The degree of influence Jared Kushner will have on his father-in-law Donald Trump's administration remains to be seen. But if you're unsure of whether he plays an active role on the president-elect's transition team, you ought to ask Chris Christie.
Federal nepotism law bans Kushner from joining the president-elect's cabinet in any official capacity, but the first-born son of billionaire real estate developer Charles Kushner has expressed interest in an unpaid role as a special advisor to President Trump.
One thing's known: Kushner is wholly unqualified to wield whatever power he's given by the incoming administration. What's worse, he doesn't recognize how unqualified he is. A recent profile in Vanity Fair makes clear this toxic mixture of personality traits. Below are five things we learned:
1. He's just getting hip to this new place called Brooklyn.
"'I’ve been checking out my brother’s company and tech companies and people really seem to love Brooklyn,' he told a real-estate acquaintance, in disbelief. 'They live there!'"
2. He doesn't give out a moronic vibe, but ...
"'My impression wasn’t that he was a moron,' this real-estate acquaintance continued. 'But he thought he was so much smarter than he was. That makes for really dangerous and decisive decisions. He is really confident that he’s doing the right thing, but he has no idea what he’s doing.'"
3. He was friendless even before he "won Trump the White House."
"In his 'Forbes' cover story, Kushner said he has dispensed with friends who got upset over his involvement in the Trump campaign. 'I call it an exfoliation,' he said in the interview. But a source who has known Kushner since adolescence said that is a generous assessment. 'He didn’t have a lot of friends to begin with,” this person said. “So this whole exfoliation thing? Not so much.'"
4. He doesn't read The New York Observer, which he owns.
"Another former employee said it was very clear he was in over his head to people on staff, and had no real interest in the paper other than what it could do for his status. 'There was one meeting he showed up to and one person asked him what was his favorite story that the paper had run recently,' she said. 'He had to think about it for a very long time in order to remember anything he’d read. He very obviously didn’t read it.'"
5. And he allegedly got rid of the office Keurig because the pods were too expensive.
"What irked his reporters . . . was the steady stream of cuts and pullbacks they saw under his leadership. The office took out its Keurig machine, they noted, because the pods were too expensive. The beloved Observer-logo T-shirts, for which the paper had used American Apparel cloth, were replaced with cheap, thin substitutions. The office holiday party, which took place at swanky restaurants around Manhattan in the years before Kushner arrived, was ultimately moved to its conference room, where cheese platters and wine were set up. Kushner did show up to toast the staff. (A source close to Kushner denied these cuts, saying that the office still has a fancy coffee machine, that the t-shirts are still American Apparel, and the holiday parties are held at locations all across the city.)"
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