Inside Trump's White House by Doug Wead

Author:Doug Wead [Doug Wead]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785905575
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2019-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

HOW JARED AND IVANKA GOT THEIR WEST WING OFFICES

We started by asking about the 2016 campaign. As discussed in earlier chapters, Jared and Ivanka had played prominent roles.

Then we asked about the Trump administration’s first days in the White House. When had Jared and Ivanka taken their first walk through the West Wing? I imagined that they would have returned to Trump Tower with a map of the White House in hand, discussing who would have which office, where and why.

I asked Jared how he had decided on his office. Is it next to the president’s? Between the Oval Office and the chief of staff’s office? Was there a fight for the territory? Were there big discussions? Did the president insist on that?

“We just took the offices we were given,” Jared said.

That was a surprise. I later learned from an administration official that Reince Preibus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee who became Trump’s first chief of staff, had mapped it all out. It had nothing to do with Jared or Ivanka.

There had been a tweet by the New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman saying that Ivanka’s office had been set aside for her months in advance.2 That seemed unlikely, and if it was true, Ivanka apparently knew nothing about it.

There had also been an incredible account from Vicky Ward’s book Kushner, Inc. I wanted to know if President Trump had, indeed, hired John Kelly as chief of staff and ordered him to “get rid of my kids; get them back to New York.”3

According to the story, prominently reported in the American media, Kelly told the president that it would be difficult to fire them, “but he and the president agreed that they would make life difficult enough to force the pair to offer their resignations, which the president would then accept.”4

Jared laughed.

Peter Mirijanian, speaking for the Kushners’ lawyer, said of Ward, “It seems she has written a book of fiction rather than any serious attempt to get the facts. Correcting everything wrong would take too long and be pointless.”5

Media critics were promoting the idea that the Kushners were so powerful that Trump and General John Kelly conspired in fear and trembling in the Oval Office on ways to bring them down.

How much money does Jared Kushner make in his new White House job?

“We have both waived our salaries,” he answered. “We are volunteering for this country.”

I wanted to know what happened right after the election. What were their first reactions? What surprised them? I had learned from my own sources in the Secret Service that the agency had had few plans in place for a Trump win on Election Night. Nearly all the planning had been based on a Clinton win.

“No, no, the Secret Service was great,” Jared said. “The surprises were all political. After the election Trump reached out to Hillary Clinton. And Ivanka reached out to Chelsea. But the next day, Hillary challenged the vote and demanded a recount.”

This was a story that had never seen the light of day.

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