Kushner Claims He Had ‘Knock-Down, Drag-Out Screaming Matches’ With Trump Over Schemes to Overturn the 2020 Election: New Book
AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File
Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top White House adviser, Jared Kushner, described to author Chris Whipple his aggressive confrontations with then-President Trump following his loss in the 2020 election and subsequent allegations of voter fraud.
Whipple’s new book, out this week, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, includes a section in which Kushner recalls “knock-down, drag-out screaming matches” with Trump.
“With all due respect, I’m not going to like what you are doing, and you’re going to be screaming at me,” Kushner reportedly told Trump while debating with him about the debunked claims of voter fraud.
“Look, when you’re out of here, a lot of people will scatter,” Kushner reportedly yelled at Trump, according to Whipple.
“I’m with you until you hit the dirt — so you may want to listen to what I’m saying,” Kushner added. Whipple also reports that Kushner warned Trump that some of his election lawyers like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell were taking him “on a funky ride.”
The Forward’s Jacob Kornbluh did a round-up of some of the key moments in the book, including claims that Trump actually wrote incoming President Joe Biden a “gracious” note and remained hopeful Trump would attend his inauguration during the transition. Trump, of course, broke with tradition and snubbed the inauguration and to this day continues to promote election deniers and debunked allegations of widespread voter fraud in 2020.
Kornbluh writes:
Since election day, Kushner and Ivanka Trump had kept telling themselves that Trump would eventually come around and accept his defeat, but “just needed to nurse his wounds,” Whipple writes. Even after supporters of Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Kushner reportedly told friends he still hoped Trump would invite Biden to the White House on inauguration day. “That image of the two presidents together, he thought, was what America wanted to see,” Whipple writes.
“It just shows he’s got many different layers,” Kushner told Whipple. As for the note Trump left, Biden reportedly told some of his aides it was “shockingly gracious.” Whipple notes that Biden did not share what was in the letter, which Kushner claims Trump spent three days composing.
Whipple’s book has raised many an eyebrow in Washington, DC, and grabbed headlines across the media. The book includes sections detailing Biden’s expletive-laced tirades while venting frustrations over the ongoing crisis at the southern border – Biden would reportedly “always apologize when women were present” for the profanity.
The book also reported Biden’s concerns and distrust of secret service agents. The president reportedly worries about holdover “MAGA sympathizers” within the ranks of the secret service.
The New York Times’s John Gans praised Whipple’s work in a recent review, calling it a “feat of a book.”
“Writing a book that quickly — and especially on these past two years — is no easy task,” Gans noted, adding:
The titular fight may be Biden’s, but Whipple must himself exhaustively cover President Donald Trump’s lame-duck struggle and accused sedition. At its best, Whipple’s comprehensive approach adds dimension to the news stream — for example, Biden’s discomfort with the Secret Service is both deeper and more dramatic than is widely understood. At its worst, the book’s iterative structure feels like scrolling a dated Twitter timeline in which the vaccination drive is defeating Covid-19, and Biden’s effort to curb climate change is doomed to failure.
