Jared Kushner’s ‘Breaking History’ Is a Soulless
and Very Selective Memoir
In this lengthy book, Kushner recounts the time he
spent in the White House during his father-in-law’s term.
By Dwight
Garner
Published
Aug. 17, 2022
Updated
Aug. 25, 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/books/review-breaking-history-jared-kushner.html
The United
States Secret Service isn’t known for its sense of humor, but when it gave
Jared Kushner the code name “mechanic,” was someone betting that he’d call his memoir
“Breaking History”?
It’s a
title that, in its thoroughgoing lack of self-awareness, matches this book’s
contents. Kushner writes as if he believes foreign dignitaries (and less-than
dignitaries) prized him in the White House because he was the fresh ideas guy,
the starting point guard, the dimpled go-getter.
He betrays
little cognizance that he was in demand because, as a landslide of other
reporting has demonstrated, he was in over his head, unable to curb his
avarice, a cocky young real estate heir who happened to unwrap a lot of Big
Macs beside his father-in-law, the erratic and misinformed and similarly
mercenary leader of the free world. Jared was a soft touch.
“Breaking
History” is an earnest and soulless — Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he
writes like one — and peculiarly selective appraisal of Donald J. Trump’s term
in office. Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies,
the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the
comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum, to
speak about his boyish tinkering (the “mechanic”) with issues he was interested
in.
This book
is like a tour of a once majestic 18th-century wooden house, now burned to its
foundations, that focuses solely on, and rejoices in, what’s left amid the
ashes: the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox. Kushner’s
fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a
cat lick a dog’s eye goo.
The tone is
college admissions essay. Typical sentence: “In an environment of maximum
pressure, I learned to ignore the noise and distractions and instead to push
for results that would improve lives.”
Every
political cliché gets a fresh shampooing. “Even in a starkly divided country,
there are always opportunities to build bridges,” Kushner writes. And, quoting
the former White House deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell: “Every day here is
sand through an hourglass, and we have to make it count.” So true, for these
are the days of our lives.
Kushner,
poignantly, repeatedly beats his own drum. He recalls every drop of praise he’s
ever received; he brings these home and he leaves them on the doorstep. You
turn the pages and find, almost at random, colleagues, some of them famous,
trying to be kind, uttering things like:
It’s really
not fair how the press is beating you up. You made a very positive
contribution.
I don’t
know how you do this every day on so many topics. That was really hard! You
deserve an award for all you’ve done.
I’ve said
before, and I’ll say again. This agreement would not have happened if it wasn’t
for Jared.
Jared did
an amazing job working with Bob Lighthizer on the incredible USMCA trade deal
we signed yesterday.
Jared’s a
genius. People complain about nepotism — I’m the one who got the steal here.
I’ve been
in Washington a long time, and I must say, Jared is one of the best lobbyists
I’ve ever seen.
A therapist
might call these cries for help.
“Breaking
History” opens with the story of Kushner’s father, the real estate tycoon
Charles Kushner, who was imprisoned after hiring a prostitute to seduce his
brother-in-law, having the encounter filmed and sending the tape to his sister.
He was a good man who did a bad thing, Jared says, and Chris Christie, while
serving as the United States attorney for New Jersey, was cruel to prosecute
him so mercilessly.
There is a
flashback to Kushner’s grandparents, Holocaust survivors who settled in New
Jersey and did well. There’s a page or two about Kushner’s time at Harvard. He
omits the fact that he was admitted after his father pledged $2.5 million to
the college.
If Kushner
can recall a professor or a book that influenced him while in Cambridge, he
doesn’t say. Instead, he recalls doing his first real estate deals while there.
He moved to New York, and bought and ruined a great newspaper (The New York
Observer) by dumbing it down and feting his friends in its pages.
His wooing
of Ivanka Trump included a good deal of jet-setting. Kushner briefly broke up
with her, he writes, because she wasn’t Jewish. (She would later convert.)
Wendi Murdoch, Rupert’s wife, reunited them on Rupert’s yacht. Kushner
describes the power scene:
On that
Sunday, we were having lunch at Bono’s house in the town of Eze on the French
Riviera, when Rupert stepped out to take a call. He came back and whispered in
my ear, “They blinked, they agreed to our terms, we have The Wall Street Journal.”
After lunch, Billy Joel, who had also been with us on the boat, played the
piano while Bono sang with the Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof.
With or
without you, Bono.
Once in the
White House, Kushner became Little Jack Horner, placing a thumb in everyone
else’s pie, and he wonders why he was disliked. He read Sun Tzu and imagined he
was becoming a warrior. It was because he had Trump’s ear, however, that he won
nearly every time he locked antlers with a rival. Corey Lewandowski — out.
Steve Bannon — out.
Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson, who begged Kushner to stop meddling
internationally — out. (Kushner cites
Tillerson’s “reclusive approach” to foreign policy.) By the end, Tillerson was
like a dead animal someone needed to pull a tarpaulin over.
Kushner was
pleased that the other adults in the room, including the White House chief of
staff Reince Priebus, the White House counsel Don McGahn and the later chief of
staff John Kelly, left or were ejected because they tried, patriotically, to
exclude him from meetings he shouldn’t have been in. The fact that he was
initially denied security clearance, he writes, was much ado about nothing.
The bulk of
“Breaking History” — at nearly 500 pages, it’s a slog — goes deeply into the
weeds (Kushner, in his acknowledgments, credits a ghostwriter, the speechwriter
Brittany Baldwin) on the issues he cared most about, including prison reform,
the Covid response and the Middle East, where he had a win with the Abraham
Accords.
This book
ends with Kushner suggesting he was unaware of the events of Jan. 6 until late
in the day. He mostly sidesteps talking about spurious claims of election
fraud. He seems to have no beliefs beyond carefully managed appearances and the
art of the deal. He wants to stay on top of things, this manager, but doesn’t
want to get to the bottom of anything.
You finish
“Breaking History” wondering: Who is this book for? There’s not enough red meat
for the MAGA crowd, and Kushner has never appealed to them anyway. Political
wonks will be interested — maybe, to a limited degree — but this material is
more thoroughly and reliably covered elsewhere. He’s a pair of dimples without
a demographic.
What a
queasy-making book to have in your hands. Once someone has happily worked
alongside one of the most flagrant and systematic and powerful liars in this
country’s history, how can anyone be expected to believe a word they say?
It makes a
kind of sense that Kushner is likely to remain exiled in Florida. “The whole
peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret,” as Cynthia Ozick put it in
“The Shawl.” “Everyone had left behind a real life.”
Audio
produced by Kate Winslett.
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Breaking History review: Jared Kushner’s
dispiriting Trump book
The former president’s son-in-law has written a
predictably self-serving and selective memoir of his time in the White House
Lloyd Green
Sun 14 Aug
2022 02.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/14/breaking-history-review-jared-kushner-trump-book
The House
January 6 committee hearings depict Donald Trump as eager to storm the Capitol.
He knew the rally held in his name included armed individuals. When rioters
chanted “Hang Mike Pence”, Jared Kushner’s father-in-law remarked: “He deserves
it.”
In response
to a plea from Kevin McCarthy, the 45th president questioned the House
Republican leader’s devotion. The mob invaded Congress. Trump sat back and
watched.
Kushner has
not fared well either. In testimony to the panel, he has derided Pat Cipollone
as a “whiner” and described deigning to exit the shower to take a call from a
panicked McCarthy. On the screen, Kushner drips hauteur, empathy nonexistent.
It’s not a good look.
Then comes
Breaking History, Kushner’s White House memoir. It sits at the intersection of
spin, absolution and self-aggrandizement.
“What is
clear to me is that no one at the White House expected violence that day,”
Kushner writes of January 6. Cassidy Hutchinson says otherwise.
Kushner
adds: “I’m confident that if my colleagues or the president had anticipated
violence, they would have prevented it from happening.” DC police tell a
different story.
Kushner
rebuffed early entreaties from Marc Short, the vice-president’s chief of staff,
to end Trump’s attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s win.
“You know,
I’m really focused on the Middle East right now,” Kushner replied. “I haven’t
really been involved in the election stuff since Rudy Giuliani came in.”
In the
aftermath of January 6, White House morale was at a nadir, according to Kushner.
A second impeachment loomed. Kushner told staff to stay the course.
“You took
an oath to the country,” he recalls. “This is a moment when we have to do
what’s right, not what’s popular. If the country is better off with you here,
then stay. If it doesn’t matter, then do what you want.”
That sales
pitch sounds canned. Those who had served in the military found the spiel stale
and grating.
In Kushner,
Inc, the author Vicky Ward described Kushner’s earlier efforts to persuade Mark
Corallo to join the White House staff. Corallo was once in the army and did a
stint at the Department of Justice too.
After he
said no, Kushner asked: “Don’t you want to serve your country?”
Corallo
replied: “Young man, my three years at the butt end of an M-16 checked that
box.”
Trump
dodged the draft for Vietnam. When his brother, Fred Jr, accepted a commission
in the air national guard, he met with his family’s scorn. In contrast, Mike
Pence’s son, the Biden boys, Steve Bannon: all wore a uniform.
In Breaking
History, Kushner selectively parcels out dirt. He seeks to absolve his father
for recruiting a sex worker to film her tryst with William Schulder, Charlie
Kushner’s brother-in-law. At the time, Schulder, his wife, Esther, (Charlie’s
sister), and Charlie were locked in battle over control of the family real
estate business.
Kushner
explains: “Billy’s infidelity was an open secret around the office, and to show
his sister Esther what kind of man she had married, my father hired a
prostitute who seduced Billy.”
Schulder
and Esther were also talking to the feds.
The names
of two Trump paramours, Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, and Karen McDougal,
the Playboy model, do not appear in Kushner’s book. Then again, as Trump once
said, “When you’re a star … you can do anything.” For Trump and Kushner, rules
are meant for others.
Breaking
History comes with conflicting creation stories. In June, the New York Times
reported that Kushner took an online MasterClass from the thriller writer James
Patterson, then “batted out” 40,000 words of his own.
The
Guardian reported that Kushner received assistance from Ken Kurson, a former
editor of the New York Observer who was pardoned by Trump on cyberstalking
charges but then pleaded guilty after being charged with spying on his wife.
Avi Berkowitz, a Kushner deputy who worked on the Abraham Accords, and Cassidy
Luna, an aide married to Nick Luna, Trump’s White House “body man”, were also
on board.
Breaking
History says nothing about Patterson but gives shout-outs to Kurson, Luna and
Berkowitz: “From the inception of this endeavor, Ken’s brutally honest feedback
and inventive suggestions have made this a better book.”
Kushner
rightly takes pride in the Abraham Accords, normalization agreements between
Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. In the
process, he provides backstory for Trump’s frustration with Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s
then-prime minister’s earned a “fuck him” after he hesitatingly embraced
Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, seeking to garner maximum
concession without grace or reciprocity. What Netanyahu craved but never
received was American approval of Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Here,
Breaking History adds color to Trump’s Peace by Barak Ravid.
According
to Ravid, David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, was close to Netanyahu.
He sat in on Israeli government meetings until he was tossed out by cabinet
members. Ravid also calls Friedman “flesh of the settlers’ flesh”.
Enter
Kushner. “Friedman had assured Bibi that he would get the White House to
support annexation more immediately,” he says. “He had not conveyed this to me
or anyone on my team.”
Things grew
heated. “You haven’t spoken to a single person from a country outside of
Israel,” Kushner said. “You don’t have to deal with the Brits, you don’t have
to deal with the Moroccans, and you don’t have to deal with the Saudis or the
Emiratis, who are all trusting my word and putting out statements. I have to
deal with the fallout of this. You don’t.”
One Trump
veteran described Breaking History to the Guardian as “just 493 pages of pure
boredom”. Not exactly. Kushner delivers a mixture of news and cringe. He does
not extract Trump from his present morass. On Wednesday, Kushner’s
father-in-law invoked the fifth amendment. Only Charlie Kushner got the pardon.
A devoted child takes care of dad.
Breaking
History: A White House Memoir is published in the US by HarperCollins
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