Oy vey! The social consequences of supporting Donald Trump!
Soon, very soon, barring some succession of events so awful as to surpass even the insanely high bar set this season for civic unpleasantness, Donald Trump will be consigned to the dustbin of American political history. Unless the very real and deep problems that the country is facing today—the onward march of the billionaires, a collapsing press, the spreading effects of technologies that make large sections of the workforce redundant, the decline of American power abroad, a resurgence of identity politics at home, etc.—somehow prove fatally disorienting, he will go slouching back to Mar-a-Lago. Perhaps the specter of a Trump presidency will have a lingering salutary effect on both parties, and the political fevers will break, though probably not.
Other key questions will nevertheless remain. Among those pertinent here: What will become of Jared Kushner, the Trump campaign’s smooth-faced consigliere, who just last week broke his regular observance of the Sabbath for a strategy meeting in Trump Tower to help his father-in-law (in Yiddish, mechutan) deal with a tape of his extraordinarily vulgar remarks about women? Can his role be chalked up to a more-or-less normal sense of loyalty and ambition? Does he remain the type of person that others want to do business with, or socialize with, even in New York? Or will Kushner be held responsible, in some important ways, for his role in his father-in-law’s campaign?
The Times has called Kushner a “de facto campaign manager” for Donald Trump, but in a campaign that often seems rudderless, his real value may be less managerial than sensory. Trump has moderated his tendency toward bigotry and misogyny only slightly since the beginning of election season, and recent revelations have made the change seem especially superficial. Kushner, on the other hand, is a normalizing presence. His hair is a normal color. He signals his aspirations legibly, without being garish. At cocktail parties, he is pleasant. For Trump, he has been an essential go-between—a kind of human balm, useful for preventing or soothing abrasions. Trump reportedly uses him exactly this way, deploying Kushner as an emollient with corporate and political figures, including Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer; Henry Kissinger; Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto; Ronald Perelman; Paul Ryan, and numerous other Republican leaders. This past September, Kushner helped arrange a meeting between Trump and Netanyahu. A former associate of Rupert Murdoch recently told The New Yorker: “I think Jared’s been the key in getting Rupert to come around to the idea of a Trump presidency.”
But the question of what else there is to Jared Kushner remains somewhat mysterious. “It’s interesting, because [Kushner is] just like Trump in a way,” said Michael Gross, a journalist and author who has known Trump for many years. “He had this ambition to cross the river and make a mark. And yet he remained, and remains, something of a cipher. Obviously, the question is: Is there a there there?”
