Thanksgiving could be pretty tense at whatever Trump golf resort the first family chooses to celebrate the upcoming holiday.
Ivanka Trump might be in an especially precarious position at the dinner table, trying to keep things agreeable between her father, President Donald Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner.
That’s because the president reportedly is pretty mad at his son-in-law over his role in decisions that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, according to a new report in Vanity Fair.
It was learned Monday that Mueller had secured indictments against one-time Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign aide Rick Gates, as well a surprise guilty plea from former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos.
According to Vanity Fair writer Gabriel Sherman, those indictments announced loud and clear that the Russia investigation poses an existential threat to Trump’s presidency.
“Here’s what Manafort’s indictment tells me: Mueller is going to go over every financial dealing of Jared Kushner and the Trump Organization,” said former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg. “Trump is at 33 percent in Gallup. You can’t go any lower.”
Trump has reacted to the situation by lashing out on Twitter and venting in private to friends, Sherman wrote. Trump is frustrated that the investigation seems to have no end in sight, and his anger focuses on Kushner, who is also a senior White House advisor.
On Monday and Tuesday, Trump took phone calls with his former White House strategist Steve Bannon, who is now back to running the hard-line conservative news site Breitbart. Bannon is no fan of either Kushner or Ivanka, reportedly due to their more moderate economic and social positions.
Prior to Bannon’s departure from the White House, there also were reports that Ivanka had been urging her father to fire Bannon for months, while Kushner and Bannon feuded for control over the president’s attention and policy direction.
Someone briefed on Trump’s calls this week with Bannon said that the president specifically blamed Kushner for recommending that he fire former national security advisor Mike Flynn and former FBI director James Comey, Sherman reported. Those actions led to Mueller’s appointment as special counsel.
When longtime Trump ally Roger Stone recently told the president that Kushner had been giving him bad political advice, the president agreed, someone familiar with the conversation told Sherman.
Nunberg echoed this sentiment in his conversation Tuesday with Sherman.
“Jared is the worst political adviser in the White House in modern history,” he said. “I’m only saying publicly what everyone says behind the scenes at Fox News, in conservative media, and the Senate and Congress.”
The White House didn’t respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.
It’s been reported that Kushner’s role in the White House has been reduced, likely due to the influence of John Kelly, who came in as chief of staff in August and has instituted a more professionally run administration.
When Trump brought Kushner into the White House, he gave his son-in-law — who had no prior experience in government or foreign service — a wide-ranging portfolio that included reforming the federal government, addressing veteran’s affairs and serving as the president’s main diplomatic point person on the Middle East and China.
But Business Insider reported last month that both Kushner and Ivanka are attempting to limit their responsibilities in the White House amid legal and logistical concerns about their expansive, still undefined roles.
Meanwhile, Kushner reportedly remains a focus of Mueller’s Russia investigation and was questioned by Congress about his contacts with Russian officials during the presidential campaign. That fact could add to Trump’s reported aggravation with his son-in-law.
So that leaves Ivanka in a tough spot. What if it turns out the White House gig isn’t working out for Kushner and the president would like to see him go — even though he is famously loathe to fire family? Would Ivanka decide to give up her high-profile government job in solidarity with her husband?
As it turns out, the couple aren’t well liked in Washington D.C., according to a Vanity Fair report from August that illuminated the extent to which people in their adopted hometown and in the White House view them as a feared and vindictive duo who are essentially powerless and clueless about that reality.
The report said that Ivanka and Jared would try to stick around in Washington through the end of the 2018 school year, but they could bail sooner. An influential Republican donor told Vanity Fair: “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.”
In the more immediate term, there is the matter of Thanksgiving and the potential for some uncomfortable dinner table moments between the president and Kushner.
Of course, Ivanka could always skip Thanksgiving with her family and take Kushner and their kids off on one of their ski trips.
