Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner refused to sign memo saying Trump was not antisemitic, book says
'As he kept seeming to be incapable of offering absolute support for Israel in the wake of October 7,' Wolff writes, referring to the deadly 2023 attacks by Hamas, 'Trump, not for the first time, turned to Jared for Jewish cover, explicitly asking him and Ivanka for a public endorsement.
'As Trump had continued to waffle, the Washington Post, the campaign understood, was working on a piece that would recycle all the language Trump had variously used over the years, which, on its face, might certainly sound antisemitic. Kushner kept dodging on the formal endorsement of his father-in-law. The campaign then tried to settle for merely a statement from him that his father-in-law was not antisemitic.'
According to Wolff, Kushner finally said: 'No, Ivanka and I aren't going to do that. We're not going to go and put our names on something and get in the middle of things. That's just not what we're going to do this time.'
Kushner and Ivanka Trump were senior advisers to Trump during his first presidency, from 2017 to 2021. But they kept their distance after his attempt to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat to Joe Biden culminated in his supporters' January 6 attack on Congress. The couple have not taken up roles in his second administration after he won back the presidency in November at the expense of former vice-president Kamala Harris, though Kushner has been linked to Trump's controversial plans to depopulate and redevelop the Gaza strip after Israel's relentless assault in response to 7 October.
Wolff's book, All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America, is his fourth on the president. The new volume was formally confirmed this week, shortly ahead of its US publication on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Wolff's first Trump book, Fire and Fury, was released in 2018 and sold millions as Trump tried to block it, kicking off a lucrative rush of Trump-focused books that has shown new signs of life since he won re-election.
Wolff followed Fire and Fury with Siege and Landslide. Excerpts from All or Nothing have been published in Vanity Fair and the Daily Beast, the latter detailing what Wolff claims is Melania Trump's 'hatred' for her husband.
Announcing All or Nothing, publisher Crown said: 'Wolff's thesis in his 18 months of covering the campaign was that the establishment would destroy Trump, or Trump would destroy the establishment. All or Nothing is Wolff's panoramic and intimate picture of that battle … from indictments, to trials, to assassination attempts, to the humiliation and defenestration of a sitting president, to Trump's staggering victory.'
Last November, as Wolff wrote the book, a group of Trump aides including his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said: 'A number of us have received inquiries from the disgraced author Michael Wolff, whose previous work can only be described as fiction. He is a known peddler of fake news who routinely concocts situations, conversations, and conclusions that never happened. As a group, we have decided not to respond to his bad faith inquiries, and we encourage others to completely disregard whatever nonsense he eventually publishes. Consider this our blanket response to whatever he writes.'
On Friday, the Trump White House's communications director, Steven Cheung, told the Beast: 'Michael Wolff is a lying sack of shit and has been proven to be a fraud.
'He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.'
Among other moments in All or Nothing sure to be widely discussed, Wolff reports that Trump demanded to know 'what the fuck is wrong with' Elon Musk, the world's richest person who became a key campaign backer, and called JD Vance, the vice-presidential pick over whom Wolff says Trump had grave doubts, 'shifty, very shifty'.
Describing a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in October, where Trump survived an assassination attempt in July, Wolff writes: 'And Elon is here, waiting when [Trump's team] arrive[s], which is cause for a moment of consternation … Elon! Next only to Trump, there is Elon.'
Saying aides viewed Musk as 'a new, overwhelming, and discordant presence in the campaign', generating 'an ever-rising tide of bewildering, if not opaque, requests, orders, and recommendations', Wolff said aides thought Musk had 'elevated the Trump campaign in his own mind to a personal mission and religious cause', while 'the Trump circle' was 'already anticipating the earth shaking when he and Trump invariably f[e]ll out.
'When they arrive, Elon – wandering about by himself, with only a thin layer of assistants or security – is hungry. This causes a kerfuffle and results in uncertainty over how to attend to him. Someone produces a bag of pretzel sticks.
'The suggestion is made that JD is here and would love to speak to him. Musk, sitting down and eating his pretzel sticks, politely declines: 'I've really no interest in speaking to a vice-president.'
'Later, called onstage, with no one having any idea what he might say, Musk bounds up and, suddenly – in Mick Jagger style, prancing and jumping – becomes the headline, his T-shirt rising far above his midriff.
'What the fuck is wrong with this guy?' says a bewildered Trump. 'And why doesn't his shirt fit?'
Elsewhere, Wolff describes Trump's extensive second thoughts about Vance, in one instance reportedly described in a phone conversation with an unnamed confidant.
'Yeah. What the fuck is with that name-change stuff?' Trump is depicted as saying. 'How many name changes has he had? That's shifty, that's very shifty. That's my staff fucking up. They know what I think about people changing their names. I think it's shifty. And they didn't tell me.'
Vance was born James Donald Bowman. After his parents split up he was adopted by his new stepfather and renamed James David Hamel. Long known as 'J.D.', he later changed to his surname to Vance, after the beloved grandmother of whom he writes in Hillbilly Elegy, his bestselling book from 2016. He eventually dropped the periods, to become 'JD'.
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