Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner refused to sign memo saying Trump was not antisemitic, book says
Source: The Guardian
Fri 21 Feb 2025 18.34 EST
Last modified on Fri 21 Feb 2025 18.43 EST
Donald Trump’s Jewish daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, refused to sign a statement saying Trump was not antisemitic, according to a new book by the veteran Trump tell-all author Michael Wolff. “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.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/21/donald-trump-ivanka-jared-kushner-michael-wolff-all-or-nothing