Ivanka and Jared's Power Play

[DonViejo]

How the patrician couple came to have an outsized influence on a populist Presidential campaign.

By Lizzie Widdicombe

The modern Presidential campaign may be the world’s most sophisticated pop-up operation, a billion-dollar multilayered organization that, if it hopes to succeed, must be as technologically sophisticated and responsive as any Silicon Valley unicorn. A campaign includes armies of social-media worker bees, data crunchers, messaging experts, policy advisers, media surrogates, fund-raising chiefs, oppo-research teams, volunteers, and, above all, coolheaded managers, who can formulate a coherent position on Chinese trade policy and a plan for how to get out the vote in Hillsborough County in a lightning storm.

Then, there is the Presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, which has followed this formula about as closely as the candidate follows the South Beach Diet. The Republican Party establishment has, if reluctantly, helped sketch the outlines of an organization. The campaign raised eighty million dollars in July; some of Trump’s friends and donors have been tapped to form a team of economic advisers, who include numerous billionaires and men named Steve. But Trump’s “brain trust” is largely the black box of Donald Trump’s real and existing brain.

-snip-

But the Trump campaign is not without secondary figures. Rather than a Karl Rove or a David Axelrod, his true inner circle seems to be his family, especially his adult children. It’s nothing new for the children of Presidential candidates to lend a hand. George W. and Jeb Bush worked alongside Lee Atwater in their father’s 1988 campaign. Al Gore’s daughters were well-spoken surrogates. The five Romney boys—those square-jawed Mittlets—gave strategic advice to their father. But it’s different with Trump, because, as the political historian Julian Zelizer observed recently, the Trump kids “seem at points to be the only people in the room.”

For all the goofy charms of Eric (the golf-course expert) and Donald, Jr. (the force behind the unfortunately timed Trump Mortgages, which launched in 2007), Ivanka, who is thirty-four, is Donald’s clear favorite. She lends a veneer of professionalism to the campaign, giving speeches that portray her father, who once told New York, referring to women, “You have to treat ’em like shit,” as a Lean In-style feminist. In early August, Trump, pressed to name a woman he might appoint to his Cabinet, could think of only one: his daughter.

Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, a thirty-five-year-old real-estate developer, who owns the New York Observer, has become what the Times described as Trump’s “de facto campaign manager.” He has acted as a liaison with dozens of influential figures, including Henry Kissinger, Paul Ryan, Rupert Murdoch, and, until recently, Roger Ailes. Ivanka has counselled Trump on his rhetoric and his policy choices, and Jared was instrumental in the running-mate selection.

more
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/22/ivanka-trump-and-jared-kushners-power-play

[enough]

1. One thing the Trumps are not is "patrician." (nt)

[Happyhippychick]

2. If I were Jared, I wouldn't be bragging about being any kind of campaign manager.

It's the worst campaign in history.

[patsimp]

3. donald jr and erik are thugs who hunt big game animals to hide the fact they have small penis's

like their stupid father's small hands.

[Avalux]

4. Why must this family be legitimized in any way?

Ivanka is a hack, her brothers are hacks, her husband is a hack, and so is her father.

[MFM008]

5. Thank you

They should be taken as seriously as
"Kardashian" is.

[GeorgeGist]

6. The Fall of the House of Trump.

I'd pay to see it.

[HipChick]

7. I can't understand then why they aren't pulling in more younger voters?

[SaschaHM]

8. So we're just changing up the word populist now?

[tanyev]

9. So why are two of Trump's most trusted advisors vacationing in Croatia right now?

Surely those sights would still be there after the November election. Or was there some urgent need to touch base with Putin's girlfriend? Things that make you go hmmmm.