When Jared Kushner was interviewed by Jonathan Swan for the second season premiere of the HBO series Axios it turned into an epic disaster. Kushner dodged so many questions he began to look like a rat in a maze. And now he and his top advisers are feeling the heat.
Especially from MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, who tore President Donald Trump’s son-in-law a new one during a panel discussion Monday on her show Deadline: White House, Alternet reports.
She singled out Kushner and Ivanka Trump as especially destructive forces within the Trump administration, noting that Kushner was instrumental in driving Rex Tillerson from the White House.
“He repelled top-tier talent for the chief-of-staff job,” Wallace said. “It would seem to be that if there’s rot in this White House, the malignancy is Jared and Ivanka.”
Oooh, that’s gotta hurt!
Wallace maintained that the couple’s “profound ignorance and their profound hubris” hinders the Trump administration by pushing away people who might have lots of failings, especially on a moral level. But, Wallace added at least some of these folks have basic ideas about how a government is supposed to function.
“All of their enemies are gone now,” Wallace said. “They had it out for John Kelly, they had it out for Don McGahn. So his incompetence and his hubris aside, for his audience of one, he is steamrolling everyone else. And he’s in charge of more and more and more.”
And in the interview with Swan, it really did seem like Kushner was playing for an audience of one, avoiding just about every question, Vox notes. Swan asked a batch of questions, including whether or not his father-in-law’s birtherism was racist, about why he and other campaign officials didn’t inform the FBI about Russia’s misdeeds during the 2016 presidential election, and about his views on abortion. And especially about his friendship with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose regime murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year.
Kushner dodged that last question by saying “the discussions I have, with whether it’s, you know, individual Palestinians or with world leaders or with other people, I keep those discussions to myself.”
Kushner’s deflect-o-rama began when Swan asked if he’s ever seen Trump do or say anything that can be regarded as racist or bigoted. While Kushner did say “absolutely not,” he was coy when asked if Trump’s birtherism conspiracy theories were racist.
“Um look, I wasn’t really involved in that,” Kushner responded.
Swan tried again:
“Was it racist?”
“Like I said, I wasn’t involved in that,” Kushner said. “Look, I know who the president is and I have not seen anything in him that is racist. So again, I was not involved in that.”
While Kushner wasn’t directly involved with the birtherism brouhaha, Swan noted he was involved in a campaign in which Trump promised to make banning Muslims from the country a priority.
“Would you describe that as religiously bigoted?” Swan asked.
Kushner slapped the question away.
“Look, I think the president did his campaign the way he did his campaign.”
Swan tried another tack, asking Kushner if he wished the president hadn’t made that speech in which he promised to ban Muslims from the U.S. That failed to move the president’s son-in-law.
“Uh, I think he’s here today and I think he’s doing a lot of great things for the country, and that’s what I’m proud of.”
Wallace, at one point during the panel discussion (in the video below) referred to Kushner as a “know-nothing nincompoop.”
It’s not hard to see why.
Featured image courtesy of the video above
