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Donald Trump’s advisers come and go, but three close associates stayed by his side: They play unique roles – and pay a high price for their service.
Take a stroll through the rich and powerful neighborhood of Washington. The route takes us directly to the pillars of the Donald Trump system, which is reeling powerfully but still standing.
We walk down the pretty street called Tracy Place until it curves and meets two other pretty streets in the Kalorama neighborhood. The sidewalk is cordoned off, black Chevy suburbs line the street, always the surest indication that powerful people want to have a chauffeur here. Through the open window, the Secret Service man in the driver’s seat says in a friendly but scrutinizing way: Good morning. We are in front of the house where the second most powerful man in the White House lives.
The Kushner home in Washington. (Source: Fabian Reinbold)
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner live here. Six bedrooms, only $ 15,000 rent, a steal for the area. But the two have always had a knack for cheap deals.
Jared Kushner is a slim man who goes unnoticed and has a soft voice that is rarely heard in public. He works behind the scenes and has a staggeringly wide range of responsibilities there. It should reorganize the criminal system and the immigration system, quell protests over racism, create peace in the Middle East, and curb the crown pandemic. He also pulls the strings in his father-in-law’s electoral campaign.
Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump in the White House – a staggeringly wide range of roles. (Source: Tom Brenner / Reuters)
The 39-year-old plays an indispensable role in the Trump system:
With a president who likes to talk but less to do, he is someone who cares. Trump trusts him and knows that the son-in-law will not contradict him. Kushner has accomplished a lot, but is careful not to push the boundaries of his father-in-law’s shifting truths and fantasies. The crown fighter soon downplayed the virus.
He had already learned this kind of submission (say those who have known him for a long time) from his own father, such as Donald Trump a billion dollar real estate agent.
Two houses at the end of the street on the right, where the Obamas reside, begin: The Kushners would have liked to have three blocked streets for them, but were only allowed to block the narrow trail. We continued past the largest mosque in Washington and crossed a bridge into an almost even more exclusive part of the city.
Rock Creek Drive winds through the park of the same name, properties are getting larger and pedestrians are less frequent. Steven Mnuchin, finance minister and Trump’s top man in the economic crisis, has settled in a corner.
Steven Mnuchin with Donald Trump at a press conference: Trump was first proud, then angry. (Source: Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)
Mnuchin, a former investment banker and film financier, was already well positioned with a villa in Bel Air, a city apartment on Manhattan’s Park Avenue, and a beachfront property in the Hamptons, but he found a place to stay here for 12 , 6 million dollars. In return, in American terms, there were 12.5 bathrooms: eleven full baths and three guest toilets. In the morning, two fat Chevy Suburbans are waiting to drive you to work in the building next to the White House.
Mnuchin, 59, like Trump and Kushner, is the son of a wealthy dad whose attention struggles for much of his life. Your role in the Trump system: You can talk to Democrats. Trump himself has never been able to do so. As soon as he’s in the same room with Nancy Pelosi, they collide. Contrary to his own public relations, Trump was not noticed as a negotiator in Washington.
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It was Mnuchin who negotiated the trillion-dollar rescue packages for businesses, small businesses, and millions of citizens with Democrats in record time when the economy crashed in the spring. Trump was proud and then angered when he heard on Fox News that Democrats were accomplishing many of their projects. Mnuchin bowed to Trump’s whims and had Chief of Staff Mark Meadows by his side, until recently a far-right MP, and now everything has stalled. Most of the aid has long expired, weeks of talks are over, the Senate is on vacation.
Mnuchin is a fragile guy with a glamorous wife number three, an actress from Scotland, who was apparently particularly impressed by riding the government machines. She asked if she could arrange a military plane for her honeymoon in Europe. The state apparatus refused.
Just around the corner from the Mnuchin property is Benton Place. Here, in front of the biggest house on the street, a Mediterranean-style villa, the newspapers are on the stairs. No one in Conway’s house right now. Trump’s adviser Kellyanne and her husband George only paid just under $ 8 million, but only eight bathrooms. (As with Mnuchin, the formula appears to be: a million per bathroom.)
Kellyanne Conway’s role was to exemplify a maxim for the rest of the Trump system: the shameless the better. From day one, he doubled the truth with as much taste as the boss; His creation of the word “alternative facts” was unforgettable. Like no one else (except Trump), he put down journalists. I experienced almost masochistic rituals with her. You stood in front of her at the White House to learn something, but you learned nothing but caustic instructions. It showed that one rule doesn’t just apply to Trump himself: Those who constantly lie receive less criticism than those who only do it occasionally.
Conway was the most brazen saleswoman on Trump’s politics. Her husband George, who first wanted to join Trump’s Justice Department, became the president’s most venomous opponent on Twitter. Every day a scathing tweet about his wife’s employer, then he even founded an anti-Trump association with other disappointed Republicans. So the Conways marriage became a big deal in Washington and a symbol of the Trump era.
Kellyanne and George Conway (January 2017): the best salesperson, the most caustic attacker. (Source: Joshua Roberts / Reuters)
In the end, it was the children who finished off the ghost. Her 15-year-old daughter Claudia criticized TikTok and Instagram against Trump and against her public relations wife, her own mother. One of her last messages was that she wanted to give up her parents by lawsuit. Now the father has stopped tweeting and Mrs. Mama has left her job at the White House.
Ministers and advisers come and go under Trump like a dovecote, only three remained: loyal, painless, subjugated. Kushner, Mnuchin, Conway. Now there are only two left.
The Conway case reveals a truth about the servants in the Trump system: They get power and attention, but their service to Trump and their conflict-oriented reign creates disruption.
He’s extreme with the Conways, but neighbor Mnuchin knows something about it too. According to the New York Times, his father, whose support he has sought so much support, is “disgusted” by the son’s politics. His nephew recently attacked him on Facebook, the wife simply says he doesn’t say anything about politics.
The situation is different at Kushner: Jared has married the closest circle of the family business. So far, only Trump’s sister and niece deny the character of the president. Only Kushner’s sister-in-law, model Karlie Kloss, is now campaigning for Joe Biden.
But Jared and Ivanka also paid a price. After the election victory, they thought they would move to Washington as the new Kennedys: a radiant power couple at the center of society, their home on Tracy Place as the hall of the powerful.
Nothing came of it. Friends have turned away, others have not even turned. You are an accomplice of a nefarious president. You cannot unite Washington while the chief is dividing the nation.
