trump’s legal team saying that the two “have no idea how normal people perceive, understand, intuit.” Privilege, in them, has been raised to the level of near sociopathy.

Ward, the author of two previous books about the worlds of high finance and real estate, has known Kushner slightly for a long time; she told me that when he bought The New York Observer newspaper in 2006, he tried to hire her. She knocks down the idea that either he or his wife is a stabilizing force or moral compass in the Trump administration. Multiple White House sources told her they think it was Kushner who ordered the closing of White House visitor logs in April 2017, because he “didn’t want his frenetic networking exposed.” Ward reports that Cohn was stunned by their blasé reaction to Trump’s defense of the white-nationalist marchers in Charlottesville, Va.: “He was upset that they were not sufficiently upset.”

Still, even if you assume that the couple are amoral climbers, their behavior still doesn’t quite make sense. Ward writes that Ivanka’s chief concern is her personal brand, but that brand has been trashed. The book cites an October 2017 survey measuring consumer approval of more than 1,600 brands. Ivanka’s fashion line was in the bottom 10. A leading real estate developer tells Ward that Kushner, now caught up in multiple state and federal investigations, has become radioactive: “No one will want to do business with him.” (Kushner resigned as C.E.O. of Kushner Companies in 2017, but has kept most of his stake in the business.)

To truly make sense of their motivations, Ward told me, you have to understand the gravitational pull of their fathers. Husband and wife are both “really extraordinarily orientated and identified through their respective fathers in a way that most fully formed adults are not,” she said.

Among the most interesting parts of “Kushner, Inc.,” are the chapters about the business history of Charles Kushner, Jared’s felonious father, and his plan to restore his reputation, with Jared’s help, after getting out of prison in 2006. Part of that rehabilitation project was the purchase of a flagship building in Manhattan — 666 Fifth Avenue, an absurdly on-the-nose address — for which the family paid a record amount at the very height of the real estate market in 2007. When the Great Recession hit, the building became a white elephant, its debt threatening the family fortune.

Ward’s book suggests that the search for someone who would bail out 666 Fifth Avenue has played a significant role in American foreign policy during the Trump administration. And since the completion of her book, we’ve learned that Trump overrode intelligence officials, who were concerned about Kushner and his family’s ties to foreign investors, to give Kushner a security clearance.

In the end, the Kushner family seems to have gotten what it wanted. Last year, Brookfield Asset Management, which has substantial investment from the government of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, came to the Kushners’ rescue. (The Qataris have denied any advance knowledge of the deal.)

“You’ll notice that the U.S. position toward Qatar changes when the Qataris bail out 666 Fifth Avenue,” said Ward, adding, “We look like a banana republic.” Maybe that’s why Jared and Ivanka appear so blithely confident. As public servants, they’re obviously way out of their depth. But as self-dealing scions of a gaudy autocracy? They’re naturals.

[countryboy]

New book exposes Jared and Ivanka as the clueless, entitled phonies they are.

Demonstrating yet again, libs will believe anything.

[kudzu]

Demonstrating yet again, libs will believe anything.

The Kushers would treat you like a worm.. Why would you defend them?

[tinfoil]

The Kushers would treat you like a worm.. Why would you defend them?

Liberals would treat me like a worm and then call me a racist

[Centerleftfl]

You know I actually thought they had 'something'. Boy was I dumbass! I should've known.

PS REMEMBER, GIRLS MARRY THEIR FATHERS!

[canceled.2021.1]

Demonstrating that libtards are racist and sexist

[Nomad]

Demonstrating yet again, libs will believe anything.

Demonstrating that libtards are racist and sexist

While the likes of you two demonstrate yet again that contards admire incompetence and put elitists, criminals and grifters in public office.

[cawacko]

The irony of this is Kushner and Ivanka are long time Democrats and big Democratic donors. Did any Democrats really dislike them until Donald ran? And on the flip side why are any Republicans standing up for these Democrats?

[christiefan915]

The irony of this is Kushner and Ivanka are long time Democrats and big Democratic donors. Did any Democrats really dislike them until Donald ran? And on the flip side why are any Republicans standing up for these Democrats?

I don't think they got much national scrutiny before trump ran. Once they entered the political sphere their lives became open books.

[Mason Michaels]

Demonstrating yet again, libs will believe anything.

Did you read the book?

[cawacko]

I don't think they got much national scrutiny before trump ran. Once they entered the political sphere their lives became open books.

It's still the mind fvck principle of partisan (tribal) politics. Why are Republicans upset at a book about these life long Democrats (supposedly) look bad? Why are Democrats celebrating a book making life long Democrats (supposedly) look bad?

[Nomad]

The irony of this is Kushner and Ivanka are long time Democrats and big Democratic donors. Did any Democrats really dislike them until Donald ran? And on the flip side why are any Republicans standing up for these Democrats?

Trump himself was a Democrat before it occurred to him that he could become a Republican and get elected by being a nasty, obnoxious, lying shitbag.

He obviously realized some time ago that that's what appeals to conservative voters.

The reason why Repugs are standing up for them is because they are part of a Repugnant administration. Therefore it doesn't matter how vile, evil, criminal or treasonous they are. As long as they're Repugs and in power, the rest of the the Repugs will stand behind them.

[Nomad]

It's still the mind fvck principle of partisan (tribal) politics. Why are Republicans upset at a book about these life long Democrats (supposedly) look bad? Why are Democrats celebrating a book making life long Democrats (supposedly) look bad?

If those two were Democrats (Ivanka I can believe, but Kushner probably not) it was most likely for some other purpose than sincere ideological beliefs.

Probably because the sophisticated New York crowds she/they ran with were Democrats and they wanted to fit in.

[christiefan915]

It's still the mind fvck principle of partisan (tribal) politics. Why are Republicans upset at a book about these life long Democrats (supposedly) look bad? Why are Democrats celebrating a book making life long Democrats (supposedly) look bad?

I reserved it at the library so we'll see!

[cawacko]

If those two were Democrats (Ivanka I can believe, but Kushner probably not) it was most likely for some other purpose than sincere ideological beliefs.

Probably because the sophisticated New York crowds she/they ran with were Democrats and they wanted to fit in.

Kushner is a life long Democrat. These are people dude