When it comes to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s support for Donald Trump’s third run for president, there was a clear breaking point in the relationship. It seems that the former president’s friendship with Kanye West was the nail in the coffin to the couple showing even an inkling of interest in another political campaign.
Ivanka was already running far away from Washington, D.C. after feeling her time in the White House hurt her socialite reputation, but Kushner stayed with one foot in the door — until Donald Trump’s dinner with Kanye and white nationalist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago in late November. According to New York magazine, Kushner “refused” to help his father-in-law once he realized how bad the dinner looked. Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law are modern Orthodox Jews, so hanging with the rapper, who has been sharing his horrific anti-Semitic views, got the former president into a lot of hot water.
Kushner was not going to save him this time. “He was like, ‘Look, I’m out. I’m really out,’” a source told the magazine. And even though he showed up to Donald Trump’s campaign announcement, the “mixed message” reflected “a combination of having respect for a family member and drawing clear lines for your life.” That “familial obligation” was about as far as Kushner was going to go. As for Ivanka, she reportedly finds everything with her father’s political ambitions “so bleak.”
As for Donald Trump, he tried to downplay his involvement with Kanye and Fuentes. “We sat down, we had a very quick meal. It wasn’t two hours, as somebody said,” he explained. “It was a very quick meal; it went very fast. It was pleasant. There was nothing said of any great import. And that was the end of that. All of a sudden, the press made a fake story out of it.” However, the damage is already done and Ivanka and Kushner won’t try to save him this time.