Surf Cat

Topline: Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has offered a rare look into his role as the president’s senior advisor in a cover profile for TIME magazine. Here are some of the things we learned, from his morning routine to how he defines his job as “surfing” the waves that Trump creates.

• Trump sticks Kushner with the more complex tasks, according to Kushner’s wife. tasks. “The President tends to task Jared with his highest-priority projects…the President will often call on him to handle other issues that are of significance,” Trump senior adviser and first daughter Ivanka Trump told the magazine.
• Kushner’s longevity in the White House is, in large part, owed to the fact that he views his role as being a facilitator of Trump’s agenda, as opposed to pushing his own. He is regarded as number 2 after Trump, in terms of his influence in the White House, Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, told TIME.

• “One thing you have to remember when you work for President Trump is that you don’t make the waves. He makes the waves…Your job is to surf the wave as best as you can every day. And you have to always smile and have a sense of humor with it, because he’s the one who’s got the instinct,” Kushner told the publication.
• But he hasn’t always found fans among White House officials, some of whom resent him for taking credit for projects they have long worked on, such as NAFTA. Kushner in 2018 travelled to Mexico City to convince the country’s foreign minister to negotiate with Trump, a move that angered some U.S. officials. Others acknowledge that Kushner played a pivotal role in turning soured negotiations around.
• The 39-year-old father-of-three practices transcendental meditation. Wake up time is 5:30, and he is transported to the White House from his Kalorama home at 7:15am each morning via blacked out Secret Service SUV. 
• His West Wing office might not be the biggest, but it is strategically located next to Trump’s private dining room. In it hangs various honours, including a poster of the First Step act prison reform bill, signed by none other than Kanye West.
• After leaving behind lucrative pursuits as a real-estate investor in his family’s company, he might be in Washington for the long run. Aside from hoping for a second term, he says he “likes challenges”, the lifestyle in DC is “quite nice”, and his children enjoy their schools. 

Key background: Kushner entered Trump’s White House at its inception with little experience or buy-in from officials. This is something he acknowledged to TIME, saying: “I didn’t know which files were my responsibility, which files were other people’s responsibility. I didn’t necessarily know what it took to be successful,” he said. At one point, he was stripped of his security clearance when it was downgraded in 2018. Yet, Trump’s son-in-law has outlasted several aides and former aides who have been dramatically turfed out or resigned amid tension or differences, yet his behind-the-scenes influence rarely makes it in front of the camera, compared with his colleagues. 

Tangent: In a profile last week, the New York Times reported that Kushner’s role in the White House is shifting more towards overseer of Trump’s 2020 campaign, marking a turn away from his previous focus on global policy.