Donald Trump and Jared Kushner are going to take each other down
Eight weeks after the release of his bestseller Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff is still making trouble in and around the White House. Maybe not as much trouble as he made in Nikki Haley’s orbit, but still. During a bookstore chat with Armando Iannucci last Friday, Wolff told the Veep creator that President Donald J. Trump and his security-clearance-challenged senior advisor/son-in-law Jared Kushner — both of whom are very much in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia-centric crosshairs — will turn on one another in order to keep their respective butts out of prison:
IANNUCCI: “Do you think if the chips were down, Trump will, in the end, fire his own daughter?”
WOLFF: “I think there is a pretty good possibility at this point that Jared will be indicted [in Mueller’s Russia probe]. So the more direct question is, will Trump throw his son-in-law under the bus, and then the corollary to that is, will his son-in-law throw his father-in-law under the bus? And I think the answer to both of those questions is, yes.”
Wolff’s accusations about Haley seemed iffy to some, but based on Trump and Kushner’s oft-documented history of rampant self-interest, this one feels just about right. For his part, the President has screwed over, well, everybody. There’s the plethora of small business owners to whom he owes bundles of money. There’s the architect who designed the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester. There’s Muammar Qaddafi. There’s Puerto Rico. And there are, of course, his voters. I could go on.
Kushner’s list of transgressions isn’t as lengthy as Trump’s, but during his professional life, the real estate pseudo-magnate has cheerfully messed with his tenants, his lawyers, and Congress. (Said list is short because Kushner hasn’t been in business as long as daddy-in-law. Give the kid some time—if he makes it back to the private sector, he’ll catch up.)
All this being the case, sheer logic would dictate that if and when Team Mueller gets Trump and/or Kushner under oath, one or both will gladly flip on the other, Rick Gates-style, in order to avoid incarceration. After all, Donald Trump and Jared Kushner have perfected the art of the screw. Why would they stop now
Novelist, pop culture journalist, and celebrity ghostwriter Alan Goldsher has written 14 books