Vanity Fair: Kushner unable to control Trump; furious his efforts are being undermined

Can Jared and Ivanka Outrun Donald Trump’s Scandals?

Less than a fortnight into his new post, Kushner appears unable to control his father-in-law—and is “furious” that his efforts are being undermined.

On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump descended upon the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes flanked by the expressionless duo of Vice President Mike Pence and recently sworn-in Secretary of Defense General James “Mad Dog” Mattis. The press conference marked the latest significant announcement in a week already teeming with them. During the first days of his administration, the new president had issued a number of executive orders on topics ranging from the Affordable Care Act to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. As the work week came to a close, Trump quietly announced from a wooden desk what would surely be the most controversial measure of them all: a ban on refugees from around the globe. Trump would temporarily halt migration, in particular, from seven predominantly Muslim countries, such as Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Sudan. Saudi Arabia, where the plotters behind the 9/11 attacks had hailed, was notably absent, among other nations. (As others have noted, Trump has business interests in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.) The president explained that this measure, which many interpreted as a betrayal of America’s identity as a refuge for the oppressed, was merely an enactment of “extreme vetting.” “This is the protection of the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States,” Trump read. “That’s big stuff.” He signed the order, with a gold-tipped pen, at 4:42 p.m., 16 minutes before sundown.

Little more than a week into the Trump presidency, the timing of the Friday sunset seems to be growing increasingly important. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and West Wing adviser, has been positioned as something of a mollifying presence upon his mercurial boss. “I have a feeling that Jared’s going to do a great job. He’s going to do a great job. You’ll work with him,” Trump recently declared at his pre-inaugural gala to assorted well-wishers and friends from the business community. In a White House split between those seemingly loyal to the Republican Party (Reince Priebus, the former chairman of the R.N.C., now Trump’s chief of staff), and its rabid base (Breitbart chairman turned chief strategist Stephen Bannon), Kushner appeared to be a Valerie Jarrett type—a steady familiar voice who could suss out the signal from the noise.

Kushner, along with his wife, Ivanka Trump, is also an orthodox Jew who observes Shabbat. From sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday, the couple abstains from technology and work. And early in the incipient Trump administration, that brief period has been unusually fraught. Last week, the president personally called the Park Service on the morning after his inauguration to inquire about the size of the crowds who came to watch him take the oath of office. He subsequently delivered a widely derided speech at C.I.A. headquarters that afternoon, during which he blathered on about the media’s treatment of him and his inaugural crowd size. He then sent his press secretary, Sean Spicer, into the briefing room to falsely claim that it was the largest audience for an inauguration in history. During the tumult, some noticed the conspicuous absence of Kushner’s allegedly calming presence. “He wasn’t rolling calls on Saturday when this happened,” one person close to Kushner told me last week. “To me, that’s not a coincidence.”

The timing of Trump’s executive order on Friday, just moments before sundown, meant that Kushner would not be in the West Wing to absorb another cataclysmic Saturday. Indeed, Kushner observed the Sabbath as thousands of people protested outside airports across the country, children waited for their detained parents, lawyers rushed to federal court rooms, taxi drivers went on strike, and one Democratic leader broke down in tears on live television.

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Shakespearean play in the making here.