Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Are on a Break

Bert and Ernie. Matt and Ben. Penn and Teller. Jared and Donald. They weren’t on a beloved, long-running television show and they’ve never delighted audiences with sleights of hand. Nor have they written an Oscar-winning screenplay about a self-taught Boston genius who works the night shift as a janitor at MIT. For the most part, people despise them and with good reason. But for four years, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump spent nearly every day together, figuring out new and inventive ways to destroy the country, whether it was shutting down the government in a failed attempt to get Nancy Pelosi to fund the wall, letting autocrats get away with grisly bone-saw murders, or so badly screwing up the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis that hundreds of thousands of people died. Trump called Kushner his “star.” Kushner went on TV and denied Trump was a racist, and later insisted that if Black people didn’t like their lot in life, they had only themselves to blame. Now though? The odd couple from hell apparently want nothing do with each other.

CNN has the report on the breakup:

As Donald Trump plotted his Conservative Political Action Conference appearance last week, and a broader, more robust plan to return to politics as an omnipresent disruptor, one person was conspicuously absent from the confab. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was notably not on the list of advisers assisting the former president. Kushner, who previously served as chief adviser-cum-micromanager with far-reaching responsibilities and had virtual carte blanche, has tapped out, say several people who worked closely with Kushner at the White House or are familiar with his thinking and told CNN on background in order to maintain relationships.

It’s not clear, however, who is instigating this—at least for now—breakup. Some who have been in contact with Kushner place it at the feet of being done with his father-in-law’s antics. Sources closer to Trump say he’s angry with his son-in-law over the election loss…. Two of the people who spoke to CNN say Kushner’s relationship with Trump, son-in-law or no, has been fractured since Trump’s reelection loss. Trump, they say, has at times in the last several weeks expressed to those close to him that he faults Kushner for losing.

As CNN points out, it’s entirely in keeping with Kushner’s (and Ivanka Trump’s) M.O. to distance himself from the 45th president when things are looking particularly bad. When the White House was dealing with the fallout of Trump praising neo-Nazis, the couple were conveniently on vacation in Vermont. When he was accusing Jewish Americans who support Democrats of being “disloyal” to Israel, and throwing a fit over not being allowed to buy Greenland, they were in Wyoming. As the Russia investigation intensified, they were, of course, in Sun Valley, Idaho. Given that Trump recently tried to overthrow the U.S. government, it’s not entirely surprising that Kushner wouldn’t be eager to be associated with the president at this moment in time. (Ivanka, of course, flew into furious damage control on the day of the riot, after calling the violent mob “patriots.”)

According to one person “familiar with Kushner’s new chapter,” the Boy Prince of New Jersey “wants closure and a fresh start, one that doesn’t include advising his father-in-law on a daily basis.” (Others say that Kushner is “effectively done with Trump’s rhetoric,” rhetoric he had no problem with when Trump was president and which he no doubt would be fine with had Trump won a second term.) Still others who spoke to CNN insisted that “the schism was instigated by Trump, who has been telling those in his inner circle he is angry with Kushner.”

Yes, it’s a real he said/he said. For now, it seems unlikely that Kushner and Trump will be oiling each other backs on the shores of Miami, or even hitting the links together. But one thing seems for certain: Nothing can keep these two apart for long:

[A] source predicted that after a cooling-off period, and if and when Trump decides to launch a 2024 campaign, Kushner would likely come back into the fold as an adviser.

Just like old times.

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