Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump Came to Washington Seeking Power & Glamour. They'll Leave With Neither

Jared and Ivanka are just the latest in a long line of presidential family members who didn’t exactly bowl Washington over. But they’re also the lamest.

MARGARET CARLSON
02.28.18 10:30 PM ET

In many ways, Jared Kushner won’t be any worse off than prior presidential family members working in the White House. Sure, he won’t be privy to classified intelligence. He’ll be asked to leave the room when the topics turn top secret. If he tries to enter the Situation Room, a large person talking into his wrist will bar him.

But these limitations didn’t stop Webb Hayes (Rutherford B.’s chief of staff), John Eisenhower (aide-de-camp to and son of Ike), Alice Roosevelt (Teddy’s right-hand woman and eldest daughter) or Bobby Kennedy (so infamous for being JFK’s attorney general a law was passed to keep it form happening again) from influential positions counseling presidents of the same surname.

Sixteen children of presidents officially worked in the White House, by the estimate of author Doug Wead in All the Presidents’ Children, and even more unofficially. James and Elliot Roosevelt were constantly at their father’s side after polio rendered him paraplegic, their strong arms, Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, making it seem in public as if he were still able to walk. Daughter Anna moved in to the White House in 1943 filling the role of first lady leaving Eleanor to turn her ceremonial role into a substantive one.

But in Kushner’s case, given his portfolio, his demotion to the kid’s table could prove fatal. Trump flouted the anti-nepotism rules like every other norm, whether giving up his business, releasing his tax returns, or accounting for the money he promised to charity.

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