New York Times Posts Brutal Review of Jared Kushner’s ‘Soulless’ Memoir: He ‘Looks Like a Mannequin, and He Writes Like One’

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

There have been numerous brutal beatdowns in history. Muhammad Ali’s eighth round knockout of George Foreman at 1974’s “Rumble in the Jungle.” My Florida Gators trouncing our in-state rival Florida State Seminoles 52-20 in the Sugar Bowl to win the 1996 national football championship. Judge Maya Guerra Gamble stomping on Alex Jones’ antics during his recent defamation trial in Austin.

We can now add New York Times book critic Dwight Garner’s review of Jared Kushner’s new book, Breaking History: A White House Memoir, to that list.

Kushner, pictured above somehow appearing less lifelike than the table lamp in the foreground, has penned an “earnest and soulless” memoir, writes Garner, and that’s actually one of the kinder comments to be found in the absolutely savage review.

The ex-president’s son-in-law “looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one,” presenting a bizarro-world interpretation of the “chaos” of the Trump presidency in order to tout his “boyish tinkering” with various policy issues, which Garner mocks along with Kushner’s Secret Service code name of “mechanic.”

Then there’s this paragraph, which is best quoted and read in its unfiltered entirety:

This book is like a tour of a once majestic 18th-century wooden house, now burned to its foundations, that focuses solely on, and rejoices in, what’s left amid the ashes: the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox. Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.

Kushner embraced the tone of a “college admissions essay,” and “repeatedly beats his own drum,” Garner observes, offering a sampling of the simpering accolades Kushner claims he received from other White House denizens. “A therapist might call these cries for help.”

Unsurprisingly, Kushner acquits himself of any culpability in his father-in-law’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election and incitement of the attack on the Capitol, ending the book implying he “was unaware of the events of Jan. 6 until late in the day.”

Breaking History is a book without any clear audience, Garner notes, “not enough red meat for the MAGA crowd” and the subject matter “more thoroughly and reliably covered elsewhere” for the political wonks; its author is “a pair of dimples without a demographic.”

Make some popcorn and check out Garner’s full schadenfreudelicious review here.