Philippa Kaur

Jared Kushner is not the first presidential son-in-law to have held high office. President Woodrow Wilson leaned heavily on his talented and experienced Treasury Secretary, William McAdoo, who just happened to be his daughter’s husband.

Jared Kushner: Breaking History: A White House Memoir (Harper Collins)

McAdoo, however, was a skilled politician, and his appointment had to be ratified by the US Senate. Kushner, who spent much of Donald Trump’s period in office as a senior advisor, and even at times a de facto chief of staff, was previously a real estate developer.

Kushner’s marriage to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, was facilitated by Rupert Murdoch and his former wife. But that friendship had its limits, as Jared would discover when Rupert refused to override the call made by Fox News in its coverage of the 2020 elections that gave Arizona to Trump’s adversary, Joe Biden.

Kushner was one of Trump’s inner circle, with a wide-ranging set of briefs that appeared to cut across half a dozen departments. Breaking History reads rather like a dutiful student’s account of “what I did on my summer holidays”, except in this case Jared actually influenced US policies in a number of areas.

While making sure to properly acknowledge the pater familias, Kushner claims some big personal achievements:

Across four years, I helped negotiate the largest trade deal in history, pass bipartisan criminal justice reform, and launch Operation Warp Speed to deliver a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine in record time … In what has become known as the Abraham Accords, five Muslim-majority countries signed peace agreements with Israel.

Some of these claims are justified. In particular, the Trump administration did support some relaxing of the draconian penal restrictions that mean the US leads the world in incarcerations. Kushner’s account of building a bipartisan movement to modify some of these laws is important, even as it reminds us of the barbarity of much of the US justice system.

Kushner, left, and Ivanka Trump, right, sit with Kim Kardashian West, one of the celebrities who advocated for criminal justice reform, at the White House in 2019.
Evan Vucci/AP

Kushner spent considerable time working with selected gulf states to develop what became the Abraham Accords, which saw four Arab states recognise Israel. His insight was that the various royal despots would ultimately collaborate in abandoning the Palestinians in the greater interest of building an anti-Iranian alliance, where they shared common concerns with Israel. It seems Kushner never met a ruler he didn’t like, nor one whose record on human rights was worth questioning.

Kushner seems blithely oblivious to the fact his close ties to Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which go back to childhood, and his own strong support for Israeli ambitions, might have restrained Palestinian enthusiasm for his peacemaking efforts.

In this he reminds one of his father-in-law, who never let sentiment get in the way of enthusiasm for making a deal. Remember how well that went with Kim Jong-un – and, yes, Jared and Ivanka were there when the two presidents met at the Demilitarised Military Zone between the two Koreas, but tactfully no more is said about the beautiful friendship Trump claimed was established.

Little is said about this ‘beautiful friendship’.
KCNA/EPA

Read more:
Personal diplomacy has long been a presidential tactic, but Trump adds a twist

Telling silences and a magic touch

After the outbreak of COVID, Kushner became a central player, along with Vice-President Mike Pence, in organising the national response. As with his account of the Abraham negotiations, there is a great deal of fascinating detail obscured by his need to be centre-stage.

That the US suffered among the highest COVID death rates within rich countries
is apparently not worth mentioning beside the achievements of our hero in mobilising the private sector and pharmaceutical giants.

In Kushner’s world everyone is at fault, except the Trump family. President Trump, it seems, was constantly let down by his advisers, the Republican establishment, foreign leaders – by everyone, in fact, but Jared and Ivanka. Donald’s wife and sons barely appear (thankfully Melania, Eric and Donald Jr were hardly noted for their interest in policy).

In Kushner’s world, everyone is at fault except the Trump family.
Evan Vucci/AP

Nor, one might note, do either of the Australian prime ministers who dealt with Trump rate a mention. Kushner seems largely uninterested in democratically elected governments, although he does tell us of his friendship with former UK prime minister Boris Johnson. It seems that for four years, only the steady hand of President Trump, supported by his daughter and son-in-law, steered the US through perilous waters.

Breaking History suggests there were few areas of government where Jared’s magic touch was not required. As he says, when the president calls, you answer, even if it means missing sleep and meals. He notes the rapid turnover of officials in the administration, and has little praise for most of the cabinet, other than former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and treasurer Steven Mnuchin.

But sycophancy has its limits. One of the most revealing lines in the book comes in a reflection on the days after the 2020 elections: “Like millions of Americans, I was disappointed by the outcome of the election.”

Kushner makes no attempt to support claims the election was stolen, and passes over the attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters, which he acknowledges was “wrong and unlawful”. His claim that had Trump anticipated violence he would have prevented it from happening has been essentially disproved in the recent hearings into the January 6 attack.

Analysing a morally corrupt presidency

Donald Trump is known to be a lazy reader, although Kushner claimed last month his father-in-law had started reading his book. Will he wade through the 400 or so pages of praise that come before the admission of electoral defeat?

One wonders whom else the book might attract. The prose is flat but grammatical, far removed from the overblown rhetoric and denunciations so beloved of the MAGA crowd. The book has been predictably panned by the New York Times and Washington Post, and largely ignored by Trump’s true believers, who far prefer the fiery speeches of Don Junior. But it would be wrong to ignore the insights into Washington and Middle Eastern policy-making that Kushner provides.

Jared Kushner (right) and Benjamin Netanyahu make joint statements to the press about the Israeli-United Arab Emirates peace accords in Jerusalem, August 30 2020.
Debbie Hill/EPA

Even a morally corrupt presidency leaves a mark on the world that needs to be analysed. The plethora of books that have already appeared around the Trump presidency bear out Kushner’s claim to have been a key player across a number of crucial portfolios.

Indeed, the only other person to remain in “the room where it happened” through the entire four years was Pence, until his final break with Trump over the results of the 2020 elections. Now there’s a story Lin Manuel Miranda might consider as a follow-up to Hamilton. More

The US midterm elections occur in just over two months, on November 8. All 435 House of Representatives seats and 35 of the 100 senators are up for election. At the 2020 elections, Democrats won the house by a 222-213 margin, and held the Senate on a 50-50 tie with Vice President Kamala Harris’ casting vote.

On June 24, the US Supreme Court reversed its 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, denying a constitutional right to an abortion. This FiveThirtyEight
article says that, relative to a district’s partisan lean, the average federal byelection had given Republicans a two-point gain before this decision. Republicans performed very strongly in two early June byelections.

In four byelections since June 24, Democrats have performed an average of nine points better than the district’s partisan lean. This analysis was published on August 24, and did not include the byelection for Alaska’s at-large district, where preferential voting was used.

Relative to expectations, the best result for Democrats was their August 23 hold in New York’s 19th. Two polls in August had given the Republican leads by three and eight points, but the Democrat won by 51.1-48.7.

In Alaska’s at-large district, the top four candidates from a large field qualified in June for an August 16 preferential vote, but a left-leaning independent withdrew. After preferences were distributed Wednesday, Democrat Mary Peltola defeated Republican Sarah Palin by 51.5-48.5, a gain for the Democrats. Final primary votes were 40.2% Peltola, 31.3% Palin and 28.5% for Nick Begich, another Republican.

Palin’s weakness with other Republican voters explains why she lost. Begich voters split 50% Palin, 29% Peltola and 21% exhaust. At the 2020 presidential election, Alaska voted for Donald Trump by a 52.8-42.8 margin over Joe Biden, so Peltola’s three-point win is a 13-point shift towards Democrats.

Current forecasts and polling for the midterms

In my last US politics article three weeks ago, I wrote that Democrats were benefiting from the Supreme Court’s decision that nullified Roe v Wade.

Read more:
US Democrats gain ground before midterm elections as Kansas voters reject attempt to ban abortion

The FiveThirtyEight forecasts now give Democrats a 67% chance to hold the Senate, up from 60% three weeks ago. Republicans are still considered a 76% chance to gain control of the House, but that’s down from 80% three weeks ago. The national polling of the House now gives Democrats a 0.8% lead, up from 0.1% three weeks ago.

The 35 Senate seats up for election at this year’s midterms are 21 Republicans and 14 Democrats. As Republicans are defending more Senate seats, the FiveThirtyEight forecasts give Democrats a far greater chance to hold the Senate than the House.

The biggest improvement for Democrats is in President Joe Biden’s ratings. In late July, Biden’s net approval in the FiveThirtyEight tracker was close to -20. His ratings are now 53.1% disapprove, 42.4% approve (net -10.7). These ratings are still poor, but the improvement should make it easier for Democrats in close contests.

On August 16, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law after it had passed the Senate on August 7 and the House of Representatives on August 12. This act prioritised health and climate change spending. I discussed Senate passage in my previous US politics article.

On August 24, Biden announced that the government would forgive up to US$10,000 per person in student debt, and up to US$20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.

I believe the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade, a sense that Democrats are “getting things done” by legislation or executive action and better economic data on inflation, as discussed previously, are all assisting Democrats and Biden.

But there are still over two months before the midterms, and the non-presidential party has convincingly won every House midterm election since 2006.

Liz Cheney’s huge loss in Wyoming Republican primary

Since the January 6 2021 riots at the certification of Biden’s November 2020 election victory, Liz Cheney has been the Republican who has most condemned Trump, over both the riots and the Big Lie that the election was stolen.

On August 16, Cheney was crushed by a 66-29 margin in a Republican primary for Wyoming’s at-large district by the Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman. US primaries are party preselection contests that are open to a far larger number of voters than in Australia; they are administered by state election authorities.

Cheney’s loss means she will leave Congress when her term expires in January 2023. Trump won Wyoming by 43 points in 2020, so Hageman is certain to win the November general election and replace Cheney.

CNN analyst Harry Enten said Cheney’s loss was the second worst in a primary by a House incumbent in the past 60 years. Her 37.4 point loss is just worse than the 37.2 point loss for a Democratic incumbent in 2000, but better than a Republican incumbent’s loss by 41 points in 2010.

Four of six House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the January 6 riots and stood for re-election have been defeated in primaries; this includes Cheney. Only 2% of other House Republican incumbents running for re-election have been defeated.

None of the six who impeached Trump won a majority of the Republican vote in their primaries. Since 1956, House incumbents have averaged over 90% of their party’s primary vote. Trump’s grip on the Republican party remains powerful. More