Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have been making headlines since before President Trump was elected. But since entering Washington, Vanity Fair writes that the couple has undergone a “serial transformation.” At first they seemed to be awestruck by the power of their new positions, and set up calls with experts and began giant research projects. But one Washington veteran told Vanity Fair that the couple doesn’t have self-awareness: they “don’t understand how to behave when you roll into Washington as the creature of someone else.”
A new profile in Vanity Fair looks at Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s fall from grace within the Washington elite.
Since her father was elected, Trump has worked by his side. She was given a seat at the table between Prime Minister May and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, during the G-20 summit, where she also presented a $324 million effort to help finance women entrepreneurs in developing countries. This has not helped her avoid the nickname “princess royal,” a term that some West Wing advisers call her, but never to her face.
Meanwhile, among Kushner’s main accomplishments is helping get Fox News behind Trump, writes Vanity Fair. Since the election, he has plunged into an “array of issues so broad the it has become a regular source among comedians and, more importantly, people in official Washington.”
This throw-yourself-in method is unusual for Washington, writes Vanity Fair. According to one veteran, most people sit off to the side until they gather their bearings.
“What is off-putting about them is they do not grasp their essential irrelevance,” this veteran told Vanity Fair. “They think they are special.”
However, the magazine writes that the couple has been “stung” by the criticism directed at them. They do not seem to be giving up though. In fact, they seem to be fighting back against Washington, against their former community of New York and New Jersey elite, and against President Trump himself, according to Vanity Fair.
The word around Washington is that Jared and Ivanka won’t last, and it’s not because they will get fired. It is because “they will save themselves from a damaged White House,” Vanity Fair writes. No matter what though, the time may have passed for the couple to save their own reputations, both inside Washington and within the elite New York and New Jersey communities where they spent their young lives.
“When they decide it’s more important to protect their own and their children’s reputations than it is to defend their indefensible father’s, that’s a sign the end is near,” one influential Republican donor told Vanity Fair.
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