When Bush II was in office, while he was the official president, it was widely acknowledged that Dick Cheney was the real “president” who made decisions that affected people and national policy. Trump, who was elected in 2016 with a lot of hope, has shown himself to be a major failure in many ways, and a lot of people have wondered why. Many people have also wondered why Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is in essence a spoiled rich Jewish kid from New York (New Jersey metro technically) that has a history of making bad decisions and which has father has to bail him out of, was put in such a position of power. Jared has repeatedly shown poor public judgement, and a lot of people do not like him because the man is objectively repulsive in his actions and words.
Now a report from Yahoo! Lifestyle news, drawing on reports from Time magazine and Vanity Fair, suggests that Jared is what Cheney was to Bush II, except unlike Cheney, Kushner expresses open contempt for the American people, even going so far as to respond, when told that he would have a chance to help people if Trump was re-elected to a second term, that “I don’t care about that”.
Speaking to TIME for a January profile of Kushner, Brad Parscale, the Kushner-appointed manager for Trump’s campaign, said, “Nobody has more influence in the White House than Jared. Nobody has more influence outside the White House than Jared. He’s No. 2 after Trump.”
Parscale may actually have been underselling Kushner’s influence there. In a new story for Vanity Fair, Gabriel Sherman details how Kushner has filled the vacuum left by Donald Trump’s general lack of interest in governing:
“Jared is running everything. He’s the de facto president of the United States,” a former White House official told me. The previous chief of staff John Kelly, who’d marginalized Kushner, was long gone, and Mick Mulvaney, a virtual lame duck by that point, let Kushner run free. “Jared treats Mick like the help,” a prominent Republican said.Current and former White House officials described to Vanity Fair a Kushner who is as vindictive and myopic as Trump himself. After the Senate acquitted Trump of impeachment charges without calling a single witness, Kushner reportedly pushed for a sweeping purge of officials who weren’t deemed loyal enough during the hearings. A New York business executive recounted a fall 2019 meeting with Kushner, saying, “I told Jared that if Trump won a second term, he wouldn’t have to worry about running again and you can really help people. Jared just looked at me and said, ‘I don’t care about any of that.’ ” (source)
Now these are claims, but the fact is if they are true, and there is reason to suspect that such may be the case, that Kushner is acting in the role of a parasite that is thwarting any real attempts by people of good will, regardless of what one thinks about Trump, to actually help make America great again because his actions and attitude suggest and active contempt and hatred for anybody except himself and his friends in power.