Before the violent mob ascended the U.S. Capitol steps and stormed the building, the Trump family gathered in a white tent, standing around stacked monitors streaming footage of the crowd outside waiting to be whipped into a frenzy. The Trumps would follow through in short order, telling the throng that the election had been stolen and that lawmakers who didn’t support their quest to invalidate legitimately cast votes would pay. But first Donald Trump Jr. livestreamed the family, in high spirits, huddled together, watching the masses rage. At the center of the group, inches away from those monitors, was President Donald Trump. And glued to his side was Ivanka Trump, wearing a long black trench coat that matched her father’s.
Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, have spent the past five years performing a mincing dance around reality, spinning their own parallel universe instead. When it suited them, they were the loudest, most trusted voices in President Trump’s ear, with outsize presences and responsibilities. When it was less advantageous, they shrunk out of sight. As for their influence, well, there was only so much they could do, they’d say. Dad would ultimately be dad.
The weight of Wednesday’s insurrection, and the video footage that put Ivanka directly next to her father as it began, stopped that dance cold. Ivanka tweeted about the events later on Wednesday, referring to the members of that violent mob as “American patriots.” (She later deleted the tweet and simply asked people to stop the violence.) Kushner, customarily, said nothing in public. (He flew back from a summit in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday morning; a spokesperson would not confirm if he went to the West Wing from the flight—an unusual thing to decline to confirm.) If there was any outrage coming from the couple, it was invisible. More likely, people who know them told me, there was none. As one of their former friends put it to me, “People who have remained friends with Jared and Ivanka were looking for proof that they weren’t complicit but couldn’t find any.”
There aren’t many friends left, but as of this week, there were plenty of people who would either tolerate Javanka or at least bite their tongues: people who had known them for years, people who’d hold their noses to do business with them, people who didn’t much care for their administration but certainly didn’t mind the lower tax rates, the deregulation, the proximity to power. As such, they kept their disdain quiet, at least beyond their immediate social circles.
That changed on Wednesday. Karlie Kloss, who is married to Kushner’s brother, for instance, hadn’t said much publicly about her in-laws or her conversations with them. Yes, she was public about her support for Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. But she had been careful not to go beyond that, despite the fact that the Kushners had not been particularly warm or kind to her, according to several people familiar with their relationship. On Wednesday, Kloss tweeted that refusing to accept the election results and inciting violence was “anti-American.” When a Twitter user replied asking her to say so to her brother- and sister-in-law, she responded, “I’ve tried.”
Another longtime Kushner associate, Bob Sommer, who represented the Kushner family business and served as the president of the New York Observer, which Jared Kushner once owned and operated, sent messages to Kushner’s father, Charles, and to Ivanka expressing his outrage at what he was witnessing. According to The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the exchange, Sommer sent Charles an email urging him to “get Trump to be an American.” He also sent Ivanka a text telling her that he was “horrified I attended your wedding,” per the Times.
Other longtime friends told me on Thursday that many people who hadn’t wanted to get political were looking to get their feet wet. “It feels like everyone on the Upper East Side is texting me today. Suddenly they all want to join the Resistance,” the former friend said.
It’s unlikely that Sommer and Kloss and the uptown Resistance have suddenly grown consciences in the last day. Rather, Wednesday’s depravity and the couple’s role in it officially made them radioactive. For the last four years, it was easier to say nothing. Last week I could have written a story about Kushner’s role in the Middle East peace process and Ivanka’s positioning for a political future in Florida. But by Wednesday evening, that had all changed. Having any association with them suddenly became the more difficult option. “People used to fear Trump’s wrath,” another former friend of Ivanka’s told me. “Now they fear his affiliation. The stink of his family is nearly impossible to get off. How do you associate yourself with the worst, most toxic people in U.S. history?” (Even before this week, the tide was starting to turn. Through a spokesperson, media investor Aryeh Bourkoff, who has cozied up to Kushner, asked the Times’ Ben Smith not to mention his closeness with Kushner in a recent column about D.C. news coverage.)
It’s the same logic that caused Facebook and Twitter to suspend Trump this week, and that led cabinet officials, who stayed silent through his most toxic moments, to resign or make statements against him: They stopped being scared of him. They realized that his actions this week sealed his fate: out of power, disgraced, devalued beyond repair. The Democrats won fairly and obviously. And Trump, who could have walked away muttering that it was unfair but with a media and political future ahead of him, couldn’t contain his rage long enough to make it last.