Trump backed failed campaign coup against Kushner, Navarro book says
Ex-adviser says president in 2020 agreed that his son-in-law had to be replaced by Steve Bannon but did not dare try to fire him
In June 2020, less than five months before polling day, Donald Trump agreed to a “coup d’état” to remove his son-in-law
Jared Kushner from control of his presidential re-election campaign and replace him with the far-right provocateur Steve Bannon.
The coup had support from Donald Trump Jr, but according to a new book by the former Trump aide Peter Navarro, it did not work, after Trump refused to give Kushner the bad news himself.
Navarro risks Trump’s ire by criticizing his actions as president, at one point devoting six pages to outlining “why a president who is supposed to be one of the greatest assessors of talent … would make such bad personnel choices across so many White House and cabinet-level positions”.
Fearing “family troubles if [he] himself had to deliver the bad news to … the father of his grandchildren”, Trump asked Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, a major Republican donor and a central player in the coup, “to be the messenger” to Kushner.
In Navarro’s telling, Kushner first insulted Marcus by skipping a call, then told Trump’s emissary “things were fine with the campaign, there was no way he was stepping down and, in effect, Bernie Marcus and his big moneybags could go pound sand”.
Navarro writes: “And that was that. And the rest is a catastrophic strategic failure history.”
Navarro’s dim view of Kushner permeates his new book: one section is titled Both Nepotism and Excrement Roll Downhill.
With his wife, Ivanka Trump, Kushner was a senior adviser to Trump in the White House and on the campaign, essentially acting as a shadow chief of staff.
Ex-adviser says president agreed son-in-law had to be replaced by Steve Bannon in summer 2020 but did not dare try to fire him
www.theguardian.com